The Enchanted Cottage

I saw the 1945 version of the Enchanted Cottage several years ago and its message stuck with me. In fact, it’s one of my favorite love stories and I may have written about it before.

The premise is that a couple believes that each is only beautiful within the walls of a magic cottage. I won’t spoil the ending for you, because I think today would be a good day for you to find it , watch it and cry happy tears because love is real and beauty transcendent.

I thought of that movie this weekend because I think we may have stayed in an enchanted cottage.

Oh, she was not much to look at when we first pulled up in the pitch black night after a nearly 15-hour drive. In fact, she looked a little intimidating and the raucous screams of some aggressive East Coast Katydids camped out overhead did not helped.

“What. Is. This. Place?” I said to absolutely no one because, when I looked up from the driver’s seat after checking my phone, everyone had disappeared into the back of the building. I’m blind as a bat (which I assumed were also fluttering about overhead) and we had not seen a streetlight for miles, so I called out into the thick, dark night.

“Hello?”

“Where is everyone?”

I’d found the cabin on AirBnB so, if it really was haunted, my family’s demise would be on me.

The whole thing freaked me out. Eventually, I found the fam but I didn’t sleep well that night.

The next morning, though, the enchantment began. First, I stepped outside to take a walk and saw a whole family of deer so cute they looked like little claymation characters. “Hello friends!” I called out cheerfully and they didn’t run away. In fact, they came back again that night with a dozen or so of their friends and we all hung out for a while.

We discovered a fire pit with a suspended grill we put to good use (and found especially handy when the gas grill briefly but caught fire).

We found a hike nearby that ended in a waterfall.

Five fat turkeys strolled past and gobbled a greeting.

A sweet little song bird flew down the chimney and I thought maybe she was there with a pink ribbon to help some wood mice sew me a frock, but then I realized she was actually stuck in there and I called our host to help get her out.

An evening rain storm bounced merrily off the upper deck and added to the ambiance for all of us tucked safely on a picnic table below. How often does one get to dine happily al fresco in the pouring rain?

I have to hand it to the Poconos, an isolated area of the country with which I’ve become oddly familiar having found myself in Bushkill Falls two years in a row.

You never disappoint.

Close your eyes and listen to these aggressive East Coast Katydids, and tell me you would not be a little freaked out.