From gillies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go boomp in the night: Good Lord, deliver us. I remember this poster (about 11" X 17") from my parents' home. It hung on the door in the downstairs back bathroom. The image isn't a great photo of the collage, but you can get the idea. Grandma liked sensational images.
Family lore says that the poster really belongs in the bathroom at the "it may be a shack but it's our shack" camp. Not this particular collage, but one like it, spent time in the outhouse in the family's early days of camping. Being out in what feels like the middle of nowhere makes you more attuned to noise. Night trips to the outhouse were among the most frightening experiences of my childhood, except for Fire Prevention Day in grade school, which apparently freaked me right out of my imaginative little gourd (according to my oldest brother, who was babysitting me that night--I don't remember it myself).
I do startle easily, even though we live in a house, not a shack, and even though decades have passed since Fire Prevention Day. The other night we were sitting on the couch. My husband was napping. I was looking out into the darkness where I couldn't see the lake, wondering idly how cold it would get that night.
Then I heard something strange--a quiet kind of thud or two. It sounded a little as if someone came onto our front porch, but no one rang the doorbell. It must be something in the house, I thought (though it sure didn't sound like it). Just as I was able to convince myself that it was nothing, I heard a similar series of thuds, as of walking feet. Even my husband woke up.
Winter is a noisy season in these parts. Snow accumulates on the roof and melts a little when the sun shines on it. Sometimes a bit slides off when you're not expecting it. Sometimes the wind howls through the vent over the stove. The heater gears up in the basement and then begins to blow, and that progression of sounds is different depending on where you stand in the house. The well, pumps, and septic system make their own variety of noises--some happier to hear than others.
It's taken me awhile to get used to the noises, and sometimes I'm still not. Sometimes I still find myself alert in the middle of the night for no reason, awakened all the way by something I can't identify and dismiss. We live in an area that is something like "the country" but also a lot like a neighbourhood. I tend to forget the fact that people live near our cocoon.
The other night, it took a few seconds for us to look at each other and say, "We did hear that, right?" At first, we (meaning I) thought it might be a person--a friendly person. Perhaps someone was stranded and needed help. But we hadn't heard a car or any other sound, like a snow machine. And it was far too cold for someone to be out for a walk and decide to stop by.
When we went to the front door, which is on the land side of the house, we found the cause of the noise: a deer. It stood in silhouette, chewing away at the cedar bushes between the house and the car. Its hoofprints showed in the snow of the sidewalk. Of all the things that could have gone boomp, that was definitely the most picturesque.
It was also reassuring. If the doe was comfortable enough to walk around in our yard and chew the bushes, our neighbourhood must be pretty safe. Or at least it was that night: I slept well. (And yes, I have evacuation routes from each room of this house all planned out. I try not to think about those, though.)
