The posts called Cabin Thoughts (Part One, Part Two, and Part Three), were popular among my readers, generating conversations through comments, email, snail mail, and in person. Now that our cabin is closed for the season, I’d like to share a few more thoughts.

A dear friend of many years, Natalie, sent these thoughts, titled “What a Cabin Means to Me”. (Nat, I did a tiny bit of editing – hope it clarifies rather than changes your intent.)

1. Secluded from the general public and hard to get to
2. In the mountains
3. Small and rustic, having only basic amenities, and no room for isolation.
4. Not a second home, but more of a make-do-and-relax kind of place where there is no television or phone service. A place where you interact with family and friends by sharing meals, playing cards and other games, sitting by a fire, hiking, and just cherishing the quietness of the outdoors.

Once again, mountains, small, rustic, games, firesides, food, outdoors, friends and family appear. I think Natalie’s ideal cabin would separate her family from outside influences, causing togetherness among themselves. This is a theme I found multiple times. . . a desire to unplug and simplify in order to focus on the ones who are most precious.

Our Mineral King cabin is definitely a cabin but varies from Natalie’s thorough and excellent definition in several ways.

1. It isn’t hard to get to if you don’t mind the poor road, and it is highly visible if you hike a popular trail. (This is the World Wide Web, so I am being vague on purpose.)
2. It is a second home to us, but not in the sense of a home with all the luxuries you may be accustomed to (our first home is purposely lacking a dishwasher, microwave, garbage disposal and heated towel racks, and we’re just fine, but thanks for your concern).
3. The cabin no longer has a telephone; we tell people to leave a message on the answering machine at home, and we use the cabin neighbor’s phone to check messages. (This makes up for 36 years of cabin neighbors using our phone.)
4. Neither one of us likes to play games; in the evenings we listen to the radio, Trail Guy reads out-of-date newspapers that friends bring up to him, I read library books and knit.

There is no single definition of “cabin”, but there is a feel to a place that makes it a cabin. I will share a few more ideas about it tomorrow. Then, maybe I will be finished with this topic. (No promises, because after all, my business is called Cabin Art.)