Community Life in Mineral King

Mineral King is a place for backpackers, campers, day hikers, day trippers, and cabin folks. Today’s post is about the cabin community. (Last summer I posted regularly about cabin life.)

There are cabin communities all over the mountains in this country, and most likely in other countries too. I’ve written in the past (2018?) about what makes them special: Cabin Thoughts, One; Cabin Thoughts, Two; Cabin Thoughts, Three, A Few More Cabin Thoughts, and Final Final Cabin Thoughts.

Today’s post is what happens on a busy weekend in our cabin community of Mineral King. There are several parts to the community: our immediate neighbors, those across the creek, the settlement one mile down the road (formerly known as “Faculty Flat”, now “West Mineral King” is the preferred name, and no, I didn’t ask for pronouns); Silver City (private property 4 miles down the road); and Cabin Cove (7 cabins about 5 miles down the road from us).

This is what happens on any given weekend—the closer to the end of summer, the more activities. We:

  1. gather at someone’s cabin for “happy hour”, eat fun things, catch up with one another, and then are too full for dinner
  2. eat dinner together
  3. (Trail Guy and The Farmer, not me unless The Farmer isn’t around) help with various repairs. (The cabins are OLD.)
  4. hike together (hike: carrying pack with lunch and water)
  5. walk together (no pack, no lunch)
  6. give one another rides up and down the hill
  7. bring supplies for one another when coming up the hill
  8. share books
  9. lend knitting needles
  10. let people use our telephone (when we had one) and borrow the neighbor’s phone now
  11. clean up the platform for the annual “Music in the Mountains” event
  12. prune in one another’s yards (okay, that’s just me. . .)
  13. use a hav-a-hart trap to catch bushy-tailed woodrats (definitely Trail Guy, NOT me)
  14. explore historic sites
  15. lend tools
  16. repair water line breaks
  17. go through the junk we discover in our respective cabins, sometimes trading items of interest
  18. share missing recipe ingredients

We stay in touch throughout the year, because our friendships are solid, not simply seasonal.

Cabin Life, Chapter Sixteen

Work

Because Trail Guy lives at our cabin almost fulltime in the summer, he is the go-to person when cabin neighbors need help. It is tricky and expensive to get plumbers and carpenters up the hill, so when Trail Guy is able, he comes to the aid of our friends. If I am around, I often serve as his assistant.

Earlier this summer, we opened a neighbor’s cabin. When we turned on the water, we discovered a leak in the pipe on the left.

The pipe leads to the cold water in the kitchen sink.

It was a hot day, and I knew we’d be working in the sun. Nope, not this little gray duck. I carried an umbrella stand from our cabin and borrowed another neighbor’s umbrella to our site. (That’s correct—our umbrella was harder to transport.)

Trail Guy got out his super-duper tool box, a gift from yet another cabin neighbor (MANY THANK YOUS, LOUISE!)

We removed the window screen in order to undo the faucet, or something. (I just work here. . .)

All this means something to Trail Guy. His explanations haven’t stuck with me.

Finally, the dresser coupling was in place, and the screen was replaced on the window.(“Dresser coupling?” We addressed this in a post last year, which I don’t expect you to remember, so here is the link—see item #2— in case you would like a refresher.)

As I thought over this repair job, something occurred to me: this was a group project. Trail Guy repaired the pipe with: A. My mom supplied the umbrella stand; B. Next door neighbor supplied the umbrella; C. Neighbor next to the leaky pipe supplied the dresser coupling when he cleaned out his attic a few years ago; D. Dear neighbor across the way supplied the tool box. 

And I helped!

P.S. Trail Guy is NOT a plumber nor a carpenter. If you try to hire him, he will say no. 

P.P.S. (that means P.S. #2) I can draw your cabin because. . .

. . . using pencils, oil paints, and murals, I make art you can understand, of places and things you love, for prices that won’t scare you.

 

Cabin Life, Chapter Ten

 Friends

Almost everyone with a cabin stops by our place to say hello. Some don’t pay attention to the fact that the front door is closed with a Do Not Disturb sign on the knob. (Trail Guy is known for his naps, but not apparently well-enough known.)

Cabin friendships develop over generations, summer after summer, year after year. Some of our cabin neighbors have become our closest friends. We look out for each other, and communicate throughout the year, particularly during crises such as wildfires, floods, collapsed cabins, snow slides, sinkholes, and washed out roads.

This neighbor thrives on greeting the public as they pass by. I think he might be bored this year.

Here are unidentified friends and neighbors. (If you hate finding your picture here, email me and I will delete it.) 

Ouch. Lots of friends shown here who are now gone. Better enjoy the ones remaining, because time is short.

Cabin Life, Chapter Nine

Events

Cabin life is very social. There are lots of meetings and annual events.

Some years our particular neighborhood holds a Labor Day get-together.

 

This was the year we used our neighbor’s front yard because it was bigger. He wasn’t there, and may not even know we did this.

The Mineral King Preservation Society used to hold a picnic in our neighborhood. It has since moved to the Ranger Station, and this year it was held in Visalia. Weird, I know.

One year Trail Guy and I were the speakers. That was also quite weird.

And there is an annual cabin owner’s meeting.

One year the superintendent of Sequoia National Park spoke to us. We miss Woody.

In an earlier post, I mentioned the annual concert by Mankin Creek, sponsored by the Mineral King Preservation Society. Here are a few more peeks at it.

I have many more photos of these various annual events, but some of them have photos of friends who have died and it makes me too sad to see them. 

We really love our friends and neighbors in our cabin community.

 

 

Cabin Life, Chapter Eight

Entertainment

The question remains: What do you do in a place without electricity, cell phones, internet, or even landlines?

Choice #1 is we go hiking. However, that is not something I want to talk about this year, since Mineral King is not open to the public.

We have talked about puttering and gardening. Now let’s look at a few other ways we keep ourselves occupied in the Land of No Electricity. These are random photos, gathered over the course of many years.

My neighbor sewed new curtains for her cabin on an old treadle machine. Another neighbor brought up her electric sewing machine, set it up on her deck with her generator running, and she made quilts.

Many years the Mineral King Preservation Society sponsors Mankin Creek for an evening concert in August. Not this year.

I knit. A lot.

My 5-year-old neighbor calls it “needling”, and she told me I should make her a sweater.

So I did. She picked the colors she liked best from the group above.(The colors look dull in this photo but in real life it is beautiful.)

My Hiking Buddy brought up a project to finish. It had something to do with a baby shower, or maybe a wedding shower. It was fun to help her (and not have to actually attend the shower).

Almost every cabin has lots of books. One neighbor brings 10 books for an 8-day stay, and last year she ran out of reading material. Good thing we had some books to share. I usually bring a box of books up and down the hill every time so there is a pile to choose from.

A friend that I have referred to in the past as The Girl used to bring Mancala to the cabin and make me play with her. She usually won. I loved the marbles and was fascinated to see that m&ms matched them (or maybe it was Skittles). I’m not much of a game player.

Many many many hours of Yahtzee.

Some people like to fish.

Some people like to commune with wayward and obstinate stock.

And hike. Hike with neighbors, hike alone, hike with one’s spouse or family. But we aren’t talking about that this year.

Cabin Life, Chapter One

 

How I Got a Cabin

Welcome to Cabin Life, my way of staying in touch during this odd summer of Mineral King being closed to the public and my accidental stepping into a sabbatical (or something akin to it.)

Thirty-eight years ago I met Trail Guy. In a rash moment of bald honesty, I said, “I’d kill for a cabin in Mineral King”.

He replied, “There is another way”. (Maybe he said “better” or even “easier”.)

We got married the following year (in Mineral King, of course), and nobody has gotten killed.

This was all pre internet, pre personal computers, pre continual connectivity. (The first summer of marriage, we got a landline at the cabin, since we were living in two different places. Fancy.)

Nowadays (isn’t that a classic Old People word?) we live in an era of total convenience, instant gratification, continual connectedness, and complete comfort. 

So why do people go to a rustic shack up a terrible road to spend time without conveniences, ultra-comfort, electricity, cell phones, or the internet? What in the world do people do??

This series, called “Cabin Life”, will give you a glimpse, maybe a few answers to those questions, or maybe just more questions.

 

Just Thinking… and Getting a New Idea

 

 

(Not my front porch)

While at the cabin for a short week I did some thinking about the blog. After fifteen years of continual posting, it is hard to shut down the ideas. It is hard to think about just stopping. It is hard to have ideas that would be rude to share, since Mineral King isn’t open to the public this summer.

Many ideas were flying around my overactive mind: nope, not that; nope, not that one either; nope, better not write that. (“Nope” is the opposite of “yeppers” in my peculiar vernacular.)

Then it came to me that I could write a series about cabin life. I have a lot of experience and thoughts about cabin communities and living simply in a cabin in the mountains. Maybe you, O Gentle Reader (doesn’t that sound quaint?), would be interested in an inside look?

I wouldn’t be talking about the trails, the water, the flowers, the quiet, the beauty, although that would slip in simply due to the location. The goal would be to show you what in the world we do with our time “up the hill”, as almost all people in almost all mountain communities refer to their cabin places.

The posts won’t be five days a week, because there is no internet, electricity, cell service, or even a reliable landline available where I will be spending a great deal of time. If you comment, it might be a few days before I “approve” the comment so that it shows. But at least you’d know I haven’t quit blogging, and you might enjoy a new topic.

Mineral King in Winter

Retired Trail Guy and a friend went to Mineral King in Winter. This week. Yes, winter is really happening this year!

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Nice light on this cabin. People ask “How much snow?” The answer is “Depends on where you are.” Snow piles up or doesn’t pile up in different depths in different places. The best way to see how much is to check the Mineral King webcam. In the 2nd photo, taken toward Timber Gap, the striped stick is 10′ tall, and every stripe is 1′. Click here to open the Mineral King webcam in another window.

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This is The Trackster. It is more reliable than a snowmobile. This is not Retired Trail Guy. It is Retired Mailman.

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Retired Mailman is very tall, and he shoveled off this part of the roof.

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Then he photographed Trail Guy, AKA Shoveler-on-the-Roof. Our cabin is over 100 years old, and it has survived many heavy winters. Still, it takes a load off our minds to take a load off its roof.

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This is a neighboring cabin. The snow is “bridged”, so the weight isn’t as heavy on the roof.

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And a view of Sawtooth on the way back down the road. It is the tiny point on the far right of the whiteness in the distance.

2016 Calendars Available Now!

Cover of 2016 Calendar

$15 includes tax and mailing


This year’s calendar is full of pencil drawings of cabins. Some are from The Cabins of Wilsonia, some commissioned drawings of other cabins from Wilsonia, Mineral King and Camp Nelson.

I’ll have them at the Holiday Bazaar on Saturday, or you can order one using the “Buy Now” button above or you can email me or you can contact me using the contact tab beneath the “About the Artist” tab above.

List of random thoughts about cabins and Mineral King

For clarification, this blog is about a California artist, me, to be specific. Mineral King is one of my main sources of inspiration, it is in California, I call my business “Cabinart”, there are cabins in Mineral King, and this is The Season in Mineral King.

Any questions? Yes? Click on the commenting line that might say “Be the First To Respond” or “# of responses”. No? Let us proceed. . .

 1. While enjoying the sunset on the Mineral King bridge one evening, I met Claudia and Dustin.

They were delightful, and Claudia told me about a great website whose name I am afraid to type on my blog. It is called cabin {blank}. The blank begins with a “p”, has four letters, ends with “n” and has the word “or” in the middle. It is fabulous photos of cabins from all over the world. Unfortunately, I just can’t put the name in my blog because who knows what sort of firestorm of spam it might unleash! So, put on your thinking caps, figure it out, and type in www dot cabin (that word) dot com and enjoy some wonderful cabin photos.

2. You’ve read about the Nature Trail AKA Wildflower Walk in Mineral King several times on this blog. (Or maybe you skipped those days. . .) While on the trail the first weekend in August, I found yet another flower that I’ve never seen before. It is on the downstream side of this little bridge. On the upstream side of that bridge I discovered a new flower several years ago, a Monk’s Hood. That is a real thrill to this rural regional artist who never goes anywhere (except Alaska twice, Chicago twice and China twice). It is a shrub that makes a berry in the middle of the blossom. Two friends said, “Wild Coffee Berry!” but it doesn’t match the photos I found on the internet.

3. This guy blew past me on the Wildflower Walk with his dog. HIS DOG! There are signs at either end of the trail with a picture of a dog and a slash through it. I overheard the guy say that he knew dogs aren’t allowed on the trails which is why he had to walk so fast. Hmmm, that means you don’t have to follow the rules??