Some of us are lucky to have a special
place, a refuge from the busy-ness of our daily lives and for me; it’s “the
Cabin”. Thirteen years ago, in 2008, we built a “Knotty Pine Cabin” on our
little 10 acre parcel of land in Central Alberta.
It's on a little bit of lake surrounded by wetlands teeming with waterfowl. Buying it was a risk for us at the time but we are very, very glad that we
took the leap.
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| Geese taking off from the lake |
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| Early morning from the deck |
Like so many of the “leaps” that I’ve taken over the years, it seemed more like I was dragged to the decision and actions that followed by my always thinking wife, Rose. As a matter of fact, I had recently quit my job and was in Ft. Mcmurray doing a small project for my former employer. Rose called me there to say that her friend had let her know about a small parcel of land right next door to his place that had recently gone up for sale.
She wanted to go see it and, since I was away for a few days, it was decided
that she would drive out and have a look and see if it was something we would
be interested in. Well, after that it was like a whirlwind swept through our
lives! Rose loved it and wanted to buy it right then and there.
It was completely undeveloped and apparently there was an astonishing amount of
interest in it. Our friend told her there was lots of traffic along the road,
with people tramping around looking over the property and she was bound and
determined to snatch it up before someone else beat us to it.
Since we had the money available and I completely trusted her to make a good
decision regarding the purchase, she called up a realtor and made an offer to
purchase that same day and, to our everlasting relief, it was quickly accepted.
According to the realtor our buy was definitely "the bargain of the
summer". Realtors as we know often resort to hyperbole, but he was right!
Shazaaam, Rose heard, she saw, and then she acted decisively as she is prone to
do and when I returned from Fort Mcmurray we took our two teenaged daughters and
went to have a look at our new property.
We all loved it and we tromped around through the woods trying to imagine
exactly how we could develop and use it. We eventually ended up scrambling up
the hillside and standing on a fallen log together looking out through a
natural gap in the forest at the beautiful little lake as Rose declared with
certainty, “this is where we will build our cabin!”
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| Me, standing where the cabin will be built |
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| Rose looking happy, thinking about building the cabin |
If you know Rose, you will not be surprised to learn that we did indeed build
our cabin on that exact spot the next summer.
Me being me, I was thinking a small, cozy (cheap) cabin and Rose being who she
is, we ended up going considerably bigger than I thought we needed to and spent
way more money than I thought we could afford.
As usual, after considerable convincing, I decided that I had been right all
along and we went with Roses more expensive choice of a 12’ x 24’ “Knotty
Pine Cabin” and we are now very glad that we did!
It turns out that even a 12x24 cabin quickly seems to shrink when you build a
bedroom and a bathroom and a kitchen and add some furniture etc. We added an
8’x12’ loft with a ladder and a 12’x 8’ deck with railing and we were all set.
Now to decide where exactly to build it and to clear a road and all the rest of
it.
I was away a lot and Rose handled the clearing of the road and the building
spot after my good friend Ron and I trudged through the woods marking out the
exact route that our access road would take. We made it with a nice curve and a
small hill that blocks all view of the cabin from the road.
Once that was marked, we hired a local guy to clear the land and with Roses
direction, he did a stellar job. He used something called a brush hog mounted
on the front of a skid steer. That noisy thing chews up the brush and throws it
everywhere leaving the ground covered with small sticks and shredded wood that
eventually goes back into the soil.
Next, we marked out exactly where the cabin was going to be built and where we
wanted the outhouse and shed that we had purchased from the neighbor. Rose once
again ran the show, directing the delivery of 15 loads of gravel plus the
levelling of the road, yard and cabin building site while I played hooky
working in Ft. Mcmurray.
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| Site cleared, now for the gravel |
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| Right here is where the deck will be |
I was very happy when I got out there once again as she had done a fantastic job and the shed was already in place. There wasn’t much to do to level out the building site before it was time to assemble the skids and the cabin base on site.
It was around this time that we began to wonder if we needed a building permit
and after contacting the county, we discovered that sure enough we did need to
get a permit. “How else are we going to tax you the exorbitant (I mean
appropriate) amount?”
Well that was a whole crazy adventure that Rose handled in my absence, and she
actually had to go down to a council meeting and plead the case for building a
“temporary building” on our 10 acres of land beside the lake.
They deigned to grant us a building permit and with our little piece of paper clutched in our
sweaty palms, we were ready to accept delivery and begin assembling our cabin.
We opted to build the cabin base ourselves to save money and we were fortunate
to be able to hire a friend to help me build the base and assemble the cabin.
We closely followed the directions and built a 12x24’
insulated base. When the cabin was delivered, we got to work on the cabin
build. During this time we stayed next door in our friend’s guest cabin that he
had built to stay in while he constructed his own house a few years prior.
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| Building the insulated base |
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| Getting the roof on-the lightest guy (me) gets to stand on the roof |
My helper and I worked well together and over the course of a few days we got the cabin walls up and a tarp over it until we could get back out and assemble the roof. I hired a few different young guys and tapped some friends to assist over the next couple of weeks and we got the roof panels on and insulated and then the metal roofing. With some finishing touches we had a bare bones cabin shell and couldn’t wait to sleep in it!
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| Getting the windows in and the gable ends on |
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| Looking towards the lake |
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| Now for the metal roof and insulation |
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| And it's done - on the outside |
I probably would have stopped there for a while but Rose had other ideas. First we needed a bedroom and a bathroom and I have to admit that they have since come in handy! We built an 8’x8’ bedroom and stuffed it kind of full with a queen bed and two end tables. There’s just enough room to walk around it but what more do you need?
The bathroom is 4’x8’ and is jam packed with a small sink fed from a 10 litre
jug, a nice little camping toilet, some shelves and an old buffet/sideboard
that belonged to my mom and is now used for storage.
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| The bathroom |
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| The camp kitchen that we used for the first few years |
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| Rose getting organized, while April takes a well earned break |
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| Our 8x8 bedroom |
The shower is outside and it’s one of my favourite things about the cabin. After cutting the grass or picking berries or just to cool off, there are few things better than an outdoor shower! It started as a jug in a black bag (to absorb heat) mounted on a tree and gradually morphed into a wood deck with a fence around three sides and a barrel of water pumped through a propane heater for a piping hot outdoor shower experience!
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| The outdoor shower |
Every year we made improvements, like some water barrels and eves trough to
capture rain water for the shower and a propane furnace to heat the cabin.
We’ve got a few solar panels charging up some power boxes that give us enough
AC power to run a TV/DVD player and light bulbs and a lovely, beautiful, super
handy generator with a remote start, a wonderful invention indeed! In the
kitchen we use a 12 volt water pump combined with a propane heater, to give us
nice hot water for washing dishes.
Rose has always been a real trooper when it comes to making due with what is available and for the first few years at the cabin she turned out some amazing meals on a one burner, pop up camp kitchen with a tiny little flexible vinyl sink and almost no prep area. I don’t know how she did it for so long but eventually we decided it was time to upgrade to a real kitchen.
The kitchen itself was probably the most life changing (and costly) of our many
improvements. We went with Ikea butcher block counter tops mounted on some
modular kitchen cabinets and a 2 drawer industrial filing cabinet that Rose
scrounged from one of her jobs. It worked the way it usually does in our
household. Rose has the vision, prods me into going along with it, and then
somehow or other, I make it happen. My approach to building and renovating is a
combination of MacGyver and Mike Holmes and somehow it usually works out pretty
well.
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| New kitchen and lighting fixture |
In this case it turned out to be very functional and rustically attractive kitchen with a three burner propane cooktop, a nice new sink and taps and a place to hang her favourite cast iron pans. Rose is all about cast iron, she loves the look of it and she can make just about anything you may want in a cast iron pan of some size. She's got four of them hanging at the cabin and another eight on her wall at home!
We installed a custom light fixture that I
made from an antique piece of wood from an old buggy harness/oxen yoke/centaur
saddle (what the heck do I know) a cool piece of wood with metal rings and
hooks on it.
We added a cat ramp up to the loft so our
kitty doesn’t have to use the ladder. We also cleared (by hand) a lot more area
on both sides of the cabin to give us a larger parking area and a place for the
trailer and other things. This gives us some expansion space with a water view
for use when visitors want to park a trailer or pitch a tent.
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| Zoey's cat ramp |
This year we added a lean-to style screened room with sliding roof panels to the front of the cabin and we love it! The big hit of the summer though (with our granddaughter Junie) is the 12’x12’ tent platform that we built on our secondary viewing spot. She loves to drag some unsuspecting adult over there to play games or read to her. Since she discovered the tent, we haven’t been able to interest her in the canoe, go figure!
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| The new "Glamping" tent platform |
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| The new (old) deck furniture |
Two and a half year old Junie, loves the cabin. Whether it is picking berries, hiking the trails, playing with the “blocks” that are nothing more then left over triangular bits of wood, canoeing or playing in the tent, she is always eager to go to the cabin and sleep in her room there. Her “room” is just the bathroom with a playpen set up in it but she doesn’t mind and until she is old enough to sleep in the loft, it seems to do fine.
We’re happy to have the cabin as a family retreat from the busyness of life in
the city but what makes it extra special are the times when family and friends
visit and we get to share the experience with them.
This morning I'm floating in my canoe at the far end of the lake enjoying the
sounds of the birds along the shore. The red winged black birds are chirping,
clacking and trilling among the reeds as I sit here floating on a perfectly calm
lake. All at once the American Coots nesting on shore begin a series of
barking/coughing alarm calls that signal I've drifted too close to their
nesting site and I back paddle, gently moving away.
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| Writing in the canoe |
I've brought my coffee today and there are few things more pleasant than sipping good coffee in a canoe on a flat, private lake on a sunny morning in the summer time.
Rose sends me a text as I sit here writing. "This morning Junie said,”
"I like Papa, give him a hug." Somehow my day just got a little bit better!
It's not all relaxing and floating around on the lake, there is a lot of work
involved but somehow I don't mind it. We have this place because of the work,
it's as comfortable as it is because of the work, so even the work part is
satisfying in a different way than it is in the city.
Over the years I’ve built up a two
kilometer trail system that takes you through a whole selection of different
elevations and micro climates. There’s the upper meadow that meanders through
raspberry, Saskatoon, chokecherry and gooseberry/black current patches and past
the spot where the deer like to bed down. Then down through the forest past the
spot where the Long Eared owls nested for a few years (they are still around
but nesting across the road now).
Next the trail goes through the driest
area on the property, the “lower meadow” and around the point and onto the
shady path that runs along the lake for half a kilometer. It goes past the dock
that started out life as a picnic table and then past “April’s spot” that we
cleared out and now have a wood bench swing
set up where you can swing in the sun and look at the lake.
I love to walk the trails, watching for
the family of grouse that nests on the property every year. There are also many
water birds of course, but my favourites are probably the Great Blue Herons,
they are so huge! We’ve seen deer, moose, coyotes, weasels, bunnies, squirrels,
porcupines, hummingbirds, tiger salamanders, garter snakes and myriad other little creatures
and birds.
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| Looking up at the new tent area |
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| Early morning |
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| Amazing colour some years |
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| April and I in the canoe |
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| Long eared owlets |
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| The cabin from across the lake |
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| Looking up at the cabin from the canoe |
It’s great to have a little bit of land, our little private fief that we share with the animals and birds and where we do what we want and the world leaves us alone, as long as we pay our taxes to the county that is.
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| Kait, Junie and I in the canoe |
Of course hunting season is sometimes a concern, no-one wants to be sitting on
their deck and suddenly hearing gunshots that seem very close by. Those
incidents thankfully are few and far between now, due in large part to the many
signs I've got posted all over the place.
It's breezy now at midday and I'm glad I took out the canoe early this morning.
Even with the little electric motor that we have mounted on the canoe, it can
be difficult to return against the wind from the far side of the lake.
Rose and I had quite the adventure a few weeks ago when a sudden strong wind
came roaring across the lake sounding like a helicopter overhead! It
immediately ripped my hat off and forced us into the reeds along the shore. I
tried to turn us into the wind but I had absolutely no control even at full
power. Perhaps this is a metaphor for life in general? Control is an illusion
and things can change in an instant, so take nothing for granted!
Now I know what they are talking about
when sailors say you don't want to be trapped against "a lee shore".
Feeling powerless is not fun. We waited it out for a few minutes and were able
to paddle away from the shore and motor down the lake into the wind but boy we
were glad for that little motor!
A few days later we were out on the canoe
again when I spotted the head of a deer sticking out of the water as it swam
(waded?) across the lake. We made our way closer in time to watch the young
buck scramble out of the water and go bounding away up the hillside.
Life is full of questions sometimes: why
did the deer want to cross the lake? And if it had a good reason, why didn’t it
just walk around? The lake is about 50 acres in size so it’s easy to walk
around it. We figure he just wanted to be in the water, maybe to cool off, who knows?
Out here at the cabin these are the most
pressing questions once we’ve unplugged from the concerns of the city and the
world. Why did the deer swim the lake? Why did the owls move their nest? Why
did most of the birch trees die off? And the most pressing question of all, why
don’t we just do it and move out here for good?!
I’ll give you a hint, her name is Junie💗. For us, being close to family trumps even the cabin!
