The Cabin
We spent last week in North Carolina, packing and cleaning, getting our beloved mountain cabin ready for its new owners. My husband and I had bought it in 2005, with dreams of eventually retiring in a peaceful country setting. We made the trek every few months from Central Florida into Georgia, snaked around Atlanta and hauled ass the last hundred miles or so to Ellijay to stock up on groceries at Ingles before meandering the last twenty-six miles to our little mountain settlement. Our two Jack Russell Terriers, Sarah and Sam, would spill out of the back of the SUV after the nine hour drive and race into the woods to see what was new. Jay and I would carry in the groceries and our luggage, turn to each other and sigh. Everything fell away when we walked through those doors.
We dreamed of building our own mountain settlement, of designing and crafting solid log homes that could become family retreats. We found a mountaintop, plopped down our savings and cajoled a local bank to give us a loan and began clearing roads. We discovered a company in Michigan that hauled in huge logs and assembled them with a crane. Much like Lincoln Logs. Then came the Recession. What was once a thriving vacation home market dried up. Foreclosure lists drove away any hopes we had of creating a new development. But, we told ourselves, it’s okay. The country will rebound; we simply need to wait. In the meantime, we still ran back and forth to our little cabin. Sometimes our teenage son came along, usually with friends. The dogs lay about on the wrap-around porch, or wandered down to the brook to see if any chase-able critters were hanging around.
So we waited. And waited some more. By the time the economy rebounded, we found our attentions had turned elsewhere, our motivation had slowly suffocated. We still made the occasional trek to spend time in our refuge. But things weren’t the same. Then came two years of preparing to sell our Florida business, with no time for sitting around in our woodsy haven. Friends and family spent time there occasionally and reported back to us that the cabin was doing fine. Neighbors checked on it and they reported the cabin was fine, it wasn’t missing us at all. But I knew better. I knew the cabin was sad and resentful. The windows crusted over, the porch became covered in pollen, the roof sprung a small leak, the front yard turned into a meadow of yellow daisies. Abandoned, the cabin sat and waited. We knew it needed to be lived in and loved. So we cleaned it up and put it on the market.
Four days of packing and it was empty. I stood in the family room and felt the isolation it had felt these last years. The lack of touch, of laughter; of bon homie. I wondered how soon the cabin would again feel the joy and appreciation we gave it in those early years, the dropping away of heavy thoughts and responsibilities as we walked through its door, turned to each other and sighed in contentment. We asked nothing more of it than to just be. I hope the new owners are kind, light of heart, and love it as much as we did.
