This is the door to the little nature center that I built in my backyard for my grand-daughter. It is just simple plywood, with an old brass handle on the right, and an old rusty hook-lock.
Ive dusted the shelves, vaccumed the inside, and gotten rid of all the spiderwebs. The loft has books and teddybears, and a multitude of nature specimens in jars in the cupboards. The windows have been covered with plastic to keep the winter wind out. All, the little tendings of putting a cabin to bed for the winter. I keep a nightlight burning in the front window all the time and it sheds a warm glow, alerting the prowling raccoons that someone might be inside.
This is the time of year when mountain cabins are boarded up over in Montana, when the last trails of woodsmoke fill the valleys in the Belt Mountains. I remember Mother cleaning the cabin, turning off the power, cleaning out the refrigerator, and putting heavy shutters over all the windows.
Those summer days out in the country passed so quickly for us, and soon decades rolled by. All that is left are the memories...of sweet, cold well-water that we had to pump up from the ground, of the pop of wood in the potbellied stove, and the scent of woodsmoke coming from cabins up in the canyon. We'd have to say goodbye to the friends we made during the summer, with the hope we'd see them again next year.
Over in Montana, you clear out before the snow comes, because to get to those cabins late in the year would require a snow plow. No one was there to bother with that. Once, we hiked in to the cabin, to see how it looked in winter, and it wore a 2 foot blanket of snow on the roof, with a resolute drift of snow on the front porch...not a welcome sight.
Raking leaves, I stopped to breathe deeply the fragrant air of autumn. Have you noticed, when you crush leaves underfoot, they burst with a dry scent, somewhat musty, of earth and heaven all rolled into one? Let them lay there, in the rain, and in a short while you can turn them over, and all kinds of little red worms have squiggled into the leaf-mold. They'll twitch and thrash, unaccustomed to the light. Best to cover them up - they'll be good in the compost bin.
