The Cabin

The moment I saw this cabin, sitting at the end of a dirt track that curved across an open meadow. I knew this was home. Nestled in a grove of evergreen, it was dwarfed by the jagged peaks of the Seven Sisters Mountain, four of which are over 8,200 feet. Bob and I looked at each other and agreed, “This is it!”

The cabin was hand built in 1987 by a recently arrived immigrant from Germany. He came with his young wife and two small children. It took him two years to complete the cabin. It seemed that he was in no hurry, explaining to us that fishing, hunting, trapping, and exploring always got in the way of work. I’m not sure his little family felt quite so cavalier. During the warmer months they lived in a tent, and during the winter they lived in a nearby vacant cabin that someone had offered to them out of concern for the children. Talking with the children who are now young adults, there are undisguised bitter feelings about their early years of isolation and hardship. In spite of that, anyone seeing the cabin can appreciate that it is a labor of love and craftsmanship. It is built with cedar logs selectively cut from the local forest. The method used for joining the logs is called Swedish cope because of its origin. The log bottoms are cupped with a gutter adze and trimmed along scribed lines so that each log fits snugly upon the log below. This construction is very sturdy and provides an airtight seal that sheds moisture extremely well.

The two-story cabin’s inside measurements are 20-feet by 24-feet, for a total of 960 square feet. The large open room downstairs serves as kitchen, dining, and living room, with our bed tucked into the back corner, and a partial wall that provides privacy for the bathroom with claw foot tub. The upstairs room that once was the children’s domain has become our work area and library. There are windows everywhere, giving us views of mountains, meadow, and forest. The first summer we were here, I sat at the writing desk that looked out over the meadow and watched as a black bear climbed into the crabapple tree, balancing on multiple branches and stretching to reach apples at the end of spindly tips. Amazing – such balance and agility – but there was also a very surprised look on his face when he fell out of the tree with a resounding thump!

The second-floor stair opening measures only 30-inches by 22-inches, which presented a problem when we had six big pieces of furniture to move up there. Solution? We took out the front windows on the second floor, hung a heavy duty pulley and line over the top beam, attached one end of the line to a sling that held the piece of furniture, the other end was tied to the trailer hitch on the Jeep. Bob stood on a ladder to guide the furniture past the log butts and I was at the wheel of the Jeep. Together we successfully got the furniture upstairs, although a little surgery was required to get the loveseat through the window.

Interior view of cabin.

Ooops!

A little surgery is required.