Living the Lake Life

A few months ago, my boyfriend and I bought our first home together. We decided to trade city life to move out to a small resort village in Saskatchewan and have been enjoying the lifestyle to the fullest ever since.

Moving right before Christmas might be hectic any other year, but with the Covid-19 restrictions in place we weren’t allowed to go and visit with family. While it was a strange and quiet holiday, we had a lot of time to unpack and set up our new home. With just our luck, the strictest restrictions our province has implemented so far went in to place right before our moving day. So, without the ability to offer pizza and beer in exchange for some help, we ended up moving almost everything just the two of us. But it was well worth it to spend that first night in our cozy new home.

Before moving, I lived on one of the busiest streets in one of the busiest cities in Saskatchewan. While I liked my little house, sirens and traffic were regular background noise for me, and my fingers were always crossed that I would walk out to my car in the morning and none of my windows would be smashed. Now, city life absolutely has its perks. I love trying new restaurants, checking out the local vintage shops, and taking the dogs to the riverside dog parks, but I think that living in a small community is my favorite place to be. Now, I wake up to a quiet house where I can leave the blinds open to let the sun stream in. The dogs watch deer from the windows, and race across the frozen lake in search of any scraps left behind by whoever is out ice fishing. We are also close to a Provincial Park, and there’s a perfect skating rink right by our house.

With the extreme cold we have has in the last week, paired with a lot of snow early on in the season, the deer moved in to our little village. While I love living somewhere where I can see a deer from my front window, the dogs have taken it as a personal challenge to chase them at every opportunity. I have been working on my core strength on walks lately, holding back my two coyotes while the deer lay in neighboring yards without a care in the world. A few times we have made the mistake of trusting June off leash, and ended up chasing after a dog in hot pursuit of some deer that are certainly faster than her. These chases end up with us huffing and puffing to the house to find June already sitting in the front yard guiltily.

While June likes the thrill of the chase, Piper finds her joy in sneaking frozen deer poop or fish remnants off of the ground as we walk along. She loves zooming around on the lake, sometimes forgetting that the ice below her feet is in fact quite slippery. The lake that we live by is also host to hundreds of ice fishing shacks in the winter months, and there are always plenty of people out making the most of the cold days, even after a bout of strong winds toppled over and damaged many of them a few weeks ago.

I took the dogs to the nearby park to check out the cross country ski trails the other day and was glad I hadn’t decided to try them out blindly on my skis with two dogs. They look like a blast, but definitely a little more advanced than where my skijoring skill set currently is. Instead, we enjoyed a walk and a little break from all of our deer friends. Lake life is certainly the life for us.

With all of the fun we have been having this winter, I am so excited to see what summer has in store for us!