Soapbox

My father is selling his cabin. It’s time.

The building, an old tenant farmer’s shack, is falling down now. It was never much, but once it was reasonably sound and snug. I remember clearing out the trash piled inside when he first bought it, sweeping it out and imagining the people who once lived there.  For years it had a  functional wood-burning stove, and we could bring sleeping bags and spend the night out there. Sometimes we would clear a path down the hill and go sledding, then come inside to dry our clothes at the stove and have warm food. Dad took the stove out long ago though. (My god- how has it been so many years?)

When I was a kid, “going out to the cabin” for me was often me and Dad and our packed lunch on a Saturday. I would help him for a while, marking the property line or bringing gravel up from the creek to fill a low spot on the road, and then wander off. Usually I found myself up a tree, or perched on a rock, thinking and just being an angsty kid. There was a big beech tree that you could only get into by climbing a rock and then stepping across a gap into the branches. It was a great place to sit. Now most of that tree is dead.

Mostly the cabin was hikes, family picnics and, when the kids were young, positively *epic* easter egg hunts! Looking through my photo albums last night I found a sucession of pictures of the cousins, crowded together on the old porch swing Dad hung between 2 trees, smiling for the camera with their buckets full of treasure. I think we parents enjoyed it as much as the kids did. Certainly we were more disappointed then they were when they outgrew the hunt.

At most picnics, Grandad would lead a hike up the hill.

When the weather was warm, they would indulge in that endlessly interesting pastime of childhood: mucking about in a stream.

When I was that age, I had the Big Darby at my Grandpa’s cabin. My siblings and cousins had a cabin to grow up with, and we ran wild like a litter of puppies and enjoyed the world in a way you just can’t in your back yard.

And then I lost it. But Dad bought his 35 acres, and though it wasn’t the same, I was glad my kids at least had the little stream and picnics and games with cousins out there.

Our place was even more primative than Grandmother and Grandpa’s cabin: no electricity & no running water (though dad did jury-rig something that functioned as an outhouse). Besides a roof to keep you dry, it was really just trees and rocks and water and sky- and what more do you need?
My father spent decades of his life keeping the path from the road driveable, digging up saplings on one hillside and moving them to another, transplanting clumps of wildflowers near the house, rigging a bridge over the stream so he could drive up to the small pond he had put in.
I knew the seasons of the place: the small dell where lush grass and the most amazing violets grew in spring, the asters and briars of summer, the hickory nuts and incredible aroma of fall and the peace of winter.

My children grew up at the cabin. I’ve grown old with it.

But dad is 90 now, the kids are too busy to go out for Easter or Memorial day picnics at the cabin, and the house really is falling to ruin.
The sentimentalist in me wants to keep it, because it represents so much of my life. (The survivalist in me REALLY wants to keep it as a place to retreat to when civilization falls apart.)
If I won a modest lottery pot- say 100k I would buy the land, sink a well, put up a little wind turbine for electricity, build a small cabin on the hill looking out over the valley and put in a proper road. For many years I have had that dream. Then we could spend summers out there the way my grandparents did with their old cabin, with just the birds and the deer and the wind in the trees for company.

However, “If’s” aren’t real, and my dad can’t even get out to the cabin any more. It makes total sense to sell it.
I wish there was time for one last family and friends picnic, with volleyball or croquet and way too much food.

One more chance to hook the swing back up and soar out over the valley again,, then climb up the hill to the big rocks and enjoy the view of a world with no roads, no houses- just wild Athens county, the way nature made it.
It’s not to be. The sale will be next month.
Well, life is change. I have pictures. And lots and lots of memories.