Cabin Journal

Stop the Wind

I used to love the wind. I remember childhood afternoons on the sandy beach of Lake Michigan, being cooled by the breezes coming off the lake. Or summers at my family’s cottage in northern Wisconsin, listening to the wind through the birch trees, the waves softly lapping the shore.

When I got to Colorado I discovered the music made by the wind through the aspen leaves and through the pines: a sound that evoked something wild: winds that streamed from the Pacific Ocean, across the Sierras and the empty desert basins, arriving in full force at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.   

Here, in Boulder, where strong winds are common, especially in winter, I also discovered wind’s destructiveness. A few years after I moved here, wind gusts of 80 mph tore off a roof in southern Boulder and sent it down the hill, where it landed in someone’s yard. Over the years, telephone and electric poles were constantly being replaced by tall metal towers that could withstand high winds.

But I was never afraid of the wind until last December when 100-mph winds carried flames across dry fields into suburbia, destroying 1,000 homes in Louisville and Superior. (Photo above shows the aftermath, with plastic head that someone stuck on the emergency fence.) Up to that point, no one imagined that a fire could start in December, burning so hot that it leapt across a four-lane highway to obliterate not just homes but a strip mall and hotel.

And in the last month, strong winds have started small fires up down the urban Front Range, burning fields as well as pine-covered mountain slopes, invading both mountain and suburban subdivisions. We’re learning that no place is safe. Last week, a wildfire burned several homes in Monte Vista, a southern Colorado town surrounded by farmlands and near the sandhill crane refuge I visit every spring.

None of the fires this past month has reached the destructiveness of the December fire, but everyone knows it’s just a matter of time. Everyone is holding their breath, especially when the wind comes up, like it has for the past week.

At the cabin, many of my neighbors are already making their evacuation plans for what looks to be a dry and warm summer: what to pack and  which route to take when the alarm sounds; who to call for information. One neighbor told me he can’t stop worrying, that he feels the hand of doom on his shoulder constantly. Right now, the fire danger is greater on the plains, because the snow has just melted at the cabin, and the ground is still moist. But as temperatures rise, the snow that covered Mount Meeker last week is quickly melting, and no measurable precipitation is forecast for the foreseeable future.

When I arrived at the cabin this week, the winds were strong, almost too strong to walk in, and the trees swayed violently in the wind. Unlike in the past, I didn’t find the winds comforting. It felt like some unknown and unseen force had been loosened. What’s scarier is that there is no safe shelter anymore.

The World Revealed Again

Two weeks ago, at the cabin everything felt raw. Piles of snow were everywhere, while last year’s battered grasses were crumpled on the ground. But last week, with most of the snow melted, I sensed spring:  a lightness and clarity to the air, breezes almost soft.  

Life is slowly returning to the mountains: small green shoots of a plant, which it’s too early to identify, are coming up alongside the garage; and the creeks are running again, so fast that dirt is being stirred up, muddying the waters. As I sat outside, a young chipmunk approached, the first one I’ve seen since last fall when the chipmunks and ground squirrels went into hibernation. Best of all, the aspens are budding out (above), although it will be another month until the leaves appear.

With the snow mostly gone, humans’ stuff buried over the winter is revealed: a plastic chair that got blown into the wild rose bushes by the road, a large orange utility pail and Christmas wreath stuck among the aspens, and another chair blown down near the creek. I’m also seeing the damage from our strong winter winds: trees on the ground, cracked in half or branches broken off. In the back yard, I pulled up a young thin aspen that had been weighted down by the snow.  I anchored it with a log, and I’m hoping it will survive.

Strangely, I’m finding bird feathers everywhere; stuck among the pine needless or in the grasses. The long ones (right) must be from the wild turkeys that walk past my cabin every morning to get to my neighbor’s place, where she puts food out for them. But there are also short, downy feathers, as if they came from newborns. But the birds are just starting to nest, so these soft feathers are a mystery.  

Two weeks ago, I saw my first mountain bluebird of the season, and last week I was captivated by the sight of a vulture riding the strong winds, its wings constantly readjusting to fit the flow of air, swirling in every direction across the valley.

But spring is never far from winter, and more snow is forecast for this week. Yet spring’s quickening pulse won’t be denied. Nature is preparing itself for a giant release, working at the root level, getting ready to break through: to reveal what has been hidden.

Cabin Unchic

I saw an email from Expedia with the headline, “Discover cabin escapes that feel worlds away.” Because I love anything to do with cabins, I checked out the listings. But these weren’t cabins that I was familiar with around Meeker Park—small and tucked into the woods, often 50-100 years old. Expedia’s cabins were contemporary, often next to ski slopes, with tall floor-to-ceiling windows, four or five bedrooms, a hot tub, bathrooms with “rain showers” and  claw-foot jacuzzi tubs, and “hand-thrown glazed tiles on the main bedroom's fireplace.”

The only thing that made them cabins, as far as I could tell, was their location: in the mountains or woods. So what makes a cabin? “Wood elements, rustic decor, furry accents and plaid fabrics are all associated with cabin-chic style,” gushed one HGTV commentator.

I guess my knotty-pine walls qualify as a “wood element,” and I have a Scottish plaid blanket thrown over one of my chairs. I’m not sure about the rustic décor, unless that would include the old Rocky Mountain National Park pennants on the walls. And, sad to say, I have no furry accents, unless you include the deer mice that are regular visitors to my cabin and “accent” the cabin with their funny antics, like climbing up the curtains.

The descriptions of “cabin chic” that you find on websites like Instagram also stress cozy—something the world seems to crave in this time of uncertainty—but a 5,000-square-foot cabin doesn’t meet my requirements for feeling snug and secure.

In fact, small should be one requirement for a cabin, because each room should have an outside wall, the better to feel close to nature. You need to be able to hear the wind through the pines, feel the house creak when a big gust arrives, hear the animals underneath the floor and the pine cones hit the roof. Feeling the cold come through the cracks in the walls is a bonus. In a real cabin, you’re separated from nature only by thin walls and windows.

Built in 1939, my cabin is around 650 square feet, including the attic. The walls and ceilings are the original knotty pine, and the single-paned windows let in cold air, as well as warm sunlight.  On heavy snow or rain days, water drips through the ceiling, a lingering result of an unfixable leak that developed after the 2013 floods.

The furniture is circa 1940s, including the aluminum chairs (left) on the front porch and, inside, a chipped wood table and a flowered print couch and chair. Wanting to replace the furniture, I once checked out the cabin furnishings store in Estes Park, but the overstuffed leather couches were so large they would have taken up my entire living room. I’m afraid my cabin would not be considered chic by today’s standards, especially according to this Expedia description:

“This stylish, masculine living room represents the classic, cabin-chic look. Featuring neutral gingham fabrics, rich leather details and wood-beamed ceilings, the space manages to look both comfy and super sophisticated. The large, wood-burning fireplace serves as the centerpiece of the space, tying it all together.”

At least I have a wood-burning but I enjoy its warmth and light on cold winter nights. I also lack the gingham fabrics and leather details. However, my cabin has something the large, modern ones don’t: simplicity. Because I have no plumbing, I don’t worry about pipes freezing. I have no dishwasher, so I wash dishes by hand. I’ll never need a plumber nor someone to maintain my (nonexistent) hot tub or jacuzzi. This all leaves more time for enjoying the simple life: reading, watching wildlife, smelling the pine trees.

One website I found about Alaskan cabins said a real cabin should have either an outhouse or compost toilet. I have both. I would add another requirement: that you have mice, because that means the cabin is porous, open to the world. It’s part of nature, not set apart from the surrounding forest. In fact, the forest is part of my cabin, because the foundation is tree stumps.

You can’t get much closer to nature than that. Except when the mice crawl into bed with me.