On wintery nights, when it is dark and my fireplace is lit, my mind often goes back to the glorious cross country ski trips with my late husband as we, and graduate students from the physics department would ski for a few days staying in a log cabin.
The log cabin was not elaborate, it had one large room with a table and carved chairs and plenty of shelves and a large wood stove. There were a few windows through which we could see the falling snow and the darkness that wrapped the trees like a comforting silent blanket.
There was a ladder which led to a loft where we had all carefully laid out our sleeping bags for the nights. The woodstove roared and the kettle on the woodstove whistled to us all to have more tea. There was, what once was a couch, near the woodstove which was used only for the unfortunate one who was 'chosen' to man the fire in the night..
The table and shelves had many used wine bottles with stumps of candles. We brought extra candles and prized the bottles which were full of many colours of wax that had dripped onto the side. It was at this table that we discussed our prowess on the ski hills especially those steep hills which we would climb and then say a prayer before 'snow plowing' while going down. We discussed politics, played chess (I always lost), spoke of the glories of nature, of the beaver lodges we passed and heard the kits chortling in their warm but ice bound home, we spoke of the owls who left their feathery wing prints in the snow, we discussed the snowfall which turned the forest into a wonderland of silent white,
We solved the political problems of the time and dried our wet sweaters from the days skiing near the woodstove. The winter seemed to last forever in that cabin!
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