Nostalgia is a funny thing because it rarely arrives when you expect it. You don’t wake up in the morning and say, “Today feels like a good day to revisit memories from a long time ago.” Life usually moves too quickly for that. There are emails to answer, errands to run, and the usual day-to-day concerns that keep your mind focused on the present.
But every once in a while, something small flips a switch. The other day it was music – sometimes it seems like half my life is inspired by music. Anyway, I put on some songs from the mid-1970s – the kind that played constantly on AM radio back then. Nothing special. Just background music while doing other things. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, I was thinking about a cottage my parents rented in June of 1969.
It wasn’t a vague memory either. I could picture the place clearly: a large cottage set back from the lake, surrounded by trees, with a dirt road leading in from the main highway. The lake itself was small and quiet – White Lake in Frontenac County, north of Kingston, Ontario. Yes, that’s really is it directly below.
The memory arrived so quickly it almost felt like stepping into another room. One minute I’m listening to music while writing. The next minute, I’m standing on the shoreline of a lake in 1969. And like most nostalgic moments, the memory started pulling other details along with it. The quiet of cottage country. Long summer days outside. The smell of lake water and pine trees.
Then something else happened. Without really thinking about it, I found myself looking up cottage rentals in the area. Not because I’m planning a trip. Not because I’m trying to recreate the experience. That’s just what nostalgia does. It nudges you to see if the places you remember are still there.
In this case, I already knew the answer. Several years ago – I think it was around 2016 – curiosity got the better of me, and I actually drove back to that lake. It didn’t take long to find it.
The dirt road was still there. Even the same transformer along the road stood exactly where I remembered it. The trees, the curve of the shoreline, the quiet feel of the place – none of it had changed very much at all. And the cottage was still there, too. The same large cottage set back from the water.
I remember walking around looking at it and thinking, almost out loud: “We stayed there in June of 1969.” It was a strange moment. For a few seconds, it felt as though time had folded in on itself. But there was something else that struck me. The lake looked smaller than I remembered. And the little island that once seemed far away now appeared much closer to shore.
That’s another quirk of nostalgia. The places from childhood often shrink when you see them again as an adult. What once felt enormous somehow becomes manageable. Distances shorten. Landmarks move closer together.
The lake and the surroundings hadn’t changed. I had.
Interestingly enough, there are at least two other lakes nearby with the same name, White Lake, which probably confuses visitors who stumble onto maps of the area. There is also a White Lake Provincial Park in the western end of the province, near Lake Superior.
But the one I remembered was unmistakable. It was the same lake, same dirt road. The same cottage sits quietly back from the shoreline. And now, years later, a few old songs were enough to bring it all back again.
That’s the strange power of nostalgia. It just walks in unexpectedly, carrying pieces of the past you haven’t thought about in decades.
johnberkovich.com 