The Cabin

Growing up, my family, on my dad's side had a cabin in the woods. It was an honest to goodness log cabin located in Smallwood, NY, in the Catskill Mountains. I think it had been in our family for quite awhile, and I imagine that my ancestors were the only people to have inhabited it. Let me paint you a mental picture. You drive uphill on a barely paved road and pull up to a little cabin in the woods. Then you hike (or so it seemed as a child) up a leafy path to the screen door that squeaked, and always slammed shut quickly. Now you're in the front screen porch with a bamboo couch with deliciously musty old cushions and a picnic table, covered with an ancient oilcloth tablecloth. Here is where we played hours and hours of rummy 500 and attempted to play chinese checkers, although I don't think we ever knew the rules. There was a radio with limited reception for entertainment. My parents would cook on our electric griddle right there on the table for breakfast every morning. Every time I turn on my own electric griddle the heat smell brings me right back.. Through the porch is the main room. In the center of the room was a wood burning stove on a stone or slate pallet, with the smokestack going straight up through the ceiling. There was a stone wall behind it to absorb the heat. To the left was a primitive "pull-out" couch and two kitchy arm chairs with smooth wooden arms and a lamp that reminds me of what you might find in a lodge-themed resort. There was a curtain that separated "my" room with 2 daybeds and a linen canister with a handmade skirt sewn around it. The curtain was also wide enough to act as a stage curtain. My favorite feature of that room was that there were 2 windows that opened up to the front porch, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. Behind another curtain was my parents room, which I think may have had a double bed and a tiny bathroom with a tinier shower that up until I was about 10, had no running hot water. We literally took baths in a metal tub with water heated up on the stove. The rooms had no ceilings. The tops of the walls just ended partway up and there must have been a beamed ceiling. We would throw balls and stuffed animals over the walls from one room to the next. Also off the main room there was a miniature kitchen with a 1950's refridgerator and a tiny little porch that brought you out back to a fire pit and acres and acres of trees. And ferns. There were ferns for miles. The smell of decaying leaves and ferns was overwhelmingly clean and pleasant smelling.

We had neighbors maybe a hundred yards from us on one side, but we never saw them and I don't know that they saw much of us either. We could go for walks, after finding the perfect walking sticks and just let our imaginations run wild. It was heaven on earth. There were two lakes nearby that we would go to swim and lounge and relax. Sometimes we would fish. I remember saving my money to buy purple rubber fishing lures that looked like worms to fish with. I never caught a fish with them, but we caught tons of minnows in buckets and the occasional chameleon became a short term pet. We would drive into nearby Liberty and they had tiny little junk shops where I remember buying chinese shoes and probably ceramic unicorns. As we got older, I wanted to spend more time with my friends and less time with my family. I became increasingly more sullen and begrudgingly spent my summers there, until when I was about 13, my parents (and my nan and aunt and uncle  I guess) decided that it was too expensive to keep it up, and the taxes kept getting higher and higher. Sadly, I think I was glad to see it go. It makes me sad now, that I was such a brat about it. What a great place, and great memories. That's where we would see drive in movies and spend time where it was just us. I would love to find something like that for us now. It's too bad it's gone. I need to find some pictures to scan in to really do it justice.