Settling in to Cabin Life

As the setting sun restfully dips beyond the rolling Whaleback Mountains, it turns the sky a rainbow of pinks and oranges, darkest along the black shadowy hills, like an ombre silk waving goodnight. Behind me, a blood red moon is rising. The juxtaposition is nothing short of breathtaking.

Sunset

It’s 4:30pm on a Sunday evening in mid-December, the end of my first of a seven-day stretch that I’m
spending at the cabin with Gregg. An experiment of sorts to see if I’m really up for full-time, year-round cabin-living. It will involve a daily commute to teach school, eight miles downriver, via 4-wheeler or snowmachine, depending on the weather. My lifelong dream is coming to fruition.

It’s funny how real life can be better than lifelong dreams. I always saw myself living in a remote cabin with a couple of dogs, fending for myself, infrequent trips to a neighboring town via 4-wheeler or snowmachine, inaccessible by car or truck. I thought I’d be doing it alone, after I retired or sold a book or two and could live life on my own terms. I always thought I’d be older, crazier somehow.

Stove grate that we use to cook on the oil heat stove

Here I am, still technically in my 40’s for a few more months, with a self-made, mountain man by my side, and three dogs, in a remote cabin. The mode of transportation exceeds my dreams, since we are on a river and can also go to the village by boat in the summer. I didn’t have to wait until I retired, either. I’m in the middle of my career, planning to pursue a PhD, teaching full-time, and able to live life on my own terms while earning a good living. Who knew? Who knew life could be this good?! Having a strong, wise helpmate is the icing on the cake. He’s my own personal tutor on off-grid living. I have a lot to learn.

Today was my first lesson in Dutch Oven cooking on the single-burner oil stove that we use to heat the cabin. It has a heavy iron plate on top, just big enough to set burner grate on. Even though we also have a propane stove with an oven that doesn’t work, it makes sense to use the oil stove as it is on all day, anyway, and save the expensive propane. Boneless Pork Ribs are simmering away in the cast iron pot, waiting for rice and corn to be added for a complete one-pot meal. While we eat, I’ll use a smaller cast iron pot to make a Peach Slump for dessert – a kind of peach pudding-cake made with canned peaches and pancake mix.

Our first dinner in the Dutch Oven - Mexican
Style pork ribs with rice and corn -
a one pot meal!

Gregg just walked in from gathering firewood for his small-engine repair shop in the village – its main source of heat is a wood stove, especially since the back-up oil stove has been leaking lately. He has good news – caught a pretty, red fox in a snare, and so begins the trapping season. Firing up the generator in the fading daylight, we now have lights to cook and eat by, read a book, play a round or two of Boggle, and then watch a movie (tonight it was Down Periscope) before shutting it down for the night.

The darkness after the generator is turned off around 10pm is comforting. Silence falls heavy around us as the motor goes silent and all we can hear are the regular, heavy breaths of sleeping dogs and the occasional push of the wind through the trees. There is a rogue black fly in the cabin, and he has retreated to the upstairs where we hear the occasional buzz as he flies into the window. It’s cold against the window, so he doesn’t stay there long and the buzzing sound retreats to some far corner of our cozy abode as we drift to dreams between flannel sheets with the bright white moon shining in the window over our heads, spreading a cool glow over the even squares of the brightly colored quilt made with kuspuk fabric scraps by Gregg’s hunting partner.

I dream of my dogs and my girls; of my grandbabies and my students… and laughter, echoes of laughter everywhere.