Cabin Fervor

Every fall, Dad and his buddies drove 200 miles to Jack Hochlander's tiny, unheated Adirondack cabin, centrally located in the middle of nowhere, to hunt deer. In 1957 Dad became part-owner, making him the happiest man on earth. Now, outside hunting season, he brought my brothers and me along, teaching us the ways of the woods - and how not to cook. We had an absolute blast. As Dad said, "We don't have a lot of money, but we have a lot of fun." The cabin became my favorite place on earth, too. Given a choice, I'd take a weekend at the cabin over Christmas. "I can't wait for the day you fellas do the driving," he'd say, sucking on a smoke, steering his latest jalopy up the crumbling old roads. "I'll just relax, look out the window and watch the woods go by. I'm really looking forward to that."

Twenty years later, on his sixty-third birthday, February 6, 1979, he got his wish - but I was the only driver. My brothers, wisely, chose not to come. I thought we'd have a great time, snowshoeing, swapping stories around the wood stove, but I never factored in his drinking. Saturday night, drunk, he challenged a group of reviled snowmobilers at the Deer Head Inn and barely escaped with his life. So much for our glorious weekend. After his untimely death at 73, his youngest son Graham took over the cabin. That didn't last long; directly across our road a huge new house was built, spoiling our serenity, wrecking our wilderness, and Graham was gone; now at long last, the place was mine. Like Dad, I started bringing my kids up. Would they feel the same magic Dad and I felt there years before?