Empty Cabins

Last November, I had the rare opportunity to follow my curiosity wherever it took me around Meeker Park. It was the short period of time between when the summer visitors leave and the snowstorms began. Without deep snow on the ground and the fear of trespassing where people still lived, I was able to wander through the woods and down small, winding roads to see what I might find.

 

If you drive the main roads around Meeker Park, you see maybe 20 or 30 cabins along the road. But dozens more are hidden in the woods. Finding them feels like an adventure from one of the books in which I buried myself as a child, such as Grimm’s fairy tales, where a walk through deep woods leads to an enchanted cabin inhabited by elves, fairies or witches.  

I’ve yet to meet an elf, but some human presence lingers after the summer folks have boarded up their houses for the winter, even if it’s just the melancholy sound of the wind chimes or the pile of wood standing ready for the next time the cabin owners come, or the outhouse door blown open by strong winter winds.

With no humans around, I feel free to linger, to stop and admire the sunlight on the rough pine exterior, the decorative touches like a painted red screen door and red-checked curtains (above), or a pathway made of stones (right). I can admire the compact and tidy shapes of these cabins, some with screened porches.

A place like Meeker Park is rare in Colorado because many original cabins are still standing, which is not true in the tourist town of Estes Park down the road, where most of the old lodges and cabins have been replaced by modern hotels. Meeker Park often feels like a place that time passed by, leaving it in some perpetual state of rustic pleasure. It’s like discovering Brigadoon, a window onto a past that no longer exists.  

Each cabin is different, some dating from the early 20^th century and hand-built, including the stone fireplaces. Every cabin has its own flourishes, like door handles made from deer antlers (like on my cabin, which was built in 1939). Because these cabins have been around long enough, nature has grown up around them, so the cabins seem part of the landscape, a natural extension of the ponderosa forest.  Some have sunk into the ground and are slightly tilted, while logs can be a bit crooked and windows off center, so the cabins seem organic, as if they’ve grown from the ground. 

Especially in the winter, these cabins hold secrets, stories of people long gone. I know some of the stories, like the nearby cabin that was owned by a childless couple who willed the cabin to their caretaker, whose children now rarely use it; or the cluster of cabins bought by a group of airplane pilots who built a swimming pool, now long gone; or the couple who lived across from them—several years ago she died of cancer, and soon after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and moved away.

But now, as the winter winds blow snow off the cabin roofs and the snow piles up around their foundations, sealing their doors shut, the cabins hold onto their secrets even more tightly.

 

Comments

[shoney]

Wonderful post. I love this kind of curiosity. It would be wonderful to know the stories of all of these cabins.
Thank you.

[Julene Bair]

There's something so enchanting about an empty cabin in the woods. I used to feel the same way about the cabins, much fewer and further apart, in the desert when I lived there. Love the way you evoke the feel of these discoveries.