The Cabin

 

                It seemed like every week or two, my father would come up with some grand project to do together that we would seldom fully complete. He was an electrical engineer, so while I was still a toddler, he had built a hovercraft for me to ride around; to my dismay, I learned that I was so afraid of the sound that the craft had to be dismantled. For my ninth birthday, my father bought a telescope for me that was so large, people would stop by the house to gawk, and many would knock on our front door asking if we had a cannon sitting in our upstairs window. We could use the telescope to see Saturn's rings on a clear night, but to get the best view, it had to be lugged outside and weighing in at well over two-hundred pounds. The task became apparent, and we looked out at the stars on chilly nights less and less. On my twelfth birthday, I walked outside on a freezing November morning to see a full-sized, working French-styled trebuchet, a type of medieval catapult, taking up half of my parent's parking lot. While unique, an ancient machine of war may have been an ill-thought gift for a twelve-year-old. 

                I could recount endless projects and gifts that my father involved me in that gave me a sense of wonder and a unique childhood. Still, one of the most memorable is the day he decided to build a log cabin on our farm. We bought a woodsmen book published in 1910 for people planning to learn what was called "bushcraft" and develop and live in a cabin. It took weeks of planning to start. We walked down to a bend in a stream that flowed through the middle of our farm and picked a relatively level spot that seemed to be safe from flooding or erosion. We built a little road to the site we had chosen for easy access. We spent time picking the particular trees we would cut and what would be best. We put together a grid pattern to build a sturdy foundation of 4x4 poles if our little plot did indeed flood. It all seemed perfect. I can still remember the excitement caused by talking to my father late in the night about all the camping trips we could have at the cabin and how we could improve the structure every year. 

                Before the winter, we had managed to build the floor and foundations. We had cut and sawed the trees to size using our farm's old sawmill. The logs dried inside the barn as the snow came down in blankets over the next few months. I would go and sit on the half-finished floor in a heavy coat and boots, imagining all the fun I would have there, in my little cabin. Still, this was my senior year in high school, and I spent less and less time at home. I was busy looking at colleges and taking tours, and so even as spring finally came, I worked on the cabin with my father less and less. My father would come home from work tired, or I would come back from school, wanting to meet my friends. Eventually, we did drag those dried logs out of the barn and set up a short half wall. Finally, we could see some shape coming to the cabin. Yet time seemed to be slipping away as my life pulled me in directions away from my childhood, farm, and the cabin. 

                I moved away for college that fall, and work on the cabin all but ceased. Things would never be the same, and no more significant work would ever be done on our unfinished cabin. The next summer, we pulled a plastic tarp across the half-built walls and made a jerry-rigged lean-to where we did finally go camping. We built a big, beautiful stone fire pit next to our little campsite, but this still was not the grand cabin either of us had envisioned.  
                We used this space as our campsite for years after, even if it never lived up to the grandeur of my childhood dreams; Eventually, though, the unprotected log walls began to rot and what we had built fell into disrepair as I visited home less and less. Slowly, our dream of sitting in front of a warm fire in a cabin my father and I had built slowly faded and became fuzzy. Still, the memories of what had did do together persisted. Even though the project was never completed, I feel thankful for the time it gave me to spend with my father, and I wouldn't trade that for anything.