So we went, and now we're back.

Our cabin wintered Vermont beautifully. Our patron saint, Harry, took some pictures of the cabin decked out with snow among the bare trees, blue mountains startlingly visible beyond it, but alas, they are the old-fashioned non-digital kinds of pics and so you'll have to imagine.

Our cabin began our vacation as a lovely holding pen for dirty lumber and a vacation getaway for mice; when we left, the porch roof was done, our sassy little woodstove was installed, and we'd put down the final floor inside, as well as moving out all the lumber, scrubbing the walls, sweeping out the mousepoop, and making our cabin a cabin and not a construction zone. And-- perhaps most importantly-- we had ourselves a real vacation, complete with fishing, reading, bowls full of cherries, and entirely too many of those Vermont crullers K. loves so much-- not to mention time with his sisters and parents.

The fishing took place over where I used to work, the beautiful small private lake about ten minutes from our cabin, and K's swimming in the small swimming hole that the aforesaid patron saint dug out for us to utilize the ice-cold small stream that trickles under our road. We have a teeny-tiny perfect pond now!

So, here's our photo show:








It's beautiful, no? There are dozens of pictures I haven't shown you, because we are proud as heck of our small powerless cabin in the woods. K. came across me sitting cross-legged in the clearing where we had camped last September, among the new rye grass, just gazing. Whatyou doing? he asked, and I heaved a great dreamy sigh and said, just looking at our cabin.

OUR cabin. We got in a conversation on whether or not we would sell it for five times what we've put into it and the answer is--well, no. It wouldn't be enough money to retire on, and besides-- we never want to build something like this again.

After reading about the Powatan Indians and learning about a Norwegian farmer who is the eighth generation on a family farm, I've been thinking about land, and what it means. I never recognized the American pioneer spirit in me until I learned about people who understand themselves to be temporary, the land permanent; and so while K. and I plant our feet on our Vermont land and say, this is ours, we also try to think about what has been there before, what will be afterwards. The best melding of the two that we can manage.