Cabin Journal

Year-Rounders and No-Rounders

The citizenship of Meeker Park can be divided between the year-rounders and the summer folks. It’s a badge of pride to be a year-rounder, to withstand the winters that can be eight, sometimes nine months long. I’m up here all winter, although it’s only two days a week, and when it’s really cold, maybe only every other week. (I draw the line at being in the cabin when it’s 13 degrees inside.) So I consider myself a part-time year-rounder, and I feel some pride in that.

But there’s another category of Meeker Park cabin owners: the ones who are never here, whose cabins sit closed up through snow, winds, summer rains. In the yards you’ll see weathered propane tanks, outhouses with the doors coming off, old washing machines now inhabited by chipmunks. I’ve been here five years now, and I’ve never seen anyone at the green house across the road. When I mentioned that to one on of my neighbors (a year-rounder), she ominously said “And you never will.”

From the stories I’ve heard, these are the cottages that once belonged to people who loved this place and came here often but have since died or moved to nursing homes. Even though their children and grandchildren have no interest in cabin life, they aren’t quite willing to sell the property. Maybe they’re waiting for the housing prices to go up, or they still carry some warm memories of being at the cabin as a child. Maybe, out of respect to the dead grandparents, they are hoping that someone in the family will take an interest. In the meantime, the cabins sit there, boarded up, whispering of better times.

It’s a familiar scenario to me. The same thing happened to my family cabin in Wisconsin. To my grandparents, who bought the first cabin on the lake, the north woods must have been paradise after their lives in Chicago, where the prevailing landscape is rows of brown brick buildings. Their children—my parents and aunts and uncles—brought their own families to the lake, and my siblings, cousins and I embraced this place with joy and love: we learned to swim and water ski, rowed endlessly around the lake, discovered what poison ivy looked (and felt) like), and pulled bluegills and bass from the deep water.

But something happened with the next generation—the ones now in their 30s and 40s. They lost interest in going to the lake, maybe because they couldn’t get cell phone or Internet reception and couldn’t check messages or Facebook. And so these cabins sit, visited now only by my aging siblings and cousins.

Maybe another generation will discover the pleasures of nature, renounce text messaging for the sight of a moose or bear walking down the road, abandon their iPads for a three-day snowstorm or the wind howling through the pines. Or maybe this little settlement will return to nature, to the bears and coyotes, ground squirrels and blue jays. That wouldn’t be a bad thing either.

Fire Gazing

With the onset of cold nights, I’ve started to make fires in my wood-burning stove. I love the fires, but making them has become a chore and a challenge.  It’s not that I don’t love the result; it’s the process that’s the problem.

Despite building fires for five years now, I still haven’t picked up the knack of easily starting fires. I follow all the directions: start with newspapers, small sticks, then add larger ones. When I watch others do it, I admire how capable and confident they seem, putting the last log on and walking away from the fire, not giving it a second thought.

Instead, I’m jumping up every five minutes to make sure it hasn’t gone out. Trying to work while tending a fire is almost impossible, because I’m constantly interrupted by having to throw something on the fire—anything—to keep it going. The next morning, it’s a scene of fire debauchery: small twigs, needles, leaves, charcoal scattered on top of the stove and rug.

Lately, I’ve decided to give up—not on the fire, but on getting any work done. I give myself over entirely to the fire. And that’s done the trick. Because it deserves my wholehearted dedication.

It seems a small miracle that these logs burning in front of me—this ever-changing light show, complete with satisfying pops and crackles, that sends heat my way—is the product of decades of hard work: hauling water and nutrients up from the tree’s roots, gathering sunlight from its leaves or needles, cell upon cell building up, going higher and higher, aiming for the sky, until this massive thing we call a tree is produced. Work that in minutes will go up in smoke. The least I can do is sit here and appreciate it.

I’ve even given up reading at night, tossed aside my books in favor of a deeper knowledge.  Sitting in front of the fire, watching the flames, I realize how full my head is with thoughts, constantly crashing into each other. Yet the fire demands my attention, erases all those thoughts, and gives me the possibility of emptiness. Slowly, my thoughts subside, as surely as the blue and yellow flames reach out, curl and lap the air.

As the fire softly crackles, lifts into waves across the log,  I’m filled with an absolute calm and stillness, with no thoughts of the past day’s events or the future. It’s a place I rarely visit, and I’m grateful to be there, grateful to the tree’s generosity, its strength and energy.

But it’s getting late, and I let the fire slow down. The flames shrink, become orange and red coals, smoldering with the last of the tree’s energy, a few last pops as the fire beds down, while I try to hang on to that last bit of warmth, that last bit of light.

The cabin is silent under the immensity of the black sky and stars, except for the sound of the pine trees swaying in the wind.