When I was a kid, my family spent as much of our summer vacation as possible at a tiny cabin in the woods of northern Michigan. Growing up we called it a cottage, but we might also have called it a hut. It had NO amenities, not even running water. There were hillsides of wildflowers, though, deer hiding behind trees, a creepy but oddly thrilling outhouse and we didn’t have to bathe the whole time we were up there. We would just go to one of the many nearby lakes, jump in and call it good.
My memories also include constant sand in my bathing suit, 1,000 mosquito bites, hair that smelled of campfire smoke and the beautiful freedom that was born of scarcity.
Now, I live on a ranch. We work hard, but we also like to joke that our work is what other people do on their vacations, the abundance of dude ranches being the evidence. Agriculture is the biggest industry in South Dakota, but tourism is a close second. In other words, it is a special place to live and visit, and we love our work.
Meanwhile, our county is one of the most remote in the contiguous United States. Cattle outnumber humans three to one, and the population density is one human per square mile. Suffice it to say, if you are looking to “get away from it all,” this is a pretty good place to do so.
Ironically, but not surprisingly, living here certainly doesn’t feel like a full-time vacation, nor does it feel like we’ve “gotten away from it all.” For better or for worse, modern life and all its quandaries reach us here even if it does take a lot longer to get to a Walmart.
For the past few summers, I have found myself yearning for the simplicity of my childhood cabin. I’m sad to think that my kids, despite living in a very rural place, will not have core memories that are simultaneously about bodily discomfort and wild joy. My husband spends much of his day outside. To him, camping sounds like a terrible idea: “Why would I want to sleep on the ground when I could sleep in a bed?” We are also busy. Therefore, my dream of hand-building a rustic getaway somewhere in our north pasture has not been on the top of the priority list.
Which is why, when I had the opportunity to buy what I have since christened the “camper-cabin” — an incredibly unattractive, half-finished camper rebuild — I thought I’d found the answer to my problem. It is currently just a box on wheels with bunk beds and a door you can only open from the outside, but my intention is to add to it a little here and there, and eventually it will be like a real cabin — or at least be cabin adjacent.
The weather’s changing. Afternoons are hot, but evenings and mornings are cold. It won’t be camping season for much longer, so yesterday, the kids and I went down to practice what it will be like when we do get to actually camp in the camper-cabin. We brought hot dogs and buns, s’mores fixings, the dogs and, of course, Eudora. (If you missed the last column, she’s our preemie bottle lamb.)
It took longer to get everyone and everything gathered than I expected, and by the time we arrived, the kids were already hungry and starting to whine. I braced myself for the whole experience to be miserable. But then, despite the lack of a cabin, cabin magic happened.
The kids, dogs and lamb ambled away to explore the ravine below where the camper-cabin is parked. The sun, hovering on the horizon, turned the grass to gold, and birds sang their evening songs in harmony with the kids’ laughter.
We ate our hot dogs sitting on the ground with no plates, then took off running up the hill to watch the sunset. When we raced back down into the growing darkness my son said he felt like he was flying, proving once again that less often is so much more.
