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Walkout…  We haven’t said this yet I don’t think, but we didn’t know whether we’d end up building a walkout or just have a crawl space underneath the cabin. Our cabin site is nicely sloped toward the lake, but we had no idea what the excavator would unearth when he started the dig.  The terrain in the arrowhead is so unpredictable, he could have begun digging only to find a giant piece of granite not far below the surface. So, in our planning, we planned for a walkout, but have all along created contingency plans in our head.  So as Brad Anderson, an artist with the land, unearthed boulders the size of volkswagons, he also finalized the ultimate design.  Yep, we can have a walkout.

It’s been a couple weeks of more waiting.  But we now have word that the footings are in, and that the basement walls will be poured on Tuesday.  I wish we had a picture to share, but we haven’t been up to see the work that the concrete guys have been doing.

There’s been another unknown in our process of planning.  We have often asked the question, “are we building a cabin or a cottage?”  Webster defines cottage to be “a usually small house for vacation use.”   Check.  Ours will be a 24x32 structure with a loft (and a basement of course!).  But then what is a cabin? I turn to a couple of the books in the mini-library of cabin books we’ve accumulated over the years as we’ve dreamed about this dwelling.  Dale Mulfinger is a Minneapolis architect whose love is the cabin – his own, and all those he’s explored over the years.  He says:

Cabins can exist for us in two ways. They’re places we visit in person every time we get a chance. And for some of us, they’re places we visit only in spirit, where we mentally take ourselves during a boring business meeting or whenever the modern world seems too encroaching…  

It’s not that you simply want a cabin.  You need a cabin to bring some balance back into your life, to recharge those rundown batteries, to cleanse the soul, to reconnect with nature. Your cabin is a realm of tranquility where sleeping in is not just reserved for Sunday morning, and where a good book and an Adirondack chair are an afternoon’s marriage.  Cabins contrast the vast world outside with the intimate world within. Unlike our suburban world, the world of the cabin is a place where modesty and charm outweigh size and grandeur, while simplicity and flexibility outshine sophisticated and complicated.

We go to the cabin to get away from phones, television, computers, and other symbols of our interconnected world. At the cabin we will have time to complete a jigsaw puzzle with Aunt Betty or spend a slow yet memorable afternoon fishing with Uncle Bob. 

Privacy will go out the same window that a fresh summer breeze comes in. The larder will have to store the essential ingredients for s’mores. And you can leave that recipe for Chateaubriand back in the city. (This excerpt is from Mulfinger’s book, Cabinology: A Handbook to Your Private Hideaway.  If you’re looking for the perfect cabin book, you can’t go wrong if it’s written by Mulfinger.)

As Mulfinger describes the soul of the cabin, I realize that’s the difference.  I page through the many varied books we have on cabins and cottages, and find that the tangible structure is an “anything goes” venture.  Cabins and cottages in their physical form are as varied as the number of trees we have on our property. But it’s the heart and soul of the abode we create that makes all the difference in the world. So maybe it’s not important to determine cabin or cottage.  We’ll just call it Nordhjem (North Home in Norwegian), and know that it’s the soul of what we create that makes all the difference.