Cabin Life, Chapter Twenty-one

Thoughts on Cabins from a friend

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 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, “smart” gadgets, garbage disposal or heated towel racks; we’re just fine, but thanks for your concern).
  2. The cabin no longer has a telephone, but we borrow the neighbors’ to check our messages on the home answering machine.
  3. Neither one of us likes to play games; in the evenings we listen to the radio, Trail Guy reads out-of-date newspapers that friends bring up to him, I read library books and knit.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.)

So, according to Natalie, a cabin is a small, poorly-constructed, primitive, one-story hut in the woods where everyday life is distant, and we gather to laugh with family and play board games while a fire keeps us warm. (If you have a giant log mansion on a lake somewhere, then you will have to edit this description to fit your idea of what constitutes “cabin”.)

P.S. 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 Twenty

Mineral King Cabin Community

Mineral King cabin folks come from cities, suburbs, small towns and out in the country; we live in mansions, estates, apartments, and even a few normal houses. We are (or were) artists, bankers, equipment operators, janitors, teachers, farmers, administrative assistants, engineers, retirees, dental hygienists, sheriffs, lawyers, doctors, cowboys, builders, day care workers, musicians, optometrists, veterinary assistants, physical therapists, moms, Park employees, physician’s assistants, and those are just the first ones that come to mind. We come from Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Virginia, New York, Hawaii, Florida, South Dakota, and Egypt. (And more places that I can’t remember. . .)

Our Mineral King cabins, AKA “small, poorly constructed huts in the woods”, are great equalizers.

Every one of us, regardless of our backgrounds, livelihoods, economic, educational or political status, is thrilled to have a small, poorly constructed hut in the woods without electricity. Every cabin has a barely adequate kitchen, a laughably tiny (or no) bathroom, maybe two, one, even no bedrooms.

Every single cabin user has to figure out how to deal with unreliable water, peculiar propane appliances, old stuff that may or may not work, and the definite lack of a maintenance department, hardware or grocery store. There is a terrible road to get there, rodents, spiders and other wildlife that may or may not be appreciated, and all sorts of unexpected situations. (Who left this chair and what happened to my flashlight??  Does anyone have any birthday candles? What’s wrong with this place that has no outlets? Are you serious that I cannot blow-dry my hair?)

Every single cabin that is owned by multiple families has its conflicts, whether decorating, cleaning, maintaining, or scheduling. The cabins without partnerships have to bear all the expenses, decisions, maintenance and cleaning without benefit of sharing the load.

Whether folks have complicated lives in fancy places or plainer lives in simpler places, all view a cabin as a mixed blessing: a family tradition, a repository of memories, and a bit of an inconvenience, but still a huge treat, their own treasured shabby shack in the mountains.

We have fought together against bureaucracy, helped one another, hiked together, learned one another’s family trees, and through it all we have built multi-generational friendships weekend upon weekend, year after year after decade after decade. And I am just a newcomer. . .

P.S. I can draw your cabin (or house or barn or garage or shed or hut or cottage or mansion) 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 Nineteen

What is a Cabin?

You may have noticed that some posts about art are beginning to be regular interruptions to our series called “Cabin Life”. My art business is waking back up after a semi-comatose summer. 

So, let’s wrap up this topic with some final posts. These are a rerun from 2018, but maybe you have slept since then, or maybe you didn’t read my blog back then.

Wilsonia cabin porchWhat is a Cabin?

In 1986 I married into a Mineral King cabin. I’d always wanted either a cabin or a beach house. Here in Tulare County, cabins are more available and accessible than beach houses. It has worked out well, even to the point that my art business is called Cabin Art. (Or Cabinart. . . for a Typo-Psycho, I am awfully ambivalent about the spelling of this invented word.)

One would think that I would know how to define the word “cabin”. Alas, one would be wrong about that!

We had an old dictionary at the cabin, so I looked up “cabin”. The 3rd definition said, “A small, rude hut”. Clearly the word “rude” has changed in meaning since the dictionary was published in 1935. I looked up “rude” and saw “Poorly constructed”.

Alrighty, then. A cabin is a small, poorly constructed hut.

But is it? 

I looked up “cabin” on my Mac. The dictionary on my computer has fairly useless definitions as far as our discussion is concerned.

Cabin may refer to:

  • Beach cabin, a small wooden hut on a beach
  • Log cabin, a house built from logs
  • Chalet, a wooden mountain house with a sloping roof
  • Small remote mansion (Western Canada)
  • Small, free-standing structures that serve as individual lodging spaces of a motel
  • Cottage, a small house

We called this The Beach House while growing up; never once did the word “cabin” enter our little skulls.

Forget that. Where’s my real Webster’s dictionary?? Mine was published in 2004 rather than 1935. Oh good grief, look at this: “A small, simple, one-story house.”

That’s it? Au contraire! (Is that how you say “You are wrong” in French?)

In 2018, a few folks checked in with their thoughts on what a cabin is. One suggested “primitive”; another said a place to get away from every day life; someone else put forth the idea that a cabin is a state of mind. “Non-fancy” is a good description, and another added gave a description of an ideal cabin. She used the word “spare”, which could mean an extra home or it could mean without clutter. (I’ve seen some pretty cluttered cabins, and I have lived in a cabin when it was my only place of residence.)

To be continued. . . (and your thoughts are welcome!)

P.S. I can draw your cabin (or house) 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.

 

Ten Items Learned in August

August is a long month, and the new information kept coming, so instead of the usual 7 or 8 items, this month there are 10: Elvis, a couple of books, some poems, and other fascinating facts for you!

  1. Elvis was naturally blond but he dyed his hair black. I read this in Bill O’Reilly’s Killing the Legends, which I didn’t finish because A. I don’t have an interest in celebrities and B. it was very depressing. (Why did I start it? Just normal curiosity, which often leads me to check out books that I don’t finish.)
  2. Trails develop cracks. When the cracks are lateral (running the length of the trail), it means the ground was super saturated and the snow weight was substantial. Repairing such cracks before the trail sloughs away requires some real hard work.
  3. A1C. Ick. Would prefer not to know. Would prefer to live on ice cream. However, I am a responsible adult and have been diligently paying attention to what I consume in order to lower that number before it becomes a problem. Essentially, forgoing sweets simply makes me feel both righteous and perpetually dissatisfied.
  4. The Art of Frugal Hedonism is a fun book, written by two Australians. I didn’t finish this one either, but enjoyed the turn of phrase. (Phooey, wish I had copied a few down to share with you.)
  5. I helped a friend get an extremely heavy piece of black oak for his wordworking hobby. He used some of it to make this turned wooden bowl for me. It is about 6″ in diameter, maybe even 8″. It is perfect to hold my Very Important Items at the cabin.*
  6. That slanted side pocket on Carhartt pants is so that things won’t fall out when you sit down. The tall part of the slant is in the back.
  7. Two little poems about the size of Texas: The sun has riz/The sun has set/And here we is/
    In Texas yet!
    —
    Oh, the distances in Texas aren’t so very far.
    We’ve driven from border to border and only wore out one car!
  8. Did you know there is a trend called “restocking“? It is people repackaging consumable items into pretty containers and arranging everything to be aesthetically pleasing in their pantries, refrigerators, linen closets, etc. Then they film themselves doing this along with the results and post it online. WHY??? Do they expect to get rich and famous? Maybe they ought to learn to do something useful instead, real work, like plumbing or welding.
  9. 105.5 FM is called The Legend and plays classic country music. (I cannot define “classic” but am guessing it means music older than about 10 years, or is it 20. . .?) I think it is based in Fresno. You can play “name that tune”, or “name that artist”, but they don’t seem to have a real DJ to tell you what you have heard or are about to hear. 
  10. At a recent “happy hour” gathering, some friends wanted to supply me with something non-alcoholic to drink (not because I was getting sloppy, but because I don’t drink alcohol). They introduced me to this stuff: Lagunitas Hoppy Refresher. It wasn’t bad; it fits right there with all those sparkly nothing drinks like La Croix.

 

*camera, sunglasses, and keys, if I happened to drive up the hill rather than hitchhike** or go with Trail Guy.

**Just kidding! I often catch a ride with a neighbor heading up, but have never stuck out my thumb.

Eight Things Learned in July

Most of these fall under the category of Cowboy Logic, but it is fun to learn and see them in action.

  1. When diverting flowing water from a trail, go to the highest point of trouble first; then look for the first best place to send it down to its correct channel. 
  2. When repairing a sinkhole in a road, put boulders in first and fit them together as close as possible; keep adding rocks of progressively smaller sizes, and put the dirt in last. Also, be sure to have a backhoe and an operator handy.
  3. Baby peregrine falcons could get blown out of their nests by the concussion if you explode a boulder nearby. But the real reason for not using explosives near a nest is that drilling the rock is the most upsetting sound to them.
  4. This Irish saying tickled my funnybone: “May those that love us, love us, and for those that don’t love us, may God turn their hearts, and if he can’t turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so we know them by their limping.”
  5. Ever heard of a “tulipiere“? A friend told me about them. They are special vases, invented in Holland in the 1600s for holding tulips, which were considered expensive status symbols. (The tulips, not the vases). It is pronounced, er, never mind. Can’t write it correctly.
  6. When your radiator disintegrates, it is best to not be on a steep road on a hot day, but if the road is closed, everyone who shows up will be a friend. (No photos of Fernando disabled on the side of the road nor as he was being towed away; he is repaired now.) 
  7. Every heard of “24 7 Day”? It is July 24, which is 7/24 or flipped, 24-7. This has been turned into a day of appreciation for first responders, and many stop-and-rob stores honor people that day who have badges or are wearing uniforms of first responders. (“honor”– maybe they get free coffee)
  8. When you have a skittish cat with a booboo (nope, not showing a photo of Tucker with a fat face) who cannot be captured in a carrier or a box, it is good to find a traveling veterinarian and to have a large bank balance. (THANK YOU, DR. McCONE, 559-942-1101)

Thus we conclude a month of some difficult circumstances, new experiences, and random pieces of trivial information, (but no talk of hiking in Mineral King when it is closed to the public.)

P.S. Anyone know of a Honda or Toyota (no Civics, Elements, or Tercels) for sale with less than 100,000 miles and a manual transmission?? I am ready.

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.

Pressing Pause

 

This photo is from May of 2022.

Mineral King is closed to the public this year. The Silver City Resort will not be accessible. Cabin folks are strongly discouraged from going up the hill.

NOTHING can stop Trail Guy and I from going up the hill to our cabin.

This poses a question: is it wrong to post photos of and chit-chat about a place that people aren’t allowed to go?

I don’t know how to handle this.

In addition, I seem to have accidentally retired. Actually, I don’t want to be retired, so let’s say I am on a sabbatical. I think this means a paid break for the purposes of learning new skills or doing research. However, I don’t earn if I am not working, and I am not researching anything, so “sabbatical” might also be the wrong description. I simply don’t have work right now, an odd situation that I have never encountered in all my years of self-employment as a Central California artist.

I need time to think, and I welcome your thoughts on this odd situation. Meanwhile, I will be pressing pause on my blog for an undetermined amount of time as I examine what might and might not be the appropriate method of blogging about this current phase of life as your Central California artist (and Mineral King reporter).

 

Eight New Things Learned in June

 

  1. Mulberries are SWEET. Some friends brought a bowl to church to share, and they were so sweet that my teeth almost started humming.
  2. A gabion basket is a wire mesh cube, perhaps 4x4x4 feet. It gets filled with rocks, and then it serves as a solid piece to built up a road bed or shoulder.
  3. A Foley fork, also called granny fork or a blending fork (because “Foley” is a brand name) is an old-fashioned kitchen tool that some people just cannot be without. There is interesting info about it on this website, called The Baking Wizard. (Nope, I don’t want one—simply found it interesting.)
  4. There is an entire subculture of foragers, with a website called “Falling Fruit“, which maps where there is free stuff for the picking all over the world! The Central Valley’s flyover status is confirmed in that although we feed the world, we do not appear on that map (unless it gets greatly enlarged and you locate an orange or fig tree overlapping a sidewalk in Fresno). I love to glean walnuts and citrus from friends’ groves, have occasionally picked Miner’s Lettuce to add to salads, wished to find the wild berries along the Mineral King Road (but never stopped to look), picked elderberries for jelly, and never hesitated to ask someone with a pomegranate tree if they had extra. Foraging in public spaces in a city sounds very bold.
  5. The price of flat screen televisions has dropped significantly. However, there is catch: you have to pay someone techie to hook it up and teach you how to operate it. (If it was up to me, I would not own one.) Furthermore, there is no way to get rid of “non-smart” teevees. No one wants or needs them, even if they work. (The cable company said it was the teevee, but it turned out to be their cable box that got fried in the 2 power outages and restarts.)
  6. A friend who participates in 12-step programs told me about a list of questions for consideration that she received in one of her meetings. The question that grabbed my attention is one that we all need to ask ourselves in many situations: Why am I talking? (I once heard Rush say “Before you pick up your phone and dial this show, ask yourself the question ‘Does anyone care?'”)
  7. There is a monastery in Dubuque, Iowa, where the monks make caskets. This sounds like a weird thing to learn, but the caskets are beautiful. They provide free caskets to people who have lost a child, and they do not accept orders online, only over the phone. They are called “Trappist Caskets“. I hope none of you need this information anytime soon, but it is an undeniable truth of life that none of us will leave this planet alive (unless Jesus raptures us outta here.)
  8. Have you ever heard of terramation? This is a new alternative to cremation also called “human composting, a process whereby your body is turned into compost and then spread in your garden. It is legal in five states and you can read about it here.

Well. Alrighty then. Ahem. This had a bit too much morbidity. What does it mean? 

Why am I talking?? 

Over and out.

Hume Lake Annual Reunion

My sixth annual friend reunion at Hume Lake was a week or two ago (time flies). It was a little odd to go to someone else’s  cabin before spending time at my own. It was also the first time we didn’t rent some sort of watercraft, and the first time I actually wore long pants. Summer has been slow in arriving this year in the Sierra Nevada.

The Generals Highway is closed, but I normally don’t go that way. I went my usual route of Dry Creek Road to 245 to Hogback to 245 to 180. This is one of the iconic scenes along the classic foothill road of Dry Creek.

The Park entrance station was very backed up, because going through Kings Canyon is the only route open to Sequoia.

Then I went through Grant Grove and turned toward Hume Lake at the Princess campground by the closed Cedar Grove road. Too bad, because it would be a terrific year to see the big water in the Kings River on the road to Cedar Grove.

Walking around the lake is a tradition. We have always thought it was a 3 mile walk, but the phones (so smart, eh?) tell us 2.5 miles. Ten-mile Creek was roaring as we crossed it on the footbridge. (Incidentally, the road called “Ten-mile” is only 9 miles.)

We got caught in rain walking around the lake the first day.

The dam release was roaring.

The grounds at Hume’s conference center are beautifully landscaped. I flipped over these columbine. We saw a few deer but only away from the main activity areas. People the area get all excited about seeing deer; I try to keep my disgust for the flower-consumers to myself. (Jumped up to respray some geraniums while typing this at home.)

There was a ton of snow on the distant peaks. Hume Lake gets me geographically confused, because it drains to the east.

Here is Ten-mile Creek in sunshine, still rip-roaring along.

Someone got creative with a downed tree below the dam. This walk was after it rained hard so the water is coming over the spillway in addition to the normal release pipes (channels? culverts? tubes?).

Every year I count on seeing wild iris around the lake. There were zillions in the meadow by the Princess campground, but no place to pull over and be a looky-loo.

We took a “back-stage” tour at Hume, where we got an in depth look at the inner workings. The place is self-contained like a city, with its own charter school (under Fresno Unified School District), auto shop, metal fabrication shop, sewage treatment, and fire department. They didn’t disclose the source of their water or discuss garbage, and I was a little short on time because I had to hustle down the hill to teach drawing lessons.

They showed us the ropes course, where apparently there are quite a few come-to-Jesus moments. (I already came to Jesus, so won’t be testing my faith on any of this stuff).

I learned that they bought their own coffee roasting equipment and in 9 months it paid for itself in savings. (I didn’t try any of their coffee because we were self-contained in my friend’s cabin). This is a photo of one of the dining halls. I was gobsmacked, since I served in the former building as the hostess of the dining room in 1978. That building burned down, and this huge elegant multipurpose structure has replaced the one I knew.

Besides walking the lake, there was a craft project. I observed and appreciated the results, but the method doesn’t work on Crocs, so I knitted instead.

The morning I left, it was brilliant, just fabulously brilliant.

This is Ten-mile Creek from the bridge. The Google told me that Ten-mile road was the quickest way to Exeter, along with the same roads I used to get to Hume, but coming down 245 into Woodlake rather than Dry Creek. Such a beautiful drive, if one has air conditioning. Fernando’s A/C still works—thanks for your concern.

If you came here for Mineral King news and are disappointed, you can check the Mineral King website to see if anything new has been posted.