Times change, of course. By the time I came along a generation later, roads and communication had improved. The summer folks still had their cottages, but railway service had dwindled; so they arrived in self-driven automobiles, stayed the summer, and returned to their homes, leaving a trusted caretaker to close up their place for the winter and keep an eye on it till the following season.

There was a change also in the dynamic between the summer folks and the natives who supplied their choice meats and vegetables while they were here. The formality of it was much reduced. WA White, like many members if the nearby Ausable Club, ran a tab at various stores for the summer and came in personally to pay them at the end of the season. He walked into Crawford’s Country Store (which had the best meat in town) one afternoon to pay up and discovered he’d forgotten his checkbook. He pointed to the big cast-iron brown wrapping paper dispenser and asked for several inches – upon which he wrote a check for his summer’s charges.

“You take a check on wrapping paper?” asked a bystander after WA had left.

“If WA White signs it,” responded Austin Crawford, I’d take it if it was written on toilet paper.”

Them days are gone forever, I presume. These days the summer folks are accorded a modicum of reserved respect, but there’s generally a comment ready in the event it becomes necessary. One rather superior summer woman had taken a photography course during the spring. She’d purchased an expensive Leica and a tripod, and on Saturday mornings set up in the parking lot of the general store, where she snapped candid photos of the locals coming in for their week’s groceries. She obviously had no idea that you just don’t do stuff like that.

One Saturday noon after a morning behind the lens, she came into the store to pick up a few groceries. “You know,” she said to the cashier at the checkout counter, “you have some very unusual-looking people in this town.”

“Yep,” said the cashier. “We do. But most of ‘em are gone home by Labor Day.”

The shortening of the daylight has become noticeable, as have the lengthening and cooling of the night. I’ve finally had to dig out and deploy a second fleece blanket to kill the shivering at three in the morning. Instead of curling up at the corner of the bed farthest from my feet, Kiki’s now lying lengthwise with her back against my thighs. I do my laundry during the night, putting it into the washing machine, Hans Maitag, at bedtime and Franz, his dryer brother, when I get up around three. I’ve noticed how much faster that transfer has occurred the past few weeks.

This is the quietest time of the year here. The kids are back in school; the tourists have retreated homeward, freeing the seats in the coffee shop; fewer boats buzz across the lakes; the bugs have subsided; the early birds are flying south already.

But the lull is only temporary. In a couple of weeks, when the maples, oaks, popples, and birches follow the sumacs and swamp maples into scarlet, the roads will begin to throb again, a happy sign for hoteliers and restaurateurs. Then, about the time the last colors have faded from the mountainsides, the snow guns will spring to life in the cold nights, and ski season will have begun. The new crop of cars will travel much less reflectively than those of the peepers, much faster and purposefully.

I suppose the times will change again, and ours will seem quaint. But always, I hope, there’ll be this slow, yet sudden, approach of fall, winter, and the end of another year.