Page 64 of The Cabin
I nod and turn away. She closes the door—a few minutes later she exits the cabin wearing faded blue jeans, a more form-fitting T-shirt, hiking boots, with a sweatshirt tied around her waist.
I indicate the shoreline heading away from my cabin, to the right of hers. “Done some exploring around my cabin, but haven’t seen much on this side.”
“I’ve barely left the cabin except for the dock and town a few times.”
“I was the same way, first couple weeks up here. I still only venture out when I feel the need, and I don’t often feel the need.”
We follow the shoreline, walking side by side, me nearer the water. Not too close. No risk of accidental hand touch. We walk in silence for quite a while, and then she finally glances at me.
“So who’s gonna go first?” she asks, a wry grin on her face.
I laugh. “I guess I will, since you came up with the icebreaker.”
I lift a branch up and out of the way, and she ducks under it; here, the shoreline grazes the tree line, so the pine tree branches hang out over the water, forcing us further into the trees.
“My wife died in a car accident three and a half years ago.” I rarely come right out and say it like that. “And it hurts as much now as it did a month afterward.” I pause. “But maybe that’s just because I never really dealt with it.”
She trips on a root, and I catch her by the arm. “Thanks,” she says, recovering. “My husband died. A year ago on the day I arrived.” She pauses, crouches to run her finger in some deep tracks in the dirt. “Bear, I think.”
I glance at it. “Yeah, I’d say so. Big one, too.”
“For me, some days, it hurts more now than it did then,” she says, straightening and brushes her hands together. “As if it’s…fermented, somehow.”
I nod. “I get that.”
We’re on the far side of the lake, now, and we move through the trees to the water’s edge—we can see the cabins, windows gleaming in the late afternoon sun. The docks, dark fingers out into the water. Just the two of them, side-by-side, alone out there.
Behind us, a hill rises, the crown obscured by trees.
“Want to see what’s at the top?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Sure. Probably just more trees, though,” she says, laughing.
“We can go back, if you’re bored, or tired.”
She shakes her head. “Sometimes, boredom is good, and so is being tired. But anyway, I’m not bored. I’ve just never been an outdoorsy kind of girl. Much to my dad’s annoyance, since he was a fisherman and hunter and hiker and camper and all that. I just never liked it. Bugs, dirt, wild animals, weird noises, and did I mention bugs.” She pauses as we wind around a dense cluster of trees, the grade steep up here. “This is nice, though. I’m enjoying it.”
“I grew up doing this.” I wave a hand at the woods. “My dad was in Vietnam, and came back having trouble being indoors. Mom left, and left me with him, and since he always wanted to be out in the woods, the woods is basically where I grew up. Once, when I was, oh, fourteen, fifteen, Dad packed us some big old bags and our rifles and told me to say goodbye to the house for a while. And he meant it. We drove up to Montana near the Yellowstone, out there where it’s real wild, and spent a good six months living like Jeremiah Johnson.” I laugh. “Minus the fights with natives, obviously.”
She eyes me incredulously. “Really?”
“Oh yeah. It was the only place he was at peace. And I didn’t have anywhere else to go and no one else to go to, so I went with him.” I sigh. “He taught me woodworking. If he wasn’t in the woods, he was in his shop out back, working the lathe and the saw. He made furniture. Tables, chairs, bookcases, bureaus. I could make a bookshelf before I could shave.”
“Wow.” She gestures behind us, where the cabins would be. “So, that’s not really even roughing it for you.”
I cackle. “I mean, those cabins are really well finished. So no. But in comparison to how I grew up? Sometimes, we wouldn’t even bring tents. We’d make shelter out of branches and moss and shit. Find a cave. Sleep in the hollow of a fallen tree.”
“My husband and I went camping once, like with a tent. It was terrible and we hated it and we never did it again.”
I hold another branch out of the way as we top the rise. “It’s not for everyone. But it can be fun. I don’t think I’d do any survivalist camping anymore, but being way, way out there, where there ain’t anybody for fuckin’ miles, and everything you need to survive is on your back? Makes you feel…confident, I guess. Comfortable in your skin, because you’re this little fragile ol’ thing in a great big world that’s been here before us and will be here after us, and suddenly your dumb little idiosyncrasies and the shit you’re self-conscious about…it all just doesn’t matter as much. Getting to the next campsite, making the next kill so you can eat, that’s all that matters.” I wave in the direction of the cabins. “And I guess living in the cabin is a version of that. Lessens the intensity of focus. Lets you sort of…just live with yourself, in a way you can’t in the city, doing the day-to-day grind. But maybe that’s just me. And I’m still figuring it out as I go along myself.”
