Cabin, "a small wood hut"
My buddy I met in combat medical school many years ago called me annually, "Hey you coming to the lake place this year? Every year I said yes. Every year, I didn't show up. The pile of legitimate excuses aside, he always extended a gracious invitation.
Charlie made the place sound tranquil. Very remote with a smattering of fish. Nobody else around for miles. Way off the beaten path and a cabin nested in a hill side the likes of which only a bald eagle would appreciate.
Well somewhere along the line due to fortuitous circumstances my schedule freed up. I have less parental duties. College for my daughter isn't all bad for her dad. I conned someone into feeding my chickens and walking my dog. I had no more excuses. I think Charlie was surprised, I know his wife was.
We stopped to drop his bride and one hundred pounds of black lab off at the cabin, which does not fit the word cabin. Stone stepped walkway, sauna stove, with a breezy screen porch attached to the softest wood structure to set upon the earth.
Mom and dad fashioned the place. Carried it in by hand. For years upon years they carried it in by hand, by the foot, on two feet. It leaves me stunned.
I think Thoreau said "a house is but a porch on a burrow". I'm telling you Charlie's family cabin is nested into some unimaginable nature. No trees cut down for construction. No path ways mortally mortared planked or decked. . They walk over stones the glaciers set eons ago. A cabin, by definition is a small wood hut; this is like a wood carving into a landscape that sighed "yes".
You talk about a place where you can walk softly and stare at big sticks? Hundred year old white pines shade over a hillside that disappears into a pristine lake. Such a burrow is made from sticks, logs, stones, glass and the patience of working with the earthen contours, roots, how the breeze blows or the sun streamed through the woods and over land.
