That’s a wrap
Another summer in the books. A couple weeks around Memorial Day, a week or so around 4th of July, and a whopping SIX-plus weeks beginning on the 1st of August. Various friends and relations were in and out besides those who live there. Daughters, cousins of all degrees, you name it. All vaxxed, I might add. I always like to echo The Commander and say that everyone is always welcome but I cannot welcome anti-vaxxers at this time and I don’t think she would have either. Fortunately I didn’t have to deal with that issue.
But we’re closed for business now. The water is drained, [most of] the lucky-shuckial circuits are pulled. The curtains are drawn and the storm windows are on. It’s all buttoned up. (The photo isn’t from today, it’s from an earlier year later in the fall.)
We do this because this comfortably rustic place is still rustic in the winter but not comfortable mainly because it isn’t insulated, there’s no central heat, and because of those two things, there is no indoor plumbing in the winter. And no outhouse (any more) even if you could get the place warm enough to actually stay there in the winter. This is what it looks like in the winter. I am standing just about where I parked Cygnus a lot of times this summer. Note the big snowdrift to the left of me. It forms every winter. It’s taller than me and it covers the driveway/parking area.
The next pic is from the Sherman Archives back when the moomincabin was only one story and painted red and didn’t have a deck. In those days it didn’t have indoor plumbing either except for cold running water in the kitchen sink delivered via a garden hose from my next door uncle’s well. What did we do if we had to go? You know that we had an outhouse back then. We also had a big wood stove. I’m running outta steam so we’ll talk about the outhouse and the wood stove some other day🐸
The GG closed the moomincabin this morning in tandem with npJane closing the Old Cabin. Both are safe at home on The Planet Ann Arbor now. Kudos to both of them for doing this important chore🧡🧡🧡.
September 27th, 2021 at 7:05 pm
There’s no outhouse but also no indoor plumbing. Umm? So, lots of nature calls?
September 28th, 2021 at 1:54 am
Brushing teeth by the outdoor tap, heating water in the old wood stove for dishes. Running to the outhouse in the morning clearing the night’s cobwebs as you ran between the ferns. All good memories.
September 29th, 2021 at 10:24 am
Thanks for these pictures and the explanation of closing out for the season. I’ve wondered often about the winters up there and if you spent any time at the cabin in the winter. No, is obviously the answer. Very reminiscent of my husband’s family’s “camp” in the Adirondacks. Doug was born in Rome, NY, and although the family moved to the DC area when he was just a year old, they traveled back each year in the summers and spent many weeks at the camp on Pleasant Lake, which I’ve heard about often from him and other family members. After you’ve been married as long as we have — 43 years — his childhood memories and my childhood memories are all mushed together. Sometimes it feels like I was there too. Are we one person now? Odd. Weird. Unsettling a bit.