OLD MR. MILLER

         Old Mr. Miller would pilot his little motor boat up and down the lake twice a day between his cabin and who knows where. The public dock was to our left of our 'camp', as all places in the mountains are called, his cabin to our right. He would sit in the stern, old rain hat on his head and wearing a gray windbreaker whether it was sunny, cloudy or showering.

         If one or both of us were on our dock, we would exchange a wave with him. That was the way of people on Eagle Crag and Mt. Arab Lakes. My wife explained to me that waving was a simple courtesy, a lack of which she noted in the younger people on the lake as years went on. We never spoke or called out to him, nor did he have anything to say to us.

         For the two of us, he was our major link that we were still in the civilized world. Most camps on the lake were shut up tight for the coming winter. We were to close our camp when we left. This meant packing things away, cleaning out the refrigerator and taking all perishable food with us. I was also to don a scuba mask and shut the damper on the fireplace. With the closing of camp, custody was turned over to the mice.

         I never did find out where Mr. Miller was going each morning and night. Morgan speculated that one of his children was still in their camp down the lake a ways, around Countrymen's Point and he was going there to take his meals. We never did travel out on the lake to find out. We were content to spend our time dealing with living at ShelterReeves, as our camp was known.

         Walter Reeves, Morgan's grandfather, had the cabin built in 1925. His two daughters and son had inherited it, and now their children also had use of it. There was an account book of cabin life in which each visitor was expected to make an entry. In one doorway were penciled marks where children were measured for height. All around were the artifacts of almost fifty years.

         Most people don't honeymoon in Siberia. Most people weren't Morgan and David. What better spot for ten days together than an unheated Adirondack cabin in the third and fourth weeks of September? Electric, hot water, telephone? Who needed them in 1974?

         There was a fireplace, a chuck stove and two propane tanks outside the cabin. The interior walls were lined with narrow tubing that transported the gas to the refrigerator, the stove and the lights. To illuminate the house, the camper would turn a spigot on the lamp hanging on the wall, and then light a wick inside the glass bulb. WHOOOSH, let there be light!

         The front of the cabin had a screened porch that sat high off the ground. Underneath the cabin were kept the canoe, washtubs and in later years a small sailboat. More could have been stored there but for the fact that it was built on the side of a hill and the back of the cabin was nearly on the ground. Up the hill was a decrepit outhouse, since rebuilt. In 1974 there was, praise the Lord, indoor plumbing.

         This was the world that Mr. Miller punctuated every morning and evening. Sound carried on the lake. We would hear a boat and wonder if it might be someone new. We would go out on the porch, or look out a window, but it was always Mr. Miller doing his constitutional. I don't remember seeing him again after that year, perhaps because we would take our time earlier in the summer.

         We were last there in 1998, after Labor Day again. We decided to buy this house while staying there. It was much closer to 'the mountains', as we always called the cabin, but we never went again even though the cabin now had electric, a phone, hot water and a shower. Electric came shortly after our honeymoon, and the rest followed slowly as the users aged and needed more of the comforts of home.

         We're going back in a few weeks, after Labor Day weekend for just the day. This time Morgan will stay, not in the cabin but in a glade back in the woods behind 'the big rocks', as we always called them. I have to take some black paint and a brush from the cabin and paint her name on a golden birch tree.

         I thought of this tree signing today as I contemplated printing and filing our tax return for last year. I marked in the software that she had died June 14, 2001. The software printed that I was filing as a surviving spouse on her line for signature. I thought to myself that she was missing her annual financial review. She would look at the tax return and comment about how much or little money we made. Finances never were her strong suit, and in the end I guess it didn't matter.

         Life comes a circle. Every morning around nine, and every evening after seven, neighbors hear my station wagon motoring down the road on its appointed rounds. Thirty to forty minutes later, they see it again, coming back up the hill. Do they wonder where I am going? I don't know. Do we wave to each other? No, that custom was left back on Eagle Crag Lake in September of 1974.

August 14, 2001