Cottage life sure has changed. We walked into town and saw a view of Lake Muskoka. The boat traffic is significant, but on a large lake it is diffused across broad shores. On our wee lake the noise, smell and irritation of the day at the
marine end of things ever larger boats, or smaller boats with larger engines, and PWC that can carry a passenger, spotter and a couple of kids on a tube, life is crazy. One PWC seemed to race another while dragging kids around.
Yesterday, as I quietly paddled along the shore, I came across a van parked by the water. The doors were wide open and the radio continues in the night. With cranked up in order for the young people to hear the music 300 m away, out in the middle of the lake. Now, I am not opposed to rock music, but there is a time and place for it. I do resent others thinking it their right to
create an explosion of sound in a place where the deafening noise of the city is our escape. The noise by-laws apply all day, something of which most people are unaware. The fireworks continued in the evening. Literally.
Our former renter/partiers were much quieter their final night, thankfully, except that there were other folks on the lake who do not seem to realize that this is where some of us
live. We have need or want to go to bed before 11:00 p.m. , sometimes even at 9:30 when they run fireworks on a nightly basis. The peculiar thing is that it is not just adults running fireworks for children. The
renters I wrote about the other day appeared to be late 20-somethings, wannabe teenagers, with no respect for neighbours. Setting off fireworks on municipal
property on our mutual road. So much for one's ecological footprint. All of our pets shudder in fear under beds; cannot imagine how the wildlife feels.
The Me-Generation has raised a segment of their generation who believe it is their right to
blow things up at night, to use the lake as their playground, burn damp wood dumping
hydrofluorocarbons into the air, and generally do what they want in the freedom of nature. What is with this? I once offered my cottage to a dying friend as a place for some respite care and peace and quiet of the county. That would have been a mistake. I wonder, when our (light-sleeper) infant granddaughter arrives for a holiday whether this will have an impact on *her* sleep patterns. There are several neighbours on our lake who live and work in this area and have to rise early for this purpose. It is a long drive to their employment.
Taxpayers fight for reduced taxes, in an ever more crowded tourist area, and the privilege of allowing their 20 and 30-somethings scream around lakes at all hours, dumping gas, as well as septic system waste, into at-risk ecosystems. The precious balance of humans and nature is one I will watch closely. There are those, apparently filthy rich young people, given the freedom of
staying in the cottage for the weekend, who expect that they can drive a couple of hours up here from Toronto, throw all manners to the wind, and behave as if their Muskoka property is party central. I look forward to the shoulder seasons, when there will be peace and quiet again. In fact, rather than being a snowbird, I would like to be sunbird, and escape to the city while city-folk pollute the air, water and soil.
gh that we open our windows at night. The stink from fires is awful.
