Cabin Journal

Your GPS won't do any good

This week, on my walk, I found the Mr. Rooter service man tromping through the snow near my cabin, trying to find an address. He had gone down several driveways and across the creek with no success.

“Who are you looking for?” I asked. He gave me the address.

“No, I mean who’s the person?” Numbers don’t mean much around here, because there is no logical structure to the neighborhood.

He was looking for Deb, who lives up the hill a way and behind the house we were standing in front of. I pointed the way, and off he went, another victim of Meeker Park’s incomprehensible and off-the-grid layout. Neither GPS, Google nor Mapquest do much good around here, partly because there is no cell phone coverage but also because there are few official streets.

Meeker Park has one county road, which the government plows in the winter and repairs when needed.  The rest are cobbled together from bits of people’s property to create the semblance of a road that offers access to four or five houses. Someone may decide to give it a name, something whimsical like Blue Jay Lane, or for the first person or family who lived on the road. My road honors Bill Waite, a solitary and private man who lived at the cabin next to mine (his old shed, above) for 40 years and was reportedly horrified when he found out the county had named a road after him.

Nothing is on a grid, and property parcels come in every shape and size imaginable, with no rhyme nor reason. It’s a nightmare for surveyors and title companies because property lines blur and overlap.  My neighbor’s plans to put in a septic system took several extra months because the title company’s search for the owner of the property that abuts theirs turned up 200 conflicting claims. The company said it was the most challenging title search it had ever done. It turned out the “road” that connects all of our cabins is actually private property that belongs to one cabin owner, whose property is not even contiguous with my neighbor’s property.

In trying to figure out how this could have happened, my neighbors discovered that all the property in our neighborhood (encompassing about 10 cabins) was originally owned by one woman, who started selling off bits of property in a messy fashion. If one man said he wanted to build his house on this slight hill and only wanted a small piece, she sold it to him, and if someone else wanted the property that extended along the river, they had a deal. At some point, what was left was sold to the last buyer, who ended up with a small, strangely shaped bit of land.

All this has resulted in directions to outsiders that go something like “When you go over the creek, you’ll see a house on the right that has a child’s swing set on the side. After that, turn right where you see signs nailed on the tree. The top one says ‘McIntyre’s Manor.’ After that, you’ll come to a green house on the right, with an old washing machine in front.  We’re right across from that house, the one with the red door.”

Old-timers have their own way of giving directions, usually involving people who have lived here a long time: “It’s past Mrs. McGovern’s place.” Lillian McGovern died long ago, and there’s been one or two new owners of the ranch since then, but her name is indelibly stamped on the property, partly because she was a long-time and admired figure. She and her ranch have become part of accumulated history. It’s different than the city and suburbs, where people move in and out too fast to leave stories or imprints, and there are not enough old-timers to remember.

I’m glad to live in a small part of the world where the human connection is more significant than technology, where humans (and animals) and their footprints still matter.

Walking Backwards

Over the summer I always forget, or choose to not remember, how difficult winters can be at the cabin. Maybe I was fooled by that extra long autumn where I left the front door open on sunny days and didn’t need a fire for warmth until the end of November.

So it was a shock to arrive at the cabin this week and find all the water jugs turned to ice. In the refrigerator a jar of beet juice had frozen and then cracked, leaving a black ooze on the shelf. Without water, I couldn’t clean it up. When I went to make lunch, I found the olive oil was frozen. I set it out on the table in the sun, along with all the frozen water containers, and let the sun’s warmth work its magic—although slowly.

All small inconveniences but a reminder that most of the time I live in supreme comfort in Boulder—water that comes out of a tap and that I don’t have to boil if I want it hot; heat that comes on automatically and doesn’t require sawing and stacking wood and constant efforts to keep the fire going; and warm floors that don’t force me to wear a blanket around my ankles.

I had a mission this week: to disperse the seeds I had collected all fall on the soil disturbed by the septic system. I had tried last year but the juncos had availed themselves of the free meal. This year I had brought up bags of topsoil to cover the seeds and foil the birds, but I had waited too long and missed my chance, because the bags were frozen solid. I brought one bag inside to thaw out by the portable heater, but by the time the soil got even a little bit soft, the winds had come up, meaning my efforts to get the seeds on the ground would be cast to the wind.

There was nothing left to do but go for a walk and shake off the frustrations, but I was met with more resistance: wind gusts of 30 to 40 mph. At times, I was literally stopped in my tracks, the wind coming straight at me, while I tried to hang on to my hat, put my head down and turn away from the gravel blowing in my face. Finally, I turned my back to the wind and walked up the hill backwards to avoid the brunt of the wind.  Of course, I couldn’t see where I was going, but on a day like this and in a time of upheaval, where nothing makes sense anymore, it seemed the only sensible thing to do.

Rest in Peace—and in Nature

My dad was the first person in my life to introduce me to the wonders of nature. First, by moving his family from the treeless, crowded streets of Chicago to the relative wilds of the suburbs. On both sides of our new house were empty lots—empty of houses but full of trees, bushes, flowers—places to build forts, ride imaginary horses, play hide and seek. He took us for walks in the forest preserves—acres of trees and tall grasses—and to the beach, where I could look out at the blue waters of Lake Michigan and imagine something endless and mysterious.

Best of all, in the north woods of Wisconsin he discovered a lake where he helped build a cabin made of knotty pine walls and a river stone fireplace. (That's my dad, below, getting me to hold a fish he caught.) At Thunder Lake, my dad took us children for walks into the deep woods of tall Norway pines and birch trees and to the waterfall that spilled into a dark pool of water, and taught us how to swim and sail and paddle a canoe. At night, he led us to the end of the pier and shared his awe at the bowl of stars that crowded the sky.

In the intervening decades, after I moved to Colorado, we didn’t always get along. We were on opposite sides politically, and he held some racial and religious prejudices that were abhorrent to me. But we still shared a love of nature—responding together to the sunsets over Thunder Lake, the sight of sandhill cranes in a Wisconsin field, the rippling waters of a creek. Several times he and my mom visited Colorado, and I was able to share my love of mountains with him.

On our last outing together, in late October, we went for a drive to see the last of the Midwest’s fall colors. Most of the time he had his head down, his body tired and worn out at age 95. But on the shores of Lake Michigan, he sat up when he saw the crashing waves, marveling with me at their size. And when we drove into a nearby forest preserve, his eyes came alive when he saw a huge maple, glowing red. I saw him smile like I hadn’t seen for months. It was the last time I saw him so happy. He died three weeks later.

We’ve buried him now, and I like to think of his body set free from the burdens of his stroke—not being able to walk, play the piano, talk to people.

At the cabin, there’s new snow on the high peaks, and the temperatures drop to single digits at night. There are no maple trees in the mountains of Colorado, but I find my dad in the ponderosas that soar upward, in the sky that connects us all, in the knotty pine walls of the cabin and in the leaping joy of the flames in the wood-burning stove.