twenty-four hours in the pontiac

02 May, 2025

L and I needed to leave town after what has been a spectacularly strange few weeks for both her and I. L has wrapped up the frenzy of yet another nursing school semester and I have found myself suddenly waking up in May, with part cabin fever, part spring seasonal depression.

Our escape plan was hatched in the late hours of last Saturday night’s party. The sort of thing that we would agree to only at night, not something you could be wholly serious about until it was light outside. For once though, we followed through on our plan and we scheduled a nice mid-week dip to the Pontiac. A few texts were exchanged - what time do I pick you up? can we stop at the superstore? don’t forget to add more tracks to the spotify playlist.

By 10 AM I was well on my way to L’s apartment, stuck in the dwindling post-rush hour traffic, listening to Keith Urban with the sun in my face and the car windows down. There are few things more energizing than a whole free day ahead of me, a bit of a travel plan, and the promise of a good friend’s company. Once the car was loaded up with our essentials (twisted tea branded cowboy hat, chamomile iced tea, nyt crosswords book), we shot straight down the sunny Quebec highway, which eventually turned into a poorly serviced mountainside road. There were no other cars on the road, just an open sky and trees that have only just started to bloom.

I am lucky enough to have visited many beautiful places in the world. Yet, even when I am in the moment, looking over at some beloved waterfall or rolling hills, my brain reminds me that it’s never as beautiful as the Pontiac.

I’m sure 75% of it is nostalgia. Memories of escaping the city, of the childhood days with no service or wifi, a summers with no plans except for stopping in leisurely at old Quebecois shops. The backdrop of green fields and trees is permanently etched into my brain. The sky feels nearer somehow, closer to Earth than anywhere else. Everything infinite - like if you ran for two or three hundred kilometres you’d never run out of green below and blue above.

I drive 30km under the speed limit because no one’s around to care anyway. All I want to do is look out the window and imagine what it would be like to have a farm house, to live in a place so quiet and so beautiful. As we take more turns down the winding road, L puts on more music that seems to exactly fit the vibe. Remi Wolf. Assorted songs from the Sex and the City soundtrack.

I’ve been listening to the Smiths a lot more lately, L says.

I love the Smiths, we say in unison, mocking Zooey Deschanel’s character from 500 Days of Summer. Morrissey croons over the stereo. I deliberately skip the song about the car crash. I have one rule about music when I drive. No songs about car crashes.

We stop at the usual haunt for lunch. Solid fare you can find anywhere in rural Canada, with three different types of ____ Salad Sandwiches. I get the chicken salad, remarking that I’d never once heard of a Salmon Salad Sandwich before. L tells me it’s common around here, a staple of church funerals.

In the midst of our lunch, we both get a text informing us that there’s no power at our destination. A huge windstorm from the night before has caused serious outages around most of this area, so it’s unlikely we’ll get any power restored during our short excursion. We shrug. We don’t need cell service or wi-fi or anything, so we decide to axe our pasta dinner plans and instead drop by the grocery store to get barbecueable food. We’re all good - we can definitely use the barbecue, I say. L looks me in the eye and affirms this with a nod. We send off a few final texts. I schedule an email. We get excited about how good it will feel to be fully disconnected from the world, calm and free.

We get back in the car, continuing along one of my favourite roads in the world. The final leg of the drive goes without incident, barring the large tree we see strewn across the power lines. Just a few short hours from our departure, we finally make it to the lake, calm, cold, and bright.

Despite the gorgeousness of that photo, it was a windy 9 degrees. We piled on the blankets and coats as we sat by the lake. The warmth of the sun heated our faces. We listened to Joni Mitchell and Norah Jones and took in the freshness of the air. We worked on a few crossword puzzles. This is what life should be like, L says.

I agree. Life is infinitely good when you’re out in nature, freely disconnected from the rest of the world, listening to tunes with your childhood friend.

Hours later, we see the first sign of other human life. A kind neighbour stops by, sent by L’s family to check on us after the power outage. The neighbour brings eggs from his heritage chickens, and teaches L how to turn on the generator so we can get a light and some running water for a few hours. The ordeal is somewhat stressful, the generator appears to be a new, fancy, sort of complex piece of equipment with too many steps to remember. The neighbour is patient, and makes L work through the steps to prove she can properly execute the turning on of the generator. He makes a trip a few kilometres out to the top of a hill for a single bar of cell service to call L’s family for further generator instructions. We thank him profusely for his help, noting especially that this neighbour isn’t particularly close to the family, he’s just a nice person.

He says what I have heard many an older gentleman say, Well, I have two daughters, and if they ever needed help, I’d like to think someone would do the same for them.

He gets back in his truck and heads the few kilometres back down the road to his farm. L and I almost tear up at how nice this man was, a stranger to us.

The sun begins its descent and we realize we need to get on to doing that barbecueing we had committed to. We chop the sweet potatoes and asparagus and get the oil and spices all set to go. We take it outside and I stand in front of the barbecue. I look at L, Ready?, I ask, gesturing at her to turn on the barbecue. She looks at me, eyes widening, I’ve never barbecued before. We start to laugh. Somehow we have both made it through 23 years of life without ever having used a barbecue. Somewhere in the universe I picture our fathers laughing at us. What do you mean we don’t know how to do this basic life skill. Panic ensues. I thought YOU had done it before? No, I thought YOU had! But you were so confident? So were you!

Without power, we briefly picture a world in which we both don’t eat dinner. Could we muster together a sad meal of granola bars? I pull out my phone, with the immediate instinct to google “how to turn on a barbecue.”¹ Oh right. No service. We quickly shun the idea of a sad snack dinner. We’re independent women. We can figure out how to do this. If L could learn how to use a generator today, what was one more appliance to learn?

We began by scrambling around and trying to find a barbecue lighter. No dice. I take a small lighter and try to find any scrap sticks lying around to MacGyver a possible barbecue lighter alternative. While L is running around the house looking for a manual of some kind, I try to fiddle with the propane. Is this thing on? Looks like it is. I cautiously turn a knob. Nothing happens. I poke around a bit more and spot a button with a lightening bolt on it. Could it be? Perhaps the automatic start could be why there was no long lighter around. I open the knob. Press the button. Success. Barbecue on.

L and I celebrate our big win. After loading up the barbecue with our veggies some oil starts to drip into the flame and catch fire. We remedy the problem quickly and run into the basement for a fire extinguisher, in the off chance we screw this up more and have to act. The fire extinguisher is about 1000 years old with the pin already pulled. If nothing else, it serves for some peace of mind for two anxious women.

An hour later we’ve got a fully barbecued hot dinner, with honestly some of the best cooked asparagus I’ve ever had. This was our view as we ate:

With the sun down and the generator on we got to use actual running water and turn on a light. I whipped out my dj decks and L and I sat inside and I did some basic mixing. We decided to break out our freestyle rap skills over the tracks, all extremely crude verses designed to make each other laugh. In time, we trekked back outside, armed with flashlights to turn off the generator and go to bed. The noise of a generator is so grating and loud it was a relief to turn it off, despite being in the pitch black night. While L turned all the knobs and flipped all the levers I scanned the forest behind us with my flashlight, ready to fend off any attackers. I imagine I looked very intimidating in my large cowboy hat and flipflops.

In the quiet darkness we scampered back into the house and hid under blankets. It is amazing how much being in the dark, many kilometres away from any other people, with no service or power, will make you feel a bit like a kid again.

In the morning we sat in the sunroom and declared victory over our situation. We learned new skills. We survived the night. We got to see the water.

In search of breakfast we fled the lake, back to the reliable amenities. Back home to the city.

More adventures sure to come over the next few months. May you feel the serenity of the lake wherever this blog post may find you in your own life.

love and hugs,

sam

special thanks: to L, to the Neighbour, to L’s family. To the Great Nation of Quebec and anglo-accented French