The View from Castle Rock

have a good reason, but what if you
are just interested?
The best thing, probably, is to say you are doing a family history. Librarians are used to people doing that-particularly people who have gray hair-and it is generally thought to be a reasonable way of spending one’s time.
Just interested
sounds apologetic, if not shifty, and makes you run the risk of being seen as an idler lounging around in the library, a person at loose ends, with no proper direction in life,
nothing better to do.
I thought of writing on my form:
research for paper concerning survival of mound burial in pioneer Ontario.
But I didn’t have the nerve. I thought they might ask me to prove it.
    I did locate a church that I thought might be connected with our cemetery, being a couple of country blocks west and a block north. St. Peter’s Evangelical Lutheran, it was called, if it was still there.

    In Sullivan Township you are reminded of what the crop fields everywhere used to look like before the advent of the big farm machinery. These fields have kept the size that can be served by the horse-drawn plough, the binder, the mower. Rail fences are still in place-here and there is a rough stone wall-and along these boundaries grow hawthorn trees, chokecherries, golden-rod, old-man’s beard.
    Such fields are unchanged because there is no profit to be gained in opening them up. The crops that can be grown on them are not worth the trouble. Two big rough moraines curve across the southern part of the township-the purple ribbons turning here into snakes swollen as if each of them had swallowed a frog-and there is a swampy spillway in between them. To the north, the land is clay. Crops raised here were probably never up to much, though people used to be more resigned to working unprofitable land, more grateful for whatever they could get, than is the case today. Where such land is put to any use at all now, it’s pasture. The wooded areas-the bush-are making a strong comeback. In country like this the trend is no longer towards a taming of the landscape and a thickening of population, but rather the opposite. The bush will never again take over completely, but it is making a good grab. The deer, the wolves, which had at one time almost completely disappeared, have reclaimed some of their territory. Perhaps there will be bears soon, feasting again on the blackberries and thimbleberries, and in the wild orchards. Perhaps they are here already.
    As the notion of farming fades, unexpected enterprises spring up to replace it. It’s hard to think that they will last. sports cards galore, says a sign that is already weathering. two-door doghouses for sale. A place where chairs can be re-caned, tire superyard. Antiques and beauty treatments are offered. Brown eggs, maple syrup, bagpipe lessons, unisex haircuts.
    We arrive at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church on a Sunday morning just as the bell is ringing for services and the hands on the church tower point to eleven o’clock. (We learn later that those hands do not tell the time, they always point to eleven o’clock. Church time.)
    St. Peter’s is large and handsome, built of limestone blocks. A high steeple on the tower and a modern glass porch to block the wind and snow. Also a long drive shed built of stone and wood-a reminder of the days when people drove to church in buggies and cutters. A pretty stone house, the rectory, surrounded by summer flowers.
    We drive on to Williamsford on Highway 6, to have lunch, and to give the minister a decent interval to recover from the morning service before we knock at the rectory door to seek out information. A mile or so down the road we make a discouraging discovery. Another cemetery-St. Peter’s own cemetery, with its own early dates and German names-making our cemetery, so close by, seem even more of a puzzle, an orphan.
    We come back anyway, at around two o’clock. We knock on the front door of the rectory, and after a while a little girl appears and tries to unbolt the door. She can’t manage it, and makes signs for us to go around to the back. She comes running out to meet us on our way.
    The minister isn’t home, she says. She has gone to take afternoon services in Williamsford. Just our informant and her sister are here, looking after the minister’s dog and cats. But if we want to know anything about churches or cemeteries or history we should go and ask her mother, who lives up the hill in the big new log house.
    She tells us her name.