Looks like we’re standing, yet again, on the cusp of winter. So soon. Remember when summers lasted so long that you were anxious to get back to school? Ah but we were all in a hurry to grow up, weren’t we? 

Living in a cabin on the lake seems to be irresistibly conducive to such reflexion. Must be ‘cause I do a lot of it. It’s a luxury, I know, and I do appreciate that my wandering has brought me to such a situation. It’s a mystery to me but what the hell. I do love to look out and watch the ever-changing mountain-side across the lake. Today is overcast with intermittent showers so there are no shadows on the hillside. It’s a grassy hillside, or mountainside depending on ones notion of what constitutes a mountain. I mean, to a Saskatchewan native it would undoubtedly be seen as a mountain but to a Calgarian, with a view of the snow capped Rockies from her kitchen window, it would doubtless be called a hill. 

It rises at about forty-five degrees out of the lake for seven or eight hundred feet. There is a  flat shelf directly across from me where cattle and horses can be seen grazing peacefully, an occasional bellow from a moody cow echoing across the water. All very, very rural. 

There’s been talk of another exceptionally cold winter. A woman who works with forest fire rescue told me that the scientists working with BC Fire expect heavy snowfall this winter and another flood in the spring. I think there must be some substance to that notion because the lake level is lower now that I have ever seen it and it’s still dropping, which means the water-gate keepers to the south of us are hedging their bets and letting the lakes drain longer in order to accommodate the spring runoff...which seems like a good idea on the face of it but which also means that my waterline, and likely many others, may be exposed to freezing because the protective water will be too shallow. Bummer! 

So what I have to do then, as the water recedes, is to get out my shovel and dig the line deeper into the ground. I know what to do, but am not at all enthusiastic about the prospect of actually doing it; digging a trough into the sloppy, cold, rocky mud is simply not something I can visualize as being an adventure anymore. I used to get a real buzz from conquering natural resistance…man vs nature…sweating in the cold from ultra-exertion…triumphantly returning to a fire and a mug as the early darkness settles over the land…all that jazz. But things have changed. I’m just not up for it anymore. But…we can’t just let the water-line freeze up can we? No water no toilet flush, no shower, no laundry, no nothin'…just a very unhappy woman wondering why she didn’t marry somebody her own age. 

So…I need to hire a shlepper. You know? Some young dude who will dig,dig,dig while I regale him with stories from my rock ’n roll life (with little aside admonitions not to drive the pick through the water line). Yes, it looks like I’ve come to that place in my life when the socially responsible thing to do is pay somebody else to do the actual work. Lots of people do that, or so I’ve been told. I’ve always been a do-it-yourself kinda guy but ’tis time indeed to gracefully surrender the things of youth…or middle-age even. So, tomorrow I shall begin my quest to find a willing shlep. I’ll pay top dollar…whatever that is???