Shutting down the old girl

Perhaps the most melancholy ritual of November is shutting down the old girl on Pretty Mary Lake.

The old girl is a late 19th century, five bedroom farmhouse in which our family has spent much of three generations of summers. Lest you get the wrong idea, this was not built as the county seat of some member of the landed gentry of centuries past. It was built by a farmer and forester as the best he could afford; the house is narrow, and the rooms are small. There is no insulation and the plaster in places is being supported largely by layers of wallpaper and paint. No central heating; though our little Irish wood stove, "Reggie", manages to keep the kitchen warm well into the fall and, given a couple days, will take the chill off the rest of the house.

It does, however sit on an acre-plus of lawn in the midst of a forest, and has a screened verandah that stretches across three of its faces. It features several hundred feet of lake frontage as its longest boundary. It is natural and wild, has stands of pine so large that two men cannot touch hands while hugging them and marshy sink holes so deep that generations of children have been warned off with stories of tractors disappearing into their depths.

However, one shouldn't be taken in by the interpretive signage at nearby Kejimkujik National Park, which talks about local farms being built on the fertile south side of moraines formed by advancing glaciers. Ours was built on the south side of a moraine that passes quickly through shale flour into swamp.  

Every November, when  evening temperatures begin to dip below zero, the plumbing must be drained, screen doors--and there are four--replaced with plank storm doors, all paint, boxed and canned goods packed into the car, the refrigerator emptied, dahlias dug and any other remnants of a wanton summer cleared away.

If the weather is nice around mid-month, shut-down can become the occasion for one last spell of rural idyll. Twenty acres of forest, marsh and lake shore to be checked, a city dog who revels in the freedom of the country and around every turn of every path the reminder of past wonderful times.

If schedules come together, a friend or family member might join me for part of the visit, especially if the weather forecast is promising--though two out of the last four years we have managed to get caught in unpredicted early fall snowstorms, so most tend to be a bit wary about accompanying me.

While I work away at tidying the yard, neighbours pull in--or merely wave as they speed by on the dirt road out front--and I catch up on all the news since the last time I was around. I read final copies of the Bridgewater Bulletin and Liverpool Advance, have pleasant chats with Suzie at the local corner store and stop by the hardware store and gas station just to demonstrate that we are still around and still part of the local economy.

But as each hour passes, I get closer to that final act of draining the plumbing, locking the door and driving away. I write in the journal we have kept for almost 40 years, read about the joy of opening the place up each past spring and the melancholy of closing it down each fall.

Finally, I walk through the house, checking the windows and lights. As I pull the kitchen door shut and firmly click the padlock, I might catch sight of one last lone bat picking off insects unfortunate enough to have been awakened by the warm afternoon sun or evidence of a bear having visited the apple trees overnight. I smile and sigh, get in my car and drive away.