Shutting Down the Cabin

 

“Time, that mysterious something, that flow, that relation, that mediator, that arena for event, envelops us and confounds us all.”—from Descartes’ Dream:  The World According to Mathematics by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh

 

Nighttime temperatures were forecast to dip below freezing.  It was a sign to shut off the water pump at the Quiver Lake cabin and drain the pipes.  For most years, it could be four to five months before turning the system back on.  So I tried to stretch out the last visit, putting off flipping the breaker to the off position until I couldn’t avoid it any longer.  When it was done, I took a last slow walk through the woods down to our sandy beach, and sat for a while under a large cottonwood tree to fill my mind with a few more memories to look back upon over the winter.

          I looked for flocks of waterfowl flying in and out of nearby Chautauqua Refuge or a marsh hawk following the Illinois River valley southward, a species I rarely see other times of the year.  Mostly I just sat and stared.  On shut-down day, it’s hard to accept that another season is over, and I’m surprised at how quickly a mere eight months could pass.

          Leaning against the tree, I recalled the red fox sighting, the river otter a few years before, harvests of wild golden oyster mushrooms, cookouts seasoned with wood smoke, Julie indulging in her art on the screened-in front porch, bald eagles perching on our lakeside trees, the first spring wildflowers so many months before—bluebells, Dutchman’s breeches, and spring beauties—and the many cold days, ice, and drifting snow that would have to happen before I would see them again.  I thought about almost missing the winter-spring transition while recovering from an inconvenient surgery that kept me bound to the couch for weeks, reading books, which I didn’t mind, and wondering what was happening at the cabin.

          Then summer hit.  We’re cool-weather people; so on hot, humid days we’re fine with staying home.  But this year when those types of days were finally becoming fewer, a period when I would normally be drawn more to visiting the cabin, we decided to move from our sedate Macomb neighborhood to a rural home with acreage just outside of town.  We scrambled to get as many free boxes from grocery stores as were available, and then we packed and moved and packed and moved until it was all done, and we were in—just before leaving on a thirty-eight hundred-mile round trip to New England, during which time both of us were ill.  Along the way, the cabin was always in the back of my mind, and that was the closest I would get to it for a month.

          Time on my last day at the cabin was running away.  So I looked up into the canopy of the cottonwood, stood to leave, and then thought, as I do every year when shutting down the cabin, that we should have had more overnight visits.  For one of my pleasures is to walk around the property in the early morning with a cup of coffee, out to our dead-end road to see the sun rising over the sand prairies, and later to stand on the river bluff edge before the lake breezes begin, when sounds of birds on the lake or mud flats clearly resound from below, and the floodplain forests of the opposite lakeshore are illuminated in direct sunlight, while my side of the lake is still in shadow.  On overnight visits with clear skies, I might risk running into a skunk to see the Milky Way, sometimes Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn (the spotting scope I use to view shorebirds makes an excellent astronomical telescope).

          Next year, since I don’t expect to be moving again, I hope for a year without undesirable distractions.  After being forced to install an entirely new septic system in our new home (after the original one backed up into the basement just two days after we had moved in), then replacing rotten bathroom flooring due to years of leaking pipes, and making our home safe from haphazard electrical work, I asked myself:  What else could go wrong?  Myself answers: Don’t ask.  A leaking roof?  Don’t even think it.  A shifting foundation?  Shut up already!

          The patient man in me always thinks there is more time for everything, and my time hasn’t run out; limited, though, it is, like every living thing.  So I’ll save whatever I have left for later, and then spend more of it at the cabin, as much as time allows, and be miserly with the rest.  Soon it will be time to turn on the water again, and that will be a happy time.  Time will tell.

 

 

 

An old Swiss-made watch inherited from my grandfather, Vincent Zelizko, born in 1903 in Bohemia, when it was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Richard Keating]

Great Piece, Tom,
I miss my Spanish Peaks cabin, and summers for a decade. But no way to keep it after Jody died.
Time moves on at accelerating pace. But no complaints since I'm still here.