As a teenager I had spent many a nights, alone, at my cottage in the Heart of Muskoka (ontario canada). I was born in Huntsville Ontario and although our family moved many times over the course of my young life my heart remained on the shores of Lake Vernon.
I had decided to spend a long weekend up at my cottage alone and had brought up a knitting project to keep me occupied in the evening. I could feel the tension rising in my shoulders from the repetitive action of knitting and decided it was late and to call it a night. As I stood up in the living room I felt my whole body freeze in panic. The cottage was lit up and the windows were pitch black as there was no moon this night. I stood there feeling stuck in fear and I had to force myself to breath. I quickly ran over to the light and snapped it off in hopes of being in the dark would rid me of that feeling of being exposed. I then made my way to my room and even though I attempted to go at a regular pace once I was in view of my bed I hurled myself onto it like a 7 year old trying to avoid the monsters under the bed. In this situation the monster was in inside...it was something outside in the trees, glowing and staring in at me, watching me. I hoped I would just fall asleep, but sleep never came. I laid there too afraid to sleep and too afraid to get up. I felt trapped and this went on for 4 hours. The outside light and moths were casting shadows on my wall which didn't help the situation at all and then the sound of what I assumed to be raccoons fighting outside my bedroom wall kept me up as well. By 5:00 a.m. I knew I could not spend another night and as soon as a bit of morning light started to come through my bedroom window I was up and packed the car and was out of there. The closest family I had was a two hour drive so at 7:00 a.m. I showed up at my Grandmother's door looking all sheepish and embarrassed. My grandparents had built the cottage in the early 60's and of course I spent a lot of time with them there as a little girls. She invited me in and asked why I was there so early in the morning and so I proceeded to tell her my story of the night and how the trees were glowing with no moon. She stopped me right there. "Shannon! What did you just say?!?!" I said "THE TREES WERE GLOWING!" She smiled and said "oh my goodness I haven't heard that in years!" I asked what she meant and she proceeded to tell me how when I was a little girl and she would put me to bed at the cottage that I would wake up in the night crying that the trees were glowing. Later while recounting the story to my mother she said that she had the same experience there with glowing trees and felt it was like Aliens in the trees. Needless to say that was the last night to present that I ever spent the night alone at the cottage.
Photo by Starkgrl (shannon stark)