The Cabin by Shelley Hopkins

It is a slightly shabby building, with an old front porch, a faded red door hung crookedly and a bent pear tree shading the porch and yard.  One picnic table has completely fallen apart, the wood lying in the grass and covered in lichen.  The cabin, we call it, but it isn’t really a cabin so much as a shelter.  The cabin began it’s life as an old corn bin built in 1953 when this area was tenant farmed, and early in the 70’s my grandfather had it moved to the current spot overlooking our pond.  The pond is big enough to paddle around on, and has some fish, lots of turtles and many singing frogs. At night the frogs can be so loud it is hard to have conversations. A pair of herons live on the pond, the frogs sing their great chorus every night, and fish and insects ripple the ponds waters every day.  

 When my grandmother got a new kitchen in her home her old cabinets were installed to create the kitchen. The cabin has a tiny stove, a fridge, and her little yellow cabinets. When my aunt divorced some of her nice furniture was moved in, so the cabin also has a mahogany buffet, china cabinet and dining table.  Across from the kitchen area we had an old yellow couch, a dirty brown recliner and an old bookshelf with kids nature books and National Geographic magazines.  Every time we visited the cabin I read all the books and some of the magazines. Our home didn’t have air conditioning, but the cabin did, so in the summers we often would spend a couple of nights sleeping on cots stored in the added bathroom.  

Many birthday parties were held in the cabin, with grandmother and mom cooking all the food. My brother, cousin and I would play outside, and then we would settle down on the couch or around a folding table to eat.  My favorite dinner spot was outside on the steps to the porch.  After supper we would run outside to catch lightning bugs, or crickets for the fishermen, and to toss balls and explore in the woods.  As the sun set my grandparents would decide it was time to go home, and we would pack up the cars.  I often rode back to town in my grandparents car in my favorite location.  I would crawl up into the platform under the rear window, and lay on my back watching the stars above me as we drove home on those dark roads.  I would be dropped off at my house, and begin to prepare for bed, tired but happy.

We gardened down on the farm, and after the work of planting, or weeding, or harvesting, we would go down to the cabin to cool off in the air conditioning and to drink the extra sweet cold water from it’s well.  Even now, the cabin has the freshest best tasting water anywhere.  When it was time to can the vegetables we did the work at the cabin, in the tiny kitchen, again because the cabin had air conditioning.  Sometimes, years later, I think I can still smell the cooked cabbage we canned as sauerkraut.   A couple of years ago I was walking down the farm road to the cabin and found tiny shoots of asparagus growing up between the gravel.  I pulled them up and ate them raw.  So good!.

When I was a teenager, we used the cabin all the time, and we had a television down there. Grandaddy couldn’t miss his beloved tar heel basketball games.  One time we drove down to the cabin to see burglars had taken the television, another time someone had taken the air conditioner.  The cabin is deeply isolated in the woods, and my grandmother worried there would be another robbery.  After they replaced the television, she wrote out an elaborate schedule making it look like different family members would be visiting the cabin every day.  She put the schedule up on the fridge.  The idea was, when a burglar broke into the cabin, he would take the time to read the schedule and realize someone would possibly be driving down the dirt road at any moment, and he would flee, leaving our possessions behind.  

Grandma decorated the walls with her own paintings, including a painting of the cabin from across the pond.  I have that hanging in my house now, and it always makes me smile.  She also covered the walls with photos of the family, all taken down at the pond.  We had memories of birthday parties, memorial day and labor day parties,  fishing days and just times to gather.  Many times my parents, brother and I would be down at the cabin, maybe just sitting on the porch, when we would hear a car driving slowly down the gravel road towards us.  It was almost always our aunt and uncle, the ones that lived nearby.  They would drive down and hang out for a while, visiting on the porch before heading back home.  It was always a nice surprise to hear a car winding down that road. 

 I loved to walk on that road. It wasn’t long, but it felt isolated and wild.  The road had been cut through the woods, and was covered and surrounded by tall trees.  I would step off the cabin porch, and walk alongside the pond, looking at dragon flies and looking for signs of turtles. Then the road turned up into the woods, and I walked into the quiet tree covered shade.  It was like walking in a tree tunnel, and at the end of the tunnel, after turning along a curve, was a bright sunny window where the trees ended and the fields began.  I would walk through the fields, sometimes tall with corn or other times hay or wheat, and stop at the county road.  I would look both ways even though, at the time, it was rare for cars to come along.  I would cross the road, and continue the walk on our other fields.  These fields were farmed, but the road followed the edge of woods.  On the pond side there were more pine trees, on this side were more hardwoods.  Many times we would scare up a deer, but even more exciting to me was when I scared a covey of quail.  The birds would be settled into a bush, and when I walked by they would all flap wings and jump out of the bush with a loud noise that sounded like a gun shot.  I never understood how birds would make such a noise, but I loved being scared that way.  Now, heart racing, I would walk on through a patch of woods to another two sets of fields.  If no one was working there I would walk on, circling the fields before turning around and walking back, crossing the hard top road, and continuing back through the woods to the pond, and then the cabin. I would retell my adventures of the walk, and my grandpa always said, “great, good!” when I told about wha animals I had seen.  He liked detail.

(We celebrated my grandfathers 90th birthday down at the cabin, inviting all of our family and friends.  A tent was set up with tables, because there was no room for so many people inside the cabin.  We had a nice lunch, cake and sweet tea and soft drinks.  A woman, a friend of my grandaddy, played the accordion.  She chose the Irish song Danny Boy, in his honor.   We wanted all the grassy area in front of the pond to be free for people to mill about, enjoy their food and enjoy the view, so we set the field above the woods as our parking area. Grandaddy was 90 years old and many of his friends and family were also older. The walk is short, but would have been difficult so we borrowed a golf cart and gave rides to and from the parking area.  What tickled me was how many young people expected the ride, when walking would have been more fun.  I guess my idea of fun might be different from many other people. maybe

My daughter and I used the cabin to host a reunion with one of her friends and her mom, my friend.  We slept in the cabin, walked in the woods, and enjoyed a bonfire under the stars.  I remember sitting around the fire chatting, when my friend noticed the stars had moved.  She probably knew that the stars seem to rotate during the night as the evening passes, but this was the first time she had actually observed it happening.  The pond is one of the few places in our area that is still dark enough to really see the stars, and to really be in the dark when night falls.  All of our kids have grown up being in nature, and enjoying nights in the dark under the stars, listening to the bull frogs, and struggling to be heard over the deep frog songs. I learned to fish in that pond, as did many cousins and friends.  We watched tadpoles slowly turn into frogs, we watched turtles float lazily, and fish jump in the water. That old corn bin, and the small pond have been our fancy vacation home since I was a child, and I am very thankful for such a place.  Just wild country, tall grass, quail and bobwhite, fish and turtles and frogs, and space.  Beautiful space.