There’s more to life than increasing its speed.
— attributed to Mohandas K. Gandhi
William Morris, the nineteenth-century English craftsman, wrote, “Have nothing in your houses which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” Kat and I agree, but we cast a pretty wide net when it comes to “beautiful.” An Amish bent twig rocker, a sixties spaceship floor lamp, a colored pencil sketch of a gay peacock, and funny-shaped rocks have all moseyed into the cabin.
Some purchases are more strategic. We transport a hide-a-bed sofa (our guest bedroom) in the Dakota; then, rather than wait fifteen torturous minutes for Tessa and a friend to arrive to help, the two of us wrestle it in. It’s got some tonnage. We Laurel-and-Hardy it 10 feet out of the truck, leap it forward, and roll one end on a dolly. It springs open. We girdle it with a bungee cord, then push and slide. We haven’t learned much since moving the woodstove. We can’t get it through either door, and we’re thinking we either have an outdoor hide-a-bed or need to disassemble the patio door. We finally hook-shot it in. We roll out a rug made from carpet scraps, then plunk the couch down.
The cabin is so small that we move the rug and couch fractions of an inch to get them positioned right. With the hide-a-bed extended, we can’t have overnight guests burning their toes on the woodstove. Nor can we have it block the wall furnace. We spend a prolonged length of time debating the exact position of this and other things, then realize, “We’re not epoxy-gluing these things in place. We can move them, right? Move them a lot if we want.”
For me, moving stuff in is just another step in the building process, but for Kat this is huge. From conception through morning sickness through labor, this is her baby. And at night when I would dream about roof angles and trim details, she would dream about paint swatches and furniture. She is now the foreman and I, the gopher.
On the way to the cabin one afternoon, Kat expounds on the collateral benefits of building the cabin. Prior to building, we were neurotically wishy-washy. Part of this came from merging families late in life where everything from child-rearing philosophies to brand of toothpaste needed to be jibed, negotiated, or at least understood. And to do that we would often default to “what-do-you-think?” mode; the stakes were so high — and so human.
But building the cabin was a safe place to express full-blown opinions; a safe playground for working out differences; a litmus test for likes and dislikes. I’m inclined toward funky, Kat is more classic. I like old, Kat prefers new. I like eccentric and whimsical, Kat is more traditional. So we speak our minds, then hash out details about bar stools, bookshelves, and barbecue grills. The cabin becomes a playground for exercising some new communication muscles.
Spending time at the cabin drags out old memories that have slumbered for years. The air, the relaxed feel, the pace bring me back forty years to summer weekends at The Roost. To evenings when I would listen through the heat duct to the adults laughing, drinking martinis, and playing bridge in the next room. To long, rainy afternoons when I was allowed to drink sinful amounts of Coke and do nothing but read comic books. To days when the best toys came off wheel rims — inner tubes for floating, tire swings dangling from dangerously frayed ropes, half-inflated tractor tires for trampolines. It transports me back to afternoons when I would help my grandfather, a tight-laced lawyer turned weekend woodsman, fillet and skin sunnies. If the gods were smiling, he’d let me slip a few shells into his .22 and shoot cans perched on a log next to the outhouse. And if it was a full house, I’d drift off to sleep on a rocking glider on the screen porch or, best of all, on a green canvas World War I army cot we’d unfold, click together, and nestle against the living room wall.
And sometimes the flashbacks transport me back twenty years to the cabin my parents bought on Lake Waverly. They bring back bittersweet memories of the two old theater seats my father bolted to the end of the dock for watching boats and the world go by. I’d auction off a year of my life for the chance to sit side by side with him on those seats for five minutes today. All of these dust-covered memories are blown bare as the Superior winds blow hard.
Since the days we started looking for land, I’ve kept random notes about our cabin venture in a ragtag selection of notebooks, laptop folders, and napkin backs. Bringing order to these scraps of thought is something I’ve longed to do. Maybe there’s a book there.
Kat is 110 percent behind the idea of my taking a short leave of absence to do this. When she left her job to start PrimeStaff, I kept the ship afloat. The risk paid off. So there’s a certain rightness to it.
I head north to write. Twenty miles up the road my cell phone rings and I hear sobs. Not little sniffling sobs, but deep guttural, wholehearted sobs. Kat sobs. I pull over. Trying to decipher a few words, I think one of the kids has been in an accident.
“No, no.”
Then my imagination switches to Kat’s friend, Beven, who’s been battling cancer for years. “Did Beven die? Is that it?”
“No, no.”
Finally she calms down. Her mammogram has come back with suspicious spots. The doctor would like her to come back the next day for more tests. There’s an urgency about it.
Kat tells me to keep aiming north; my returning home won’t solve anything. Okay. I drive 100 feet north and do a Steve McQueen U-turn. We talk, hug, and hold for an hour, then I head north again in earnest. The long drive provides plenty of time to swing deals. “Lord, if things turn out all right I’ll change my wicked ways.” “Kat, if you pull out of this okay, I’ll never take you or your breasts for granted again.”
And when I’m at the cabin that night I realize without Kat, without someone to share the space, tranquility, bliss, and views with, the cabin is just four bored walls perched above a lonely lake. Tom Waits growls:
What makes a house grand,
Ain’t the roof or the doors.
If there’s love in a house,
It’s a palace for sure.
Without love, it ain’t nothin’ but a house —
A house where nobody lives.
Same is true of a cabin.
The next day the phone rings, and it’s Kat, reporting in with joy. The second round of tests shows the spots are pinched pieces of skin or flaws in the X-ray or something, but not cancer.
Okay, Spike, remember, you made some deals here.
In her vastly entertaining book, Shelter — a book that is ostensibly about building a cabin but, in reality, is thirty-two percent about bad dates, forty-one percent about childhood memories, twenty-two percent about the land the cabin is built on, and five percent about actually building the place — Sarah Stonich talks about a man she meets and marries during the project. His hearing is subpar; thus they make a ritual of twice a day sitting on the fish house bed, face to face, the rest of the world shut out, discussing matters great and small. It keeps them connected. Which is the purpose of every cabin: to make the world smaller, to slow you down and allow you to focus on the important people and events — even if your hearing is perfect and you don’t have a fish house bed.
We all need a cabin — whether it has four walls or not. We all need a destination, an activity, or a group of people to tow us through the midweek muck. A cabin can be a motorcycle, a golf course, a table at Starbucks where you gather with friends. It’s worth asking the question: Do we work five days a week and jam our Saturdays with chores, all so we can do the things we really enjoy — lead the lives we want to lead — for a few hours on Sunday? Maybe we need to change the ratio.
There’s this story.
A Mexican fisherman meets a New York City businessman vacationing near his village. The banker asks the fisherman what he does all day.
“I get up at ten, fish for a few hours, eat lunch, take a siesta, make love to my wife, have a beer, then spend the evening with friends.”
The banker lectures, “Why do that? You should get up at seven, fish for five hours, take a thirty-minute lunch break, then fish for another five hours.”
“Why?” asks the fisherman.
“That way you can earn a lot of money, buy another boat, and expand your business.”
“Why would I do that?” asks the fisherman.
“So you can earn even more money, hire more people, maybe open your own fish market.”
“Why would I do that?” responds the fisherman.
“So in thirty years you can retire. That way you can get up at ten, fish for a few hours, take a siesta, make love to your wife, and spend time with friends.”
The cabin is used a lot — by us, by the kids, by friends seeking refuge. In the early stages it’s easy to offhandedly offer “cabin rights” to helpers and friends. “Hey, we want it used, if you ever need a place to . . .” And now that it’s done, people take us up on that. We don’t know where to draw the line. A kid? No problem. A sister and spouse? Fine. A Top Ten friend of Kat or mine? Sure. A friend of a friend? Well, uh, okay. A second cousin of a step-uncle? Ah, well, we’ll see if anyone will be up there that weekend.
Things happen. Ken, a friend and coworker, is heading north to camp with his son Frankie and needs a place to lay over for a night. They arrive late, and Ken thinks it would be a good idea for Frankie to sled down an unknown, uncharted driveway in pitch blackness on the sled we keep on top of the driveway for hauling material. Frankie zips down the driveway, hits a snow-covered mound of dirt, and catapults like “the agony of defeat” ski jumper onto a ledge 30 feet down the hill. There are no lights, no ropes, and oooh, it’s below zero. Ken ties extension cords together and rappels down the cliff to rescue his offspring.
But most visits are calmer. We buy a little blank book for visitors to write in, and it slowly fills with memories, thank-yous, and thoughts about life. The place brings out the closet poet. One musician friend writes, “As the leaves, like silent wall flowers at a junior high dance, were stirred to join in the night music, the evening felt electric yet filled with peace.” In a less romantic vein another friend writes, “Warning to future Carlsen guests — no matter how they beg, whine, and wheedle DO NOT agree to play SCRABBLE with these people. They will beat your pants off!”
From the book one can ascertain that the two main activities are (1) sitting on the point doing nothing and (2) sitting in the window seat doing nothing. It just depends on the weather. A landscaper friend who stays there sketches a plan for a fire pit, along with a note that suggests we buy “Charlie Brown trees” — nursery rejects — to plant along the edge because they’ll look natural. Someday we’ll build it.
Two impromptu honeymoons transpire. Various friends celebrate fiftieth, thirty-fourth, and tenth anniversaries there. Our kids use it for reunions, marathon headquarters, minivacations, and solitary retreats. We’re happy to share our little slice of heaven, despite the fact everyone puts the cheese grater back in a different drawer.
My mother and her ninety-three-year-old husband, Frank, accompany us for a weekend. They’re a little brittle afoot, so we stay put and play Scrabble, Yahtzee, cribbage, and bridge. Frank, so competitive he goes for the throat when playing “Go to the Dump” with his grandkids, is in his glory. It’s endearing to hear them giggle like high school kids on the foldout couch down below at night. We overhear Frank whispering, “I haven’t lost a game all weekend.”
By the time we get Oma Tupa finished we have four kids in college, and Kat and I find ourselves living on a semester basis. We too get tests, but of a psychological nature as the kids filter in with their academic triumphs, fears, piercings, boyfriends, girlfriends, and surprises.
We all rendezvous at the cabin before Christmas to reconnect. The first night we stay up until 2:30 a.m. chatting and playing games. The next day is spent cooking soup, splitting wood, playing gin, talking, and napping. Zach, the lone boy amidst a sea of four sisters and a deep thinker, is inclined to pull into his shell, but even he goes with the flow. Kat plays a game or two of solitaire — an event that marks her unwinding. A fire burns in the Jøtul. Alison Krauss is singing. Day fades into night.
And I think in my own fantastical way of thinking that this is one of the few times in life when I know everyone in our family is safe. There is no danger. I can see, touch, and protect everyone. There are no cars, boyfriends, girlfriends, poisons, or terrorists flying planes into buildings. We have a forest-worth of firewood to keep us warm, an endless supply of fresh water, sleeping spots for everyone. No plagues can reach us. We could all grow old here. I want to quarantine everyone. I enjoy this ultimate sense of security for the few hours I can.
The round-top window in the loft stretches from ceiling to floor, making it the perfect perch for sitting crisscross applesauce to watch the sky lay a hand on the lake. At night, when the lake is in irons and reflecting glassy smooth, you get twice as much star, moon, and calm for the money. When the sky is frenzied, and the lake angry, and lightning 300 miles away searches you out, you’re glad to have a seat in the covered section of the world. From that window, the curvature of the world sets the horizon thirteen miles out — and to watch the phantom smokestack of a freighter sixteen miles out moonwalk across the lake confirms the world is a magic place. God left a little part of it all unknown for the artist in us to enjoy.
We buy a house in the historic town of Stillwater, a house built in 1850, which, to the best of our research, is the oldest house standing. We can walk three blocks to Len’s corner store, a coffee shop, and Nelson’s Ice Cream parlor, home of the ice cream cone the size of cauliflower. We hear wedding bands playing by the river. Church bells clang at 6:00 p.m., and we create a tradition during the thirty seconds of chiming, we stop what we’re doing, breathe deep, and count our blessings. If we can’t pause for half a minute, there’s a problem.
The town is ideal; the house, not so much. On the disclosure form that asks the seller to list all known problems, the widow we are buying the house from writes “Broken soap dispenser in dishwasher.” In her mind the house is mint. I’ve inspected the house and know we’re dealing with more than a twelve-dollar part. We replace the boiler, hot water heater, and roof. The foundation bows outward more than a foot, and the front porch is so rotten the roof stays in place only out of habit. The wiring is the original knob-and-tube wiring from 1895; it’s still functional, but as we remodel our way through the house, we replace it.
We buy the house in order to downsize, but whoa, wouldn’t a garage be nice? And while we’re at it, wouldn’t it make sense to put living space above it? And wouldn’t it be convenient to move the laundry room up out of that musty Nightmare on Elm Street basement? And how about a second bathroom? And an entryway? And an extra bedroom? And a little second-story deck overlooking town? And it turns out to be a mammoth, year-long project.
We barely take a deep breath between finishing the cabin and launching into this project. Living day to day amid the sawdust, mess, and decision making is less fun than visiting it for a few days. We take out exterior walls and the house gets so cold the water in the washing machine freezes. We hope for money, old letters, or historic newspapers in the walls but only find carpenter ants — journeymen carpenter ants — and asbestos.
As the project drags on we do less work ourselves and hire others to do more. It costs more, but we save on marriage-counseling bills. I feel one-dimensional; all I do is build, think about building, write about building, dream about building. Kat likes order, and all we have is disorder. We vow to take a break for a year or two before embarking on any other building projects. We vow to take time to use the cabin.
For three years we’ve been so absorbed in building the cabin that our old canoe, “The Barge,” has sat unpaddled by the shoreline. Finally, one perfect summer day Kat and I break out the paddles and wrestle the thing into the water. We paddle north along the shore and are surprised the point isn’t really a point, but an outjutting of land large enough to accommodate four substantial cabins. We discover a sea cave, a cave I’ll explore when Kat isn’t along; dark caves full of water are not on her to-do list. We find mini-islands with gull colonies dotting the shoreline. I thought of our cabin as isolated since we could only see two dwellings from where it sits, but we’re just one of a strand of pearls draped around Superior’s neck.
We paddle south and find sculptural rock formations and lava flows thrust skyward by earthquakes and shifting tectonic plates. We encounter more bays, thumper holes, and caves. We pass a weird column we christen “The Boot,” only to discover the formation is known to the locals as The Boot. We find another rock formation in the shape of a large easy chair that we nickname “The Lazy Boy Chair.” We spend the rest of a lazy morning sitting face to face on it, listening to the water from Kennedy Creek cascade into the lake.
We see no other canoeists or kayakers in the three hours we’re out. Near larger cities you see more boat traffic because there are more people. In the absolute wilderness you encounter more people, because people go there in a like-minded mass escape. But we’re in an area with few houses, where few people journey. We’re in a fall-between-the-cracks kind of place.
From the time we strike a deal with Dick and Jean until we hammer a few coat hooks in the closet, two years slide by. In some ways it seems like we’ve been building Oma Tupa for decades. Yet in others it seems like it’s been only weeks since we stood on the shore looking up trying to figure out how financially and physically we could climb that slippery slope.
Some will argue a cabin is a poor investment. You could take the money spent and buy a month of vacation every year at the poshest of resorts for a lifetime and still come out ahead. It’s one more place to pay taxes, insurance, and utilities. It’s one more dwelling to paint and another drippy faucet to fix. All of this for a place to spend thirty days a year.
But it’s not just a thirty-day affair. Knowing it’s there helps us get through the other three hundred and thirty-five days. Knowing it’s waiting for us with open arms makes a stressful workday a little calmer. When the world seems too large and too complex, the cabin is small and simple.
