Category Archives: Cabin Life

Cabin Life – #24

Posted on by
3

I’m sitting on a picnic table on the shore of Lake Champlain. Valcour Island is in front of me, the sun is shining and the birds are chirping. Tonight is the calm before the storm so to speak, as the campground opens tomorrow.

Paved roads, electricity and hot showers are now plentiful, as is the wildlife. There are three osprey nests within a half mile of my new cabin, and of course, the raccoons are around a lot. Pico has been marking the yard, and that’s keeping them away for now, but the cats still aren’t going outside.

Opening the campground is nice, getting the place cleaned up. Last year at this time, the entire site was under at least three feet of water. I know, because we needed kayaks and boats to get in here and check on the place. We didn’t open until the middle of July last year due to the epic flooding of the spring. And only a little over a month later, we were shut down for a week because of Hurricane Irene. In between those two events, it was a drought.

I finally found my bird book, and am really looking forward to learning the different birds. Less than forty miles away, the cabin birds are on their own for the summer. But the differences are stark. The only birds I’ve seen that I had out at the cabin are robins. But I’ve also seen the osprey, sea gulls, a bald eagle and some sparrows.

It’s good to be back to work, and the fact that I still get to be outside surrounded by wildlife (yes, I do mean campers as well as wild animals) is just superb.

Cabin Life – #23

Posted on by
2

Life is definitely easier out here now.  Most of the trees are leafing out, flowers are blooming and the woodstove has been idle for almost two weeks.  And tonight I’ll be having fiddleheads sautéed with garlic.

The work season has begun, and I’ll be starting off the season on trail crew again.  After a week or so of clearing trails, I’ll be moving out to the campground I work at.  There’s some positives and negatives to this:  I live at work, I don’t have the freedom that the cabin offers me, but there’s indoor plumbing and the commute is great.

 But I’ve also discovered that as the weather has gotten better, I’ve become more excited to get the cabin ready for next winter.  The outhouse has already been moved, but I have more plans in store.  Build a shed for the generator and get a solar panel and battery for electricity next year.  The solar panel won’t provide a ton of electricity, but it should be enough so that I don’t have to have to walk around in a headlamp for five months of the year.  And honestly, I won’t run the generator unless I have to use some power tools or something like that.

I’m also looking forward to some of the conveniences that I’ll have at the campground.  After months of considering what it is that I miss most, being able to take a hot shower at home whenever I want is the biggest thing.  It’s not that I haven’t been bathing, but the shower at the gym sucked, and my friend’s showers were always open to me, but it still meant driving somewhere.  I can’t wait to come home after a long day of work and take a shower. 

It’s definitely a time of transition, but one thing has become clear to me.  After bouncing around apartments during college, and living inJacksonville, and living in a house where a double homicide was committed, I have some peace.  It’s less than four hundred square feet and a lot of people wouldn’t even stay here for a night, but I call it home.

Cabin Life – #22

Posted on by
1

Big fat flakes of snow are blowing around outside.  They seems to hover just before hitting the ground, then linger there for a few moments until they are just a plain old drop of water or two on a blade of brown grass.

Its nights like last night that make me wish I had a better camera.  The sliver of moon was visible in short glimpses through dark and gray, wispy clouds.  The kind of shot that your eye can see, but that my cheap digital camera would capture as a small blurry light in an otherwise black screen.  No hint of clouds, no depth to the picture, and most importantly, no sense of the natural beauty that my own eyes can see.

I don’t get upset when I can’t get these shots with my camera.  Most of the time it’s enough just to witness the scene, but I do desire to share some of these moments.  Like last week when two does leisurely walked through the yard.  The only non-blurry shot I got of them was one where the deer is walking directly away from me.  Not a great picture to share (close your eyes and visualize it…).

A lot of the scenes that excited me so much during the winter are now kind of common place.  Like the chickadees coming to the bird feeders.  It’s still great to watch the little birds up close so much, but I don’t tip-toe over to the big window with my camera every time they show up anymore.  When the turkeys woke me up last week, I looked, saw what was out there and then went back to bed.

But, after six months, this place has lost none of it’s charm, and I have lost none of my amazement at the opportunities to wonder in nature that living out here provides.

Cabin Life – #21

Posted on by
Reply

There’s a soft, wet blanket of snow covering everything.  It’s also eerily quiet.  The last two mornings I’ve been woken up by a yellow-bellied sapsucker banging on the metal roof of the wood shed.  And the morning before that, Pico woke me up barking at the turkeys that were walking by.  Today, the birds are silent.

The rabbits that are all over out here are brown on top and white on the bottom.  It’s an interesting site as they sprint down the road in view of my headlights, then dart off into the woods.  All winter, I saw lots of rabbit tracks, but no actual animals.  Now that there is no snow and they are that awkward combination of colors, I see them all the time.  Their winter camouflage obviously works well.

The two robins that have been hanging around are constantly scanning the ground for worms, and the ruffed grouse run that weird little scramble of theirs whenever we get close.  I think most of the birds that are around, and there are quite a few, realize that we are more a source of food than a threat though.

The chickadees and robins don’t take off when Pico and I are out, and the yellow-bellied sapsucker let me take a picture from about ten feet away.  (For those of you who don’t know, the sapsucker is a type of woodpecker.  When I took his picture, he was banging his head on a metal pipe, so maybe he’s not tame so much as brain damaged.)  The American woodcock didn’t even bat an eye when I rode by on the four wheeler.  And the eastern phoebe that picks up all the seed that the chickadees drop looks akin to a gray-colored robin with no legs.  It’s like a baseball with a beak.

Maybe it’s just that no one lived here for a long time, so the animals are used to not being in any danger when they walk around, but I like when they come into the yard, or I see them out in the big field.  And since I don’t feel like hunting, they don’t have to worry about being bothered for a long time yet.

Walls and Wells

Posted on by
5

Some photos of one of the old wells and a couple of the rock walls.  The other well is grown in and has several trees growing out of it.

The old well closest to the cabin. A stream actually runs through it, not bad thinking for whoever dug it there.

 

 

This rock wall marks one of the property lines

 

 

Rock wall going down to the lean-to

 

 

Three feet high, five feet wide or so...

Cabin Life – #20

Posted on by
6

With no TV or internet to distract me, I spend a lot of time thinking.  Just thinking.  One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is how crippled I used to be by my depression.  I also think a lot about the sea change in my own personality and life since I sought out treatment.

My therapist in Jacksonville was good, she was no Freud or anything like that, but I didn’t really need someone to tell me that all my problems were somehow related to sex.  A cigar is just a cigar.  I needed someone to unload my problems on.  During our first session, she asked what I wanted out of the therapy.  I told her I wanted to say what was making me angry (always a strong byproduct of my depression) and that I needed an independent person to tell me when I was right to be upset and when I was being a baby.  I can’t begin to describe the weight that was lifted as I gained some perspective on my feelings.

I heard an interview with a famous person the other day, and she said that her depression was never gone, but it felt like a train that was coming, and all you could do was hop on and hope that you survived the ride.  I couldn’t agree more.  It’s not that I don’t get depressed anymore or that a couple years of therapy was a magic pill.  But the lows are a lot more shallow and the train is easier to hold on to.

I’ve always found solace in nature, which is why I’ve basically spent my life outdoors.  The sounds, smells, and colors of the woods are very soothing, and I can honestly say that I have never been depressed during a hike or camping trip.  Going through therapy and addressing my issues led me to the conclusion that if I was happiest outside, then I needed to spend as much time in nature as I could.  Hence my leaving Florida to come back to the Adirondacks.  It’s my way of making my lifestyle my therapy.

The other major thing I learned in therapy was that I was really exceedingly normal.  I am open to discussing my problems because I think that many people suffer day to day from mental demons or whatever you want to call it, and I hope that others can buck the stigma of needing to talk to a therapist.  It took me about five sessions to realize that I had nothing to be ashamed of.  But as I sat in the waiting room twice a week, I saw dozens of people come in and immediately put their eyes to the ground out of shame.  I noticed it because I was one of them for a while.  And how silly, to be ashamed of seeing a therapist when you know for an absolute fact that I am also there to see a therapist.

As I sit here writing this, the snow is falling again, and there’s about an inch on the ground.  It started raining around four this morning, and changed to snow sometime after I fell back to sleep.  The new porch roof did well in the rain, and the new floor makes the porch feel much, much larger.  It’s a gray and dreary day, cold, windy and wet.  And I couldn’t be happier.

Cabin Life – #19

Posted on by
4

I found an old set of horseshoes in the lower field the other day.  It has been a nice addition to recreational life out here at the cabin.  I had some friends over to play, and according to Adirondack rules, each participant had a beer in one hand.  No setting it down to throw, no cheating with non-alcoholic “beer.”  And of course, upgrading to whiskey or tequila gets a nod of approval from the fellow participants.

Even though I am very secluded out here, I’ve found so many pieces of evidence of the continued presence of humans that it’s hard not to think about how others have lived on this particular piece of land.  I only found the horseshoes because one of the stakes had a faded orange flag on it.  When I went to investigate, I found the shoes, and it took a little while to find the other stake because the field is overgrown.

On the way up the driveway on the left, in the woods, there is an old bus and some other assorted rusty pieces of metal, no doubt left over from an old camp.  It reminds me of my childhood.  Relatives of mine had a hunting camp in Wells, and there was an old school bus out there.  When I was young, I convinced myself that there must be a ghost in that old bus.  That was enough to make me stay away, which is good, mainly because I’m sure that there were skunks or porcupines living in there.  I don’t think there are ghosts out here, even though my radio does occasionally turn on by itself.

There is what appears to be an actual hitching post right outside my door.  No doubt prior owners had horses.  Based on the condition of the crumbling old stable near upper camp, it seems likely that the horses were used for work, and not for transportation.  The rock walls that criss-cross the property are huge, often thousands of feet long and several feet high.  It speaks to the amount of time that people were out here trying to work this land.  These walls were not done in just a season or two, but were labored over what had to be generations.  The rock walls are a great navigation tool, since if I get lost, I can just follow a wall back towards the cabin and I will eventually hit either the driveway or the big field.

There are piles of rusty metal randomly scattered about.  I’ve found two old hand-dug, rock-lined wells, along with the old plow out front and some farming implements out back.  Nothing about this place leads me to believe that I am the first one to live out here “off the grid.”  But back when the others were doing it, that was just the way life was.  No other options, no going to a friend’s house for a hot shower or TV.  And as far as I know, no writing about this life either.

There is a part of me that really likes history and research, and I’d love to dig into the past of this property.  But I don’t think I will.  Something about the mystery of forgotten lives and being able to imagine how hard those people had to work makes me think that I’ll leave the story unknown.

Snow, rain, sunshine, hail…

Posted on by
4

The weather has been a little up and down lately.  There was about four inches of snow on the ground for the last few days, and then yesterday it melted, only to be replaced by a half-inch of hail.  The flowers don’t know what the hell is going on….

 

 

 

 

Cabin Life – #18

Posted on by
Reply

The afternoon sunlight slants against the birdfeeders, giving them a golden glow.  It’s hard to believe that it’s almost seven at night, when it was not that long ago that the sun was going down at about four-thirty.

During the really dark parts of the winter, it was hard not to go to sleep at six PM.  With only candles and oil lamps, night was difficult to fight off, and more often than not, I fell asleep on the couch with a book on my chest and my headlamp still on.

Now that it’s light so late in the afternoon, I am actually having a hard time filling the days.  Not that I’m just sitting around doing nothing, but I feel like I should be working until six or seven.

It is nice to take a break and realize that it’s dinner time, though.  The wood I cut over the winter is drying nicely, the deer have been coming back to the yard, and luckily there hasn’t been any sign of bears.  The chickadees have been using the feeders less and less, but the squirrels are still hitting them pretty regularly.

My focus has definitely shifted from cold weather preparation and existence to outdoor projects.  The compost bin is complete, and so is a small cold-frame I put together from scrap around the property.  The leaky porch roof now has a rather large hole in it (my fault) and is in dire need of repair, so that’s the next big project.

I’ll probably have to move a generator from Amy’s house up to the cabin to charge batteries and run a saw for the roof project.  It’s weird to think that other than charging my phone in the car, this will be the first time that I’ll have electricity at the cabin.  October to April with no power at the house seems like a long time.  But it went by pretty quickly.  I did go through a lot of 9-volt batteries powering the clock radio.  I also burned about three shoe-boxes worth of candles, as well as a gallon or so of lamp oil.

I’ve burned about four cords of wood, but the stove won’t needed much longer.  The two and a half gallons of gas I bought for the chainsaw is just about gone, and I finally added a gallon of gas to the four wheeler.  I really wish that the four wheeler would start in the cold, but now that it is running, I’ve been having a lot of fun just driving it around.  Unfortunately, Pico can’t come along on these rides, because he’s continually trying to bite the tires, and that’s no good.

The bugs are out, but nothing is biting yet.  A friend of mine saw some mosquitoes, but he said “they were too stupid to bite me.”  Let’s hope they stay that dumb all summer.