Cottage Fever & Dolce Domum

About this time of year, every year, I get struck by cottage fever. I start to get antsy for a cottage of our own. I begin dreaming of country lanes and kayaking trips. I start scouring online listings of cottages for sale. What am I looking for?

A cottage tucked away in the northern woods, surrounded by pines and birches - but with a clearing and a view so that the girl-from-the-prairie in me won't feel too enclosed. A cottage on a point or in a bay at the edge of a deep, clear lake. A loon-inhabited lake. A private and secluded cottage, but one that's close enough to town for ice cream outings on hot summer days. A cottage with creaky wood floors and afternoon sunlight streaming in through the windows. A cottage with a screened-in porch or a wrap-around deck. A cottage with a long wooden dock on which we'll eat our picnic lunches and from where Denis will learn to dive. A cottage in which I can awake to a songbird symphony and nod off to a croaking chorus of bullfrogs. A cottage that greets us year after year, like an old friend, and takes us in its embrace for the lazy days of summer. A cottage that will give Denis a sense of rootedness and a place of belonging - both of which I feel are ever important in our transient lifestyle.

I don't want much, do I?!

It was as if the chapter I read from The Wind in the Willows last night, entitled "Dolce Domum",  was written just for me. It seems I have much in common with Mole, who's torn between living in his little home underground or exploring the wide open world above.

"He saw clearly how plain and simple ... it all was ... the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence."

"He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome."

"...they braced themselves for the last long stretch, the home stretch, the stretch that we know is bound to end, some time, in the rattle of the door-latch, the sudden firelight, and the sight of things greeting us as long-absent travellers from far overseas."