The Fisherman's Cabin

Tourism had an early start on Shuswap Lake for as early as the 1930s small cabins were constructed along the lakeshore for the "fisher-people" to stay in.  Despite their rustic construction these cabins have endured over the years.  I have had the privilege of living in two of them.
My husband and I met in 1988 at the University of Victoria and by the summer of 1989 I had brought him to the farm.  We quickly installed ourselves in the Fisherman's Cabin, one of the relics from the past that had been constructed in front of my parent's home. The cabin was the perfect romantic home, set on the edge of the lake with trees gathered around it.  Eddy and Betty had also stayed in this cabin as a young couple, using it as their home while their house was being constructed on the hill above.
 The cabin has the perfect antidote for a hot summer day, a large screened porch. There is another room with a very inefficient stone fireplace.  The chimney of the fireplace was a smoke stack from a steam ship that sunk in front of the cabin.  A small stone flagged kitchen completes the cabin.

The fisherman's cabin

The cabin porch as it was in 1989 when Brent and I stayed in it for the summer

Caroline in the summer of 1989. It is fun doing dishes in the Fisherman's Cabin

Brent in the summer of 89.

 The "twin" of this cabin is around the point. It was bought by a couple from States that used it as a summer home, they added onto it and eventually it could also be lived in for the winter.  When we moved back to the farm as a family with a young baby we lived in this cabin, called the Atwater, for a few years.

The Atwater cabin in it's original state.

The Atwater Cabin  circa 1950s

Caroline the summer of 1989.  The screened porch was my favorite place to be in the Fisherman's Cabin. The sleeping corner had a beautiful popular tree nestled around it for many years until a beaver chewed it down.

A summer sleep

under the trembling Aspen.

The leaves clapping their hello, and then whispering my eyes closed.

Delicious the little breeze that skips, jumps over skin.

Everything is still, held by the thick afternoon heat.

The bees sunk low in the nectar of the wild rose, fish in the black of the lake.

The thin skinned earthworms are dug down deep to find the damp earth.

A comfort, a gift, to be safe in this moment.

I in cool cotton, others in flowers, water, soil.

It could go on forever, all of us together, suspended in the warmth

of this day.

If I could kiss this moment I would.