A Cabin in the Woods

Dwell in peace in the home of your own being.

Nanak

When I lived in western Washington I used to regularly go on an early season hike, usually April or May, when the high country was still covered in snow, but the beautiful low elevation river valleys of the Olympics offered many miles of solitary hiking, too early for crowds.

One of my favorites was the Elwha River, which flows down from the High Divide into the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Saying those words out loud makes me feel like I am home. It is home that I write about today.

I would cross the river on a high bridge, where the trail begins a steep climb towards Dodger Point. Instead of making that climb I would follow an unmaintained trail that makes its way back down the western side of the river to a long abandoned homestead called Anderson Ranch. The ranch once included an old cabin, which was on the edge of a broad meadow that extends to the river where it tumbles through a narrow opening called Goblin Gates. I often made camp there, imagining that I lived in the cabin that was no longer there, seeing myself building a fire in a wood stove every morning, hiking out once a week or so to obtain supplies. I imagined that as long as I had plenty of books I would never be bored. That was well before there were cell phones and ebooks. How I would carry loads of books to my cabin in the woods did not matter. It was a dream. I could create it anyway I wanted it to be. It seemed like the perfect life. Camping there for a night or two was the next best thing.

Many years later I had moved to Wyoming, finding a home on the western edge of the Bighorns, then to an island in Puget Sound, and finally to the Okanogan Highlands of eastern Washington, a very different landscape from the heavily forested valleys of the Olympic Mountains. My husband and I found a beautiful log home with a view to the east of the Kettle River Mountains.

On a day in early August six years ago my daughter Leah and I drove our two trucks across the mountains, loaded with the furnishings I would need until the moving van arrived in a few weeks. We picked up a quick dinner in town, then shared a bottle of wine as we sat on the deck of my new home, watching the alpenglow cast its soft glow on the mountains to the east.

It was one of those moments of utter contentment that are too rare in life. Though this was not exactly a cabin in the woods by a river, it was just as beautiful and much more comfortable. I remember thinking that if I never went backpacking again it would be okay, for I now lived in this beautiful place with the magnificent view you see in the photo above.

Today I signed the papers to sell that beautiful home. Since my husband’s death I find I am not able to keep up with the maintenance that is required of a log home, plow the road in the winter time, keep the wood stove burning, and to live in the isolated surroundings that make it so appealing but also somewhat dangerous.

I am now living in a lovely, much smaller home about a half mile above Curlew Lake, the rail trail a short walk from my front door, and I am surrounded by pine trees. There is a meadow of wildflowers that extends, not to a river, but to a dirt road. My view of the gentle hills of the Okanogan Highlands is not as spectacular as the one you see above, but it takes me back to my cabin in the woods. Then there’s this: I have plenty of books.