Hutchison, Patrick. Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman. New York: St. Martin's 2024. Print.
I bought the cabin for $7,500 from a guy on Craigslist. He was a tugboat captain. His name was Tony. Here's why.* (*Footnote: Why I bought the cabin, not why Tony was a tugboat captain or why he was named Tony.)
Description:
Years after leaving college with an intent to roam the earth telling the stories of beautiful lunatics, I was in an office creating email template to sell advertising to plumbers and wondering how I'd ended up here.
He thought that maybe if he could get away to the woods, to the
environment he grew up, that would be a distraction and give him a purpose to his life that would somehow provided satisfaction.
Eventually, he found his answer while perusing Craigslist (during slow work hours)
for cabins. There, among the pricey, fully-outfitted houses, he found a very brief note for a rustic cabin for sale 40 minutes away from his home in Seattle. Driving up that same day, he saw the "rustic" (i.e. dilapidated, falling-down) 10' x 12' structure that resembled "a big chicken coop" or kids' clubhouse. It was on an isolated road lined with abandoned buses and unoccupied cabins that were once meth houses and squatters' shelters. The cabin had no running water, electricity, heat, cell service, or Wi-Fi, but to Hutchison, it was his dream.
Like any new parent with a hideous baby, my eyes glazed over the flaws. At that moment, I only saw what I wanted....I saw only potential, and I saw a version of myself that was capable of making it better. Not great, necessarily, but better....Most importantly, I felt the pull of something a bit bigger, a grand pursuit, a thing to dive into that was different and new and exciting.
One problem: he knew nothing about building, carpentry, or even power tools. The only time he had used an electric drill was to hang a painting, ending up making multiple holes in the wall, chipping plaster, and making a shambles of everything. With this cabin restoration, what could possible go wrong, or through some great luck actually succeed?
Undaunted, he bought the cottage immediately and began obsessively searching YouTube videos and any other source of info to find the best, cheapest tools, materials, cabin restoration techniques, outhouses, foundations, driveway drains, and everything else imaginable. With friends (who also knew nothing about tools or building but brought plenty of beer), on his very first weekend they somehow built an outhouse, fortified the broken deck, cut the front door so it could swing open over the leaning house (leaving a large enough gap at the bottom for birds could walk into the house, and rigged up a Coleman stove for heat and soup. These became his cottage staples, along with plenty of beer and whiskey.
All this happens in the first few pages of Cabin, so I'll leave the rest of this delightfully satisfying book to your imagination. But this narration is not just a laughable series of efforts by a hapless idiot. Hutchison is a serious, dedicated, albeit unskilled worker who figures things out on the fly, Yes, he make some (many) quirky mistakes along the way. But all the while, he enjoys the feeling of personal satisfaction he gains with building something with his own hands (and yes, some power tools), while experiencing the beauty and silence in a gorgeous section of forest.
[After buying his first tool, a power drill] Climbing into bed that night, I felt a glow that reminded me of Christmas nights growing up, falling asleep to the reality of new toys and the knowledge that the future held many, many days of good times.
While the restoration of the cabin is the foundation of the book, this is also a stream-of-consciousness memoir of Hutchison's personal restoration journey to self-confidence through problem-solving of daunting tasks along with his deep love for the cabin itself, and what it represented in his life.
At times, it felt like the cabin and I were partners in a sort of joint self-improvement project. When the cabin was all fixed up, maybe I would be too.
I don't often whole-heartily recommend a book to all First Sentence Readers, but Cabin is the exception. I hope that everyone reads this absorbing and delightful book. It is at once funny, thoughtful, energetic, foolish, emotional, and triumphant, all in the backdrop of a glorious forest setting full of hikes, trees, snow, stars, and quiet. There are times of rollicking, deep friendships as well as plenty of solitude for dreams and simply enjoying life in an isolated cottage of your own building. Highest recommendation for all readers.
With no one but the trees to judge us and a fistful of Band-Aids to keep everything in order, we'd pick up where we left off as kids, making forts, learning how to build things again.
[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]
Author Marshall and his wife, Mindy, both budding writers living in New York City, fall in love with the small French island of Belle Ile off the coast of Brittany where the architecture has remained the same since the 1700s. Their "brand-new ruin" is an eyesore, but a piece of history that needs tender (i.e., specific and expensive) attention. (Previously reviewed here.)
Happy reading.
Fred
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