Since it’s Monday, and I often do a “Memory” post on these first days of the week, I thought I’d look back to find my very first post about the cabin! It was in September of 2004 – just a month after we started off on this great adventure! There have been some changes here at The Cabin since that post almost 19 years ago – but the sentiment remains the same!

Have I told you about the Cabin? It’s a small one-room cabin built by my grandfather in the 1930s. He was the town doctor up here in Bradford, Vermont, and needed a little getaway that wasn’t too far from town. The Cabin, built on the foundation of an old farming settlement about 8 miles outside of town, is on about 100 acres on Wright’s Mountain (elevation 1800 ft+/-). Growing up I remember the cows that wandered through the fields on the way to their upper pasture (and watching out for the cow plops that dotted the grass), the two gas lights that were the only illumination other than candles, and the chemical toilet bucket that my father would ever so carefully carry through the cabin to be disposed of in some unknown (to me) location. The water was hand pumped from the well and the kids were the beasts of burden to get it to the Cabin. There’s a small pond where we would swim and catch salamanders, frogs and fish. Trust me, there’s nothing like a fresh-caught trout for breakfast! Electricity came in the 1960s along with the Destroilet ( a gas toilet – but that’s an entire other story!). A loft was added to accommodate the next generation (as in my kids and my siblings’ kids), and now we even have running water – well, it’s to the shed anyway! The Destroilet died several years ago, and we moved to the good old-fashioned outhouse. It’s a two-holer with all the amenities ~ a magazine rack, pretty curtains, and scented candles.
The Cabin is where I go to re-fuel emotionally and spiritually. The scenery has changed only in the addition of a few houses on the hillside and the growth of new trees. Maybe these pictures will help explain the special qualities of this family gem –

Here is my favorite view – with the cabin reflected in the pond (I know, I know, Lara – I take it every year…but there are little changes every year, honest!)

This is the view from the back porch –

And this is the view from the back porch when we eat dinner…

We took a drive to one of the hills in the above “view from the back porch” to see if we could see the cabin. Well folks, if you look really hard you can see a tiny dot in the middle of this picture – and that my friends is the cabin. And that is also why we feel free to leave the outhouse door open to enjoy the view when we are doing our -ahem- business!

Here is a closer view of the cabin…

OK, so this isn’t the cabin – but it was a pretty neat picture of an old cemetery and church that we came upon in our travels that I thought I’d include it!

And here we are with our friends Joe & Janet who joined us for Labor Day weekend at the Cabin. (Honest, the triple chins are from the way I’m sitting, not from all that ice cream research!)

OK – back to 2023! Those folks in the chairs are looking a bit different these days – but so is the area around that little cabin!
I took this picture yesterday – the angle is different, but I really hadn’t realized how much of the “landscaping” had changed over the years!

…to everything there is a season…