4522 SILLS BAY ROAD - SOLD

The Essentials

A beautiful forested two-acre waterfront lot just 30 minutes north of Kingston.

The Bigger Picture

Before you head the extra five minutes north you’ll want to stop at the Sydenham chip truck, it’s one of the best I know. Whenever we list a property up this way, I imagine myself at the picnic bench, car keys tossed aside, the healthy whiff of a half-pint of malt vinegar and the blinding glitter that is too much salt. It’s pretty good.

Even better, you might pop in to the new bakery next to the gas station. Make that: you should pop in to the new bakery next to the gas station. It’s distinctly possible you’ll think for a moment that you’ve been transported to Brooklyn. You’ll drift, is what I’m saying, until you try the pretzel and feel about as intensely alive and present, as in-the-moment as you can remember. These, I swear, are worth the trip alone, and I have the seller’s son to thank for that tip.

But five minutes north, a loaf-for-later on the passenger seat beside you, you arrive at this beautiful forested two-acre waterfront lot on Sills Bay Road. Tucked between the maintained road and the Bay, there are slopes both gentle and steep, and a natural shoreline like something from a Canadian Tourism brochure, all bullrush and wind-bent pine. I must have scrambled up and down from the water to the road a half-dozen times just figuring out the lay of the land. I was like a kid again, except for the bad knee and the distinct reduction in puff.

I’d build here, I thought, or maybe here. I clear these trees and I’d leave those. I was pointing out rock formations and street trunks as if I wasn’t alone. The driveway has to go here, I thought. Yeah, obviously. I watched for a bit an osprey fishing the shallows and then screeching over granite and cedar into the next bay.

You’re not going to plunge in here in your scarlet Speedos (at least I don’t think so) but if your inclination is more to nose through the reeds in a kayak and then circumnavigate a host of islands before heading south to Sydenham Lake or north into Eel Bay, then welcome to paradise.

A general leveling towards the water, and a long curving swale down from the road, point to ideal and secluded building sites. Your year-round neighbours might never know you're there. You can talk to yourself all you like. Or to the deer that walk the lane along the shore more worry-free than I think ever been, with a head-up grace I find nothing short of bewildering.