Cabin in da Woods

We built a cabin in the woods, beside a river in Vermont, more than 1,000 miles north of where we were living in Florida. It was challenging, a lot of hard work and mostly met what we were looking for when we started on the journey.

We moved near family, but didn't expect them to be hostile, rude, belligerent and offensive. Whew, boy did we have a lot to learn about living next to country folk. It turned out the strangers were the nicest people ever, and close family was, well, just too darned close.

We walked the property across the river from Pop's place in 2020. It was beautiful, a country side road over a small bridge, next to a river next to a glade, and a roaring stream. Rather, a roaring rock-filled river, at 1,000' above sea level, just south of the town of Cabot, Vermont, 1/4 mile down the hill from the Creamery.

You will upset people

WTF ? What do you mean, "you will upset people?" we asked. Oh, you'll see, he muttered. We had no clue what he meant, but in the months and years that followed we found out. Oh, boy did we find out.

But for now, this was our honeymoon time, our first walk on property that in a month or so would be ours.

Following the closing, there would be ground prep, surveyor, site selection and the shell construction by the team who built the log cabin on top of our cellar pad. Roof, windows and finally, by the second week of October, 2021, a shower curtain front door would follow. Dividing the interior, adding pex for plumbing throughout, building cabinets, tiling the downstairs bathroom, kitchen countertops, deck builders who lived on the property, a travel trailer rental misadventure and lastly, an ADU gone wild in the summer of 2024.

In between there was the Flood of 2023, and again, on July 10, 2024 - the Flood of 2024

This is a very long story gone short, for perhaps, good reason. Suffice to say, we have a cabin in the woods, next to a (sometime) raging river. It is ours and we are blessed.