Cabin in the Woods

For a long time now, I've wanted a cabin in the woods. Something small and simple like the stone cabin above, though I do like the floor to ceiling woodwork in this cabin bedroom.

After watching Ken Burns' "National Parks" series, I've been captivated by John Muir. We share the same devotion to nature, though I feel like a slacker next to him. Muir covered a lot of ground and walking was a kind of meditation for him. He built a Sugar Pine cabin at the base of Yosemite Falls. His description of the cabin enchants me. If I could have one just like it....

"This cabin, I think, was the handsomest building in the Valley and the most useful and convenient for a mountaineer. From Yosemite Creek, where it first gathers its beaten waters at the foot of the falls, I dug a small ditch and brought a stream into the cabin, entering at one end and flowing out the other with just enough current to allow it to sing and warble in low, sweet tones, delightful at night while I lay in bed. The floor was made of rough slabs nicely joined and embedded in the ground. In the spring, the common pteris ferns pushed up between the joints of the slabs, two of which, growing slender like climbing ferns on account of the subdued light, I trained on threads up the sides and over my window in front of my writing desk in an ornamental arch. Dainty little tree frogs occasionally climbed the ferns and made fine music in the night, and common frogs came in with the stream and helped to sing with the Hylas and the warbling, tinkling water. My bed was suspended from the rafters and lined with libocedrus plumes, altogether forming a delightful home in the glorious valley....and I was loth to leave it.”

~John Muir