Cottage of Lost Memories
A snowstorm is blowing outside as I view my collection of photographs of summer visits to Jasper National Park. A photograph shows a cottage built in the 1920s to attract artists and increase tourist visitations. In the window’s reflection is a turquoise lake in the foreground and on the distant horizon, Mount Edith Cavell capped with snow. Inside the cottage, a semi-circle of chairs face a stone fireplace and the flames of a fire, lit minutes before I had stepped outside.
It’s there we four friends, whom we jokingly called “The Group of Four,” had sat with our evening meal, discussing our day’s photo shoot, reading poetry, and sharing the ups and downs of our lives.
I shot the image on our last visit. How many years did we spend a June week here? Ten I think—it felt like a tradition, like a home-coming instead of a going away to a retreat.
Ten years more have passed since that last visit, since that argument that ended those visits.
shuttered cottage,
beneath the welcome mat
a rusted key
