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Cabin: Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine
Inspired by his From the Ground Up blog for the New York Times, a beautifully written memoir about building and brotherhood
Confronted with the disappointments and knockdowns that can come in middle age—job loss, the death of his mother, a health scare, a divorce—Lou Ureneck needed a project that would engage the better part of him and put him back in life's good graces. City-bound for a decade, Lou decided he needed to build a simple post-and-beam cabin in the woods. He bought five acres in the hills of western Maine and asked his younger brother, Paul, to help him.
Twenty years earlier the brothers had built a house together. Now Lou saw working with Paul as a way to reconnect with their shared history and to rediscover his truest self. As the brothers—with the help of Paul's sons—undertake the challenging construction, nothing seems to go according to plan. But as they raise the cabin, Ureneck eloquently reveals his own evolving insights into the richness and complexity of family relationships, the healing power of nature, and the need to root oneself in a place one can call home. With its exploration of the satisfaction of building and of physical labor, Cabin will also appeal to readers of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft, and Tracy Kidder's House.
Confronted with the disappointments and knockdowns that can come in middle age—job loss, the death of his mother, a health scare, a divorce—Lou Ureneck needed a project that would engage the better part of him and put him back in life's good graces. City-bound for a decade, Lou decided he needed to build a simple post-and-beam cabin in the woods. He bought five acres in the hills of western Maine and asked his younger brother, Paul, to help him.
Twenty years earlier the brothers had built a house together. Now Lou saw working with Paul as a way to reconnect with their shared history and to rediscover his truest self. As the brothers—with the help of Paul's sons—undertake the challenging construction, nothing seems to go according to plan. But as they raise the cabin, Ureneck eloquently reveals his own evolving insights into the richness and complexity of family relationships, the healing power of nature, and the need to root oneself in a place one can call home. With its exploration of the satisfaction of building and of physical labor, Cabin will also appeal to readers of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft, and Tracy Kidder's House.
243 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2011
49 people are currently reading
431 people want to read
About the author
Lou Ureneck
6 books29 followersLou Ureneck is a teacher and writer. He lives in Boston. His first book, "Backcast," won the National Outdoor Book Award for literary merit. He has worked as a reporter and editor at the Providence Journal, the Portland (Maine) Press Herald and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He also has been a merchant seaman and carpenter. Ureneck also was a Nieman fellow and editor-in-residence at Harvard University. He built a cabin in Maine with his brother, Paul, and wrote a book about it called "Cabin." In the book, he tells the story of Paul and him, of the cabin's construction and of his coming to consciousness about his love of nature. His most recent book, The Great Fire, is out in May 2015.
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January 9, 2021
Cabin by Lou Ureneck is a tale of two brothers, a dream, and five acres in the state of Maine.
Lou begins his heartfelt saga thusly:
"The idea had taken hold of me that I needed nothing so much as a cabin in the woods - four rough walls, a metal roof that would ping under the spring rain and a porch that looked down a wooded hillside.
I had been city-bound for nearly a decade, dealing with the usual knockdowns and disappointments of middle age. I had lost a job, my mother had died and I was climbing back from a divorce that had left me nearly broke. I was a little wobbly but still standing, and I was looking for something that would put me back in life's good graces. I wanted a project that would engage the better part of me, and the notion of building a cabin-a boy's dream, really-seemed a way to get a purchase on life's next turn. I won't lie. I needed it badly."
You bet Lou needed it badly. Lou's knockdowns could serve as classic textbook, the midlife crisis we all face in one form or the other anywhere from our early 30s to our late 50s (Lou's cabin story begins when he's 58).
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung offers profound words on just this topic: "Therefore, if some great idea takes hold of us from outside, we must understand that it takes hold of us only because something in us responds to it and goes out to meet it."
Lou's response engages both heart and mind, "a boy's dream, really" - the dream of not slapping up a prefab vacation house but building an authentic cabin with "craft and heft and tradition" - a cabin that would serve as both expression and extension of the surrounding rugged Maine hillside.
As I was reading this moving account, it was as if I was right there at Lou's side every single step of the way. To share a taste of my experience, I'll link my comments with Lou's actual words.
"In this experiment in mental health, building a cabin with Paul was one of the reasons I wanted to build it at all. When you get around to reassembling your life, as I was doing, it's good to have someone at your side who remembers how the parts once fit together." ----- Fortunately, Lou's younger brother Paul had a wealth of knowledge and expertise both as builder and construction manager. However, Paul had something infinitely more valuable: he shares a deep brotherly bond with Lou.
"Growing up, I had always been on the move, from one place to another, sometimes in the middle of the night. My mother and father had separated several times when I was very young, and my father disappeared from my life when I was seven years old." ----- Lou fills us in on his backstory, especially his years growing up in central New Jersey in and around Toms River. One memorable piece of his boyhood: out in rustic central New Jersey, Lou made some money as a tracker, catching muskrats and raccoons.
"The fundamental unit of timber-frame construction is the "bent." This is an assembly of timbers fashioned into the shape of a raised H - two vertical posts connected near their tops with a horizontal beam." ----- Alas, building a cabin yourself requires a commitment to detail. The steps are six in number: 1) foundation, 2) frame, 3) exterior siding, 4) roof, interior 5) siding and finish, 6) plumbing, heading, lighting, cooking. Lou shares enough of the nitty-gritty to satisfy any reader who would like to know what it would be like to undertake such a project. "If I were to make a list of lessons learned about cabin building, one of them would be: order your materials well in advance of when you need them and have them delivered in proximity to the building site."
"By the time you hit your sixth decade, life's losses begin to pile up. If you have been lucky or resourceful - luck being by far the more determinant of the two - the pain of the losses has been reduced somewhat by the satisfaction of the things you have gained along with way, principal among these being children. Another is the freedom that comes with age. It is the freedom that allows you to know and be yourself." ----- Lou has spent a good number of years as a college professor. This to say, Lou has the ability to clearly articulate his hard won wisdom.
"Outwardly we had led different lives, but inwardly we had similar values and impulses, which had come out of our strong shared experiences as children and young men: blood loyalty and the resourcefulness that children learn from having to wash out their underwear and socks in the bathroom sink each night before school or lift an alcoholic stepfather out of the bushes and clean him up in the house. All of this, the similarities and the differences, was playing out, and would further play out, as the cabin took its shape." ----- All through Lou's story, a reader senses how blood runs thicker than water. I know, I know, it's a cliché but in this case it's 100% true.
"I was about twenty when I first read Tolstoy, and each time I finished reading one of his stories, I felt as if I needed to recover from the stun of an electric shock. Never had literature spoken so directly to me or had life so fully opened up on the page." ----- As any reader of this review can appreciate, an openness to world literature counts for so much. Cabin, a journey of spirit, an uplifting journey, one I highly recommend.
Lou and young brother Paul
Lou Ureneck at his cabin in Maine
January 27, 2012
A story about building. Building a cabin in Maine- from scratch. That was something new for me. I try to recall the subject of the last books I’ve read. Scattered words occur to me: bonds, love, chase, revenge, friends, house, blood, senses. Now, doesn’t every story have to do with building and demolishing?
It’s a good metaphor and I like it. Lou Ureneck reaches the roots and the branches of this metaphor. He starts by his recent misfortunes, continuing by introducing us to his childhood, his relation to his brother, his mother and then his life as a husband and father. Every story gets disrupted by the gradual building of his cabin, as we gradually get to know him, his inner and outer world. The two parts of this metaphor grow hand by hand. The building of the cabin and the building of his whole life, some rooms of which had been shuttered.
This is not the only metaphor he used. There are plenty of them in the book created through inventive and acute observations. Also, there is a timeline which travels the reader back and forth, focusing in details, then showing the big picture and finally an overall excellent organization of the chapters.
“It’s difficult to give your life meaning if you can’t give it coherence” was one of the first sentences I wrote down. It’s one of the things I love about books. Of course, a good story is satisfying. After all, the reader wants to turn anxiously to the next page. Is it enough though? Lou Ureneck achieved more. I found myself stopping in the middle of a paragraph and closing my eyes or gazing in emptiness around me. It makes you think, slow down, pause, dig into your thoughts. Roland Barthes named it the pleasure of reading. I would add that this is a pleasure that makes us more intelligent, sensitive, above all, more humane.
The question is how did he achieve that? The writer studied, and it shows. Studied on how to make a cabin, on the historical background of Maine, studied literature- and I always adore references to the sacred monsters like Tolstoy. First and foremost, he studied himself. He goes so deep into the basis of his feelings, childhood, thoughts, roots, needs, that I wonder whether he should have been a psychotherapist.
Finally, Lou Ureneck passes through this, the building, the getting back to his feet, with optimism. He could easily choose misery, lying on his couch during weekends instead of going to Maine. I always thought that this is what defers people. There are the ones who cannot stand up when they fall, the ones that focus on the misery and the problem itself. And then, there are the ones that shout every morning to themselves: You have to wake up. The ones who prefer to keep their pride even if that means more difficulties. The ones that have a fire burning inside of them- in other words the urge to create, the urge to build.
It’s a good metaphor and I like it. Lou Ureneck reaches the roots and the branches of this metaphor. He starts by his recent misfortunes, continuing by introducing us to his childhood, his relation to his brother, his mother and then his life as a husband and father. Every story gets disrupted by the gradual building of his cabin, as we gradually get to know him, his inner and outer world. The two parts of this metaphor grow hand by hand. The building of the cabin and the building of his whole life, some rooms of which had been shuttered.
This is not the only metaphor he used. There are plenty of them in the book created through inventive and acute observations. Also, there is a timeline which travels the reader back and forth, focusing in details, then showing the big picture and finally an overall excellent organization of the chapters.
“It’s difficult to give your life meaning if you can’t give it coherence” was one of the first sentences I wrote down. It’s one of the things I love about books. Of course, a good story is satisfying. After all, the reader wants to turn anxiously to the next page. Is it enough though? Lou Ureneck achieved more. I found myself stopping in the middle of a paragraph and closing my eyes or gazing in emptiness around me. It makes you think, slow down, pause, dig into your thoughts. Roland Barthes named it the pleasure of reading. I would add that this is a pleasure that makes us more intelligent, sensitive, above all, more humane.
The question is how did he achieve that? The writer studied, and it shows. Studied on how to make a cabin, on the historical background of Maine, studied literature- and I always adore references to the sacred monsters like Tolstoy. First and foremost, he studied himself. He goes so deep into the basis of his feelings, childhood, thoughts, roots, needs, that I wonder whether he should have been a psychotherapist.
Finally, Lou Ureneck passes through this, the building, the getting back to his feet, with optimism. He could easily choose misery, lying on his couch during weekends instead of going to Maine. I always thought that this is what defers people. There are the ones who cannot stand up when they fall, the ones that focus on the misery and the problem itself. And then, there are the ones that shout every morning to themselves: You have to wake up. The ones who prefer to keep their pride even if that means more difficulties. The ones that have a fire burning inside of them- in other words the urge to create, the urge to build.
February 15, 2015
I truly enjoyed reading this book. It started out slow but I grew to like it very much. There was a lot of technical information about building but it was interesting. The author had a lot of the same feelings I have about reasons to go to a cabin.
"I found the North Star and turned in place to take in the entire sky. It had been a night in which the stars actually sparkled; they glittered, it seemed, for my benefit. The snow was deep and creaked under my boots. The temperature was well below zero and a pale wraith of smoke drifted up from the chimney as the woodstove inside pulsed with heat. I had stood there for a very long time, letting the cold find it's way into my woolen shirt, and I thought I would never be happier."
"Now and again I just stood by the door's rough opening and watched the water come down from the roof and fall from the eaves [...] by then, I had a chair in the cabin, and I would just sit and watch the rain come down, tapping the leaves, splattering on the ground or blowing this way and that as the rain shifted."
"I found the North Star and turned in place to take in the entire sky. It had been a night in which the stars actually sparkled; they glittered, it seemed, for my benefit. The snow was deep and creaked under my boots. The temperature was well below zero and a pale wraith of smoke drifted up from the chimney as the woodstove inside pulsed with heat. I had stood there for a very long time, letting the cold find it's way into my woolen shirt, and I thought I would never be happier."
"Now and again I just stood by the door's rough opening and watched the water come down from the roof and fall from the eaves [...] by then, I had a chair in the cabin, and I would just sit and watch the rain come down, tapping the leaves, splattering on the ground or blowing this way and that as the rain shifted."
June 28, 2020
roughly equal parts memoir, construction details, and observations on nature (both Maine and his childhood in New Jersey). First area was reasonably interesting, the others not so much for me. It was very well written, so would appeal to others interested in those details.
September 15, 2020
This author has a lot of words. I think my biggest angst is the title. The book was more of a memoir. The cabin itself added very little to the story. As someone who lives in a Cabin that we built ourselves, I wanted a book more about cabin building with that title. A good read if you're looking for a memoir; not so much if you're looking for a how-to or an idea book.
January 9, 2012
If I thought I wanted a cabin BEFORE I read this book, I not only wanted a cabin but I wanted to BUILD A CABIN IN MAINE. I would have liked more pictures of the interior and of the cabin layout. I enjoyed the book and would read other books by the author.
July 6, 2025
Enjoyed the slow pace and detail of this memoir. Picked it up at a liquor store, of all places, on a little free library/free book shelf.
Reminds me very much of the David Greyson novel “Under My Elm”, (which I may never be able to finish…it is no longer in print and the copy I stumbled upon at a little free library in Clarkston, MI was misprinted and is missing several chapters).
Keeping this one on my bookshelf at our lakeside home for others to enjoy.
Reminds me very much of the David Greyson novel “Under My Elm”, (which I may never be able to finish…it is no longer in print and the copy I stumbled upon at a little free library in Clarkston, MI was misprinted and is missing several chapters).
Keeping this one on my bookshelf at our lakeside home for others to enjoy.
August 15, 2019
There are few books I return to time and time again, and even fewer that I read twice in a row. This book is one of them. Catering to my own urges to build a cabin, Lou Ureneck takes us on a journey of self discovery, history, and brotherly compassion as he and his brother build a cabin in Maine. The appeal of this books lies in its writing and its very human story. Ureneck traces his history with nature back to his childhood in New Jersey to building his first home with his brother to leaving Maine for Philadelphia and then to Boston for a teaching position at BU.
Filled with insights and discoveries, "cabin" is a book any nature lover and cabin nut will enjoy time and time again.
Filled with insights and discoveries, "cabin" is a book any nature lover and cabin nut will enjoy time and time again.
December 2, 2020
A good book that filled the yearning in my mind. Given all of the events of the last year and the hours upon hours of reflection I’ve done as a result. I’ve found myself drawn to spending as much time outdoors as I can. I’ve also come to accept that there are fewer days ahead than behind and that over the last decade I’ve wasted time that I cannot get back. This book hit a spot that I’ve been trying to scratch. A place where family and friends can come together. That broken fences can be mended and new families created and nurtured. I would recommend this book to anyone who has fallen on rough times or is simply stressed out by the current state of the world.
January 1, 2018
Having lived in Oxford County for six years, I wanted to read this book. Not only is it a heartwarming memoir, it is written in a literary style that brought joy to my heart...even though I know nothing about building with wood. My best friend who was a carpenter by trade, read this book in almost one setting. (He's retired so he could do that.)
August 20, 2019
This book is simple in the best way possible. It’s simply a story of healing in the context of nature and the ways in which the Earth itself is often the best backdrop for emotional reckoning. Short and sweet, we follow two brothers who build a cabin in the forests of Maine, the construction of which sets the stage for a deep sense of peace.
April 14, 2024
The story of a man and his brother building a cabin in Maine. The book was given to me by my sister because my wife and I have a cabin on a lake in central Maine. And it needs work! The book has good writing in a journalistic style, nothing literary. But a good read. The author writes a blog for the New York Times and was a journalism professor at Boston University.
The author buys five acres of land in Bethel, Maine, in the southwestern part of the state in the foothills leading up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
The theme is creating a home. The author has suffered loss recently: a divorce after a long marriage, the loss of his mother, the loss of his job as a newspaper editor in Philadelphia. There's a chapter on the hardships the two brothers endured as they grew up. An absent father and an in-and-out abusive alcoholic stepfather. The author has an apartment back in Boston but he wants a home. Something that has meaning to a person who lived in a rental units with a single mom, constantly moving, and we suspect leaving unpaid rent behind.
Thirty years earlier he had helped build his brother's house in Maine. His brother’s teenage sons help in the new construction process. Both the author and his brother had part time construction jobs in their youth, one as a framer and one as a sheetrock installer, so they know a lot more about this type of project than the average bear.
The author has thought about this project for a long time and he has a huge stack of timber stored on his brother's property. It's been stored so long they disagree about how useful some of the deteriorating boards are. The author initially has visions of old-fashioned construction with a mallet and wood pegs but his brother, a construction manager, quickly talks him out of that.
We have chapters about his thoughts about the design and construction. We get insights into the building codes and environmental concerns that anyone who has engaged in this kind of one-off construction has dealt with. For example, strict adherence to the environmental rules would have required them to blast out a ledge, causing more damage to the environment than ignoring the rule would. The zoning codes contradict the environmental issues. The town would require a 24-foot-wide driveway! That would mean turning his front yard into a gravel parking lot.
There’s a chapter where he reminisces about cabins he has known and stayed in. He takes walks around the property and acquaints us with the stream and animals in the environment.
He's a smart shopper. New windows for the cabin would cost at least $10,000 but he's able to buy and repair old ratty ones for $5 each. Just figuring out what type of footings or pilings are needed and the construction of them is worth a chapter.
We read a chapter about the history of settlement of the area going back to the Native Americans and the various landowners, saw mills and factories that shaped the region. He wants an orchard so they plant 50 apple trees. All in all, a good read.
Top photo of a Maine cabin from seasidemaine.com
The author (b. 1950) from Facebook
The author buys five acres of land in Bethel, Maine, in the southwestern part of the state in the foothills leading up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
The theme is creating a home. The author has suffered loss recently: a divorce after a long marriage, the loss of his mother, the loss of his job as a newspaper editor in Philadelphia. There's a chapter on the hardships the two brothers endured as they grew up. An absent father and an in-and-out abusive alcoholic stepfather. The author has an apartment back in Boston but he wants a home. Something that has meaning to a person who lived in a rental units with a single mom, constantly moving, and we suspect leaving unpaid rent behind.
Thirty years earlier he had helped build his brother's house in Maine. His brother’s teenage sons help in the new construction process. Both the author and his brother had part time construction jobs in their youth, one as a framer and one as a sheetrock installer, so they know a lot more about this type of project than the average bear.
The author has thought about this project for a long time and he has a huge stack of timber stored on his brother's property. It's been stored so long they disagree about how useful some of the deteriorating boards are. The author initially has visions of old-fashioned construction with a mallet and wood pegs but his brother, a construction manager, quickly talks him out of that.
We have chapters about his thoughts about the design and construction. We get insights into the building codes and environmental concerns that anyone who has engaged in this kind of one-off construction has dealt with. For example, strict adherence to the environmental rules would have required them to blast out a ledge, causing more damage to the environment than ignoring the rule would. The zoning codes contradict the environmental issues. The town would require a 24-foot-wide driveway! That would mean turning his front yard into a gravel parking lot.
There’s a chapter where he reminisces about cabins he has known and stayed in. He takes walks around the property and acquaints us with the stream and animals in the environment.
He's a smart shopper. New windows for the cabin would cost at least $10,000 but he's able to buy and repair old ratty ones for $5 each. Just figuring out what type of footings or pilings are needed and the construction of them is worth a chapter.
We read a chapter about the history of settlement of the area going back to the Native Americans and the various landowners, saw mills and factories that shaped the region. He wants an orchard so they plant 50 apple trees. All in all, a good read.
Top photo of a Maine cabin from seasidemaine.com
The author (b. 1950) from Facebook
January 20, 2020
This is nice, but I do feel there were a lot of times the author was explaining to me instead of making me feel what he did. That made some passages far less interesting, and didn’t seem like it should have happened given that my reaction to nature would be pretty similar. It just felt like sometimes it was more important for him to say something than to convey something. Still pretty good overall though.
August 10, 2021
I picked this up a few months ago at the bakery’s little free library. Thought it was a perfect book to read during a family vacation to a lake cottage in New England with my brothers that I hadn’t seen in almost two years.
At times the book waned but overall it was pretty good and I enjoyed many of the background info parts. I do have a pretty good knowledge of house building that made some of the more technical parts easier to follow which might have been trickier for others.
At times the book waned but overall it was pretty good and I enjoyed many of the background info parts. I do have a pretty good knowledge of house building that made some of the more technical parts easier to follow which might have been trickier for others.
May 14, 2022
I really wanted to like this book. The author is a similar age with some similar experiences and the cabin that he built isn't that far from where I live. I found the portions of the book where he discussed the actual building of the cabin interesting. The memoir portion was interesting to start, but it got tedious to me. I didn't finish the book, which is unusual for me.
December 10, 2022
3.5? Enjoyed a lot, but the last 50ish pages dragged and the tangents seemed less related to the build and more like filler. Loved all the descriptions of nature and seasons at the cabin. Loved seeing the process from idea to reality. Loved that it made me think of the trip to Portland that I got the book on!
March 9, 2024
I use this book as inspiration whenever I’m about to start a cabin project. He’s a bit of a drag and you can tell at this point in his life he’s got a bit of stunted sadness but he’s knowledgeable and it’s clear he loves nature. It’s not just a story about one man’s journey but there’s also nifty insight when it comes to building in backwoods areas.
June 22, 2017
3.5 stars. A pleasant and readable nonfiction story of a man building a cabin in Maine with his brother and nephews. I wish it had pictures. This book really romanticizes the quiet appeal of a secluded cabin in nature, especially when the author is a writer who can add in Emerson and Thoreau.
April 2, 2018
This was a sweet story of a man's life thrown off-kilter due to a divorce and his attempt to regain his center of gravity by returning to nature and re-establishing his bond with his brother and nephews. I could relate to parts of it and enjoyed the journey.
November 12, 2025
Self absorbed man refers to women mainly as ex-wives. I could have done with more cabin info and fewer sad stories from his life. In general, the specific becomes the universal, this author fails to achieve that.
August 4, 2017
A moving and beautiful story about rural Maine, family, nature and building a new life. Poetic prose.
December 16, 2017
Had a hard time finishing it.
December 28, 2017
I found this book was really slow moving. I don’t generally give up on a book, I decided to stop reading it half way through.
November 30, 2018
I really wanted to like this book but it just didn't grab me. It's a good story and I enjoyed the nature parts but I had a hard time being interested enough to pick it up when I had put it down.
November 5, 2019
I loved this.
November 24, 2021
I want to live this way of life—but too scared. Also, like the history of Maine and the area. Interesting.
March 23, 2022
Great writing with a nice productive and homesteady feel to it. If this isn't an audiobook yet it would make a good one for road trips. It makes me want to build a cabin of my own.
April 6, 2023
Nice book, lots of insights into life and I love reading true stories in New England!
August 25, 2014
It’s part story and part encyclopedia. It's a compilation of everything related to the location and construction of a cabin in Maine, though it's by no means a how-to manual. Half of it is about the human relationships of the builders — which is my sweet spot. The other half, intertwined with the story, is about the ecology, history, and social structure of the area, sometimes in exhaustive detail. If the subject of a particular page doesn’t interest you, just skip ahead a few paragraphs or pages and read about something else. Like:
Did Elvis Presley know that when he recorded the song? Well, now you and I know it.
I must have skipped a third of the text, but the parts that engaged me were wonderful. I loved the author's boyhood trapping of muskrats in New Jersey (and what does this have to do with building a cabin in Maine? Not much.) I loved the Civil War history detailing what happened to the local Maine boys who went away to fight. I loved meeting the locals who helped with the construction — a carpenter, a dowser, an excavator — and I loved meeting a crusty local lumberman who greeted the author with a long skeptical stare and then asked, "Are you a liberal?" as if he were asking, "Are you a cockroach?"
It's about men: the author, his brother Paul, their sons, their father. Both the author and his brother go through divorces, but though he examines every other tangential aspect of the cabin-building, we learn almost nothing about the break-ups except how they affected the work. The very lack of women in the author's narrative — and I suppose, the author's mind — might indicate why the divorces took place. Or might not. I have to respect the author's discretion, though it creates a notable hole in the story.
Here's a construction detail I learned, while it twisted my stomach in a knot:
I hope I never have to use this technique, but it's good to know.
By the 1830s, Stoneham (Maine) was … a source of staves for the manufacture of wood barrels. Stoneham’s staves, the beveled pieces of wood that formed the sides of the barrels, traveled by wagon to Portland and then by schooner to Cuba and the West Indies, where they were assembled into barrels and filled with molasses and rum. The staves were temporarily assembled into barrels in Stoneham to assure their eventual watertightness, and then broken down and packaged into shooks that took up less space in shipping — in the local vernacular, the staves were “all shook up.”
Did Elvis Presley know that when he recorded the song? Well, now you and I know it.
I must have skipped a third of the text, but the parts that engaged me were wonderful. I loved the author's boyhood trapping of muskrats in New Jersey (and what does this have to do with building a cabin in Maine? Not much.) I loved the Civil War history detailing what happened to the local Maine boys who went away to fight. I loved meeting the locals who helped with the construction — a carpenter, a dowser, an excavator — and I loved meeting a crusty local lumberman who greeted the author with a long skeptical stare and then asked, "Are you a liberal?" as if he were asking, "Are you a cockroach?"
It's about men: the author, his brother Paul, their sons, their father. Both the author and his brother go through divorces, but though he examines every other tangential aspect of the cabin-building, we learn almost nothing about the break-ups except how they affected the work. The very lack of women in the author's narrative — and I suppose, the author's mind — might indicate why the divorces took place. Or might not. I have to respect the author's discretion, though it creates a notable hole in the story.
Here's a construction detail I learned, while it twisted my stomach in a knot:
Paul smacked his thumbnail hard with the hammer. It immediately turned purple and throbbed as the blood from the bruise pushed up the nail. He applied pressure on it to slow the pooling of the blood, but the pain was bad enough to make working difficult… So I proposed a solution I had learned on a construction job and had once used on myself: Piercing the thumbnail to relieve the pressure… I sterilized a tiny drill bit with the flame of a butane lighter and went to work in my operating room — the front seat of his truck. Slowly and carefully, I turned a tiny drill bit, about an eighth of an inch in diameter, back and forth with my thumb and forefinger over Paul's thumbnail to make a hole. 'You're going to know it when I touch the flesh,' I told him. 'That's okay,' he said. 'It can't be any worse than what I'm feeling right now.' The bit came through and the pressurized blood shot over the dashboard and onto the windshield. He wrapped his thumb with a handkerchief and tied it tight.
I hope I never have to use this technique, but it's good to know.
May 30, 2016
Recommended by C.J. Konnerth. C.J. and I have known each other since 3rd grade and have been the best of friends ever since (except for that time he pushed me and I fell through the ice in the pond on Orchard Hill and so I took his hat - he says I ripped the sweater off his back - soaked it in pond water and hung it on a tree to freeze).
Growing up together we built forts in the woods, slept out under the stars, built campfires, camped and hiked at his family’s property in Deposit, New York, and basically had one of those idyllic childhoods you read about in books. Now, I was Jewish, and as you may know, Jews don’t camp. C.J. and his family opened up this world for me and it was wonderful.
The last time I went camping or spent any significant time in the woods was when the Monroe Boyz (6 of us who have spent our lives together) got together after ten years of diaspora, to spend the weekend at C.J.’s property. My experience? I couldn’t breathe because of my allergies, the stench in the camper from beer farts was so intense we nearly knocked ourselves out, and the temperature went from 90 during the day to about 30 at night. Yeah, that was a lot of fucking fun. And that’s the last time I did THAT - 1985!
“cabin,” by Lou Ureneck, is about a man who grew up having a very tumultuous childhood, became a successful editor of a significant newspaper, who, when his life falls apart after a divorce decides to construct a cabin in the woods of Maine (with a lot of help from his brother and friends) to rebuild his life.
I think those who live in very rural parts of the nation will relate very much to this book. Those that live in the suburbs, but get away into nature to tame their inner wild beasts sometimes will like it, too. But, unfortunately, I’ve been away from nature for so long it took me a while to get through this book. The passages of the men measuring and building are the least interesting aspect of the work. There are certainly some things about it I found very interesting, like when Ureneck’s travels show the underbelly of life in the woods of Maine. Those parts caught my interest with its truthful creepiness. Memories from Ureneck’s childhood include one guy getting killed when he’s run over by his own tractor, and a woman who locks her husband in the basement until he can get over the bender he’s on from drinking muscle liniment he uses on his horses. Another story of a man named Earl who lost his entire family, a wife and four children in a canoe accident reveals the cruelty of living in a sometimes unforgiving landscape.
On the other side of the picture is the wonderful serenity that nature affords. “Walking an old woods trail and breathing cold air or sitting on a fallen tree trunk to watch an owl surveil the frozen woods for prey – these are talismanic experiences. Nature offers a direct and uncomplicated relationship to the world. It is free of the distorting complications of ambition, shame, disappointment or pride – all of which pollute the joy and beauty that is so freely given by nature. Here in the woods, there was no spin, and nothing was false or insincere. Is it a coincidence that truth seems in short supply in those places that are bereft of nature?”
By the time the book ends, Ureneck and his family gather for a Thanksgiving feast in the cabin and a new tradition is born . . . and Ureneck is re-born. If you spend time in the woods, you’ll certainly appreciate this book. It’s not very fast paced book, but I guess that’s a reflection of its subject.
Growing up together we built forts in the woods, slept out under the stars, built campfires, camped and hiked at his family’s property in Deposit, New York, and basically had one of those idyllic childhoods you read about in books. Now, I was Jewish, and as you may know, Jews don’t camp. C.J. and his family opened up this world for me and it was wonderful.
The last time I went camping or spent any significant time in the woods was when the Monroe Boyz (6 of us who have spent our lives together) got together after ten years of diaspora, to spend the weekend at C.J.’s property. My experience? I couldn’t breathe because of my allergies, the stench in the camper from beer farts was so intense we nearly knocked ourselves out, and the temperature went from 90 during the day to about 30 at night. Yeah, that was a lot of fucking fun. And that’s the last time I did THAT - 1985!
“cabin,” by Lou Ureneck, is about a man who grew up having a very tumultuous childhood, became a successful editor of a significant newspaper, who, when his life falls apart after a divorce decides to construct a cabin in the woods of Maine (with a lot of help from his brother and friends) to rebuild his life.
I think those who live in very rural parts of the nation will relate very much to this book. Those that live in the suburbs, but get away into nature to tame their inner wild beasts sometimes will like it, too. But, unfortunately, I’ve been away from nature for so long it took me a while to get through this book. The passages of the men measuring and building are the least interesting aspect of the work. There are certainly some things about it I found very interesting, like when Ureneck’s travels show the underbelly of life in the woods of Maine. Those parts caught my interest with its truthful creepiness. Memories from Ureneck’s childhood include one guy getting killed when he’s run over by his own tractor, and a woman who locks her husband in the basement until he can get over the bender he’s on from drinking muscle liniment he uses on his horses. Another story of a man named Earl who lost his entire family, a wife and four children in a canoe accident reveals the cruelty of living in a sometimes unforgiving landscape.
On the other side of the picture is the wonderful serenity that nature affords. “Walking an old woods trail and breathing cold air or sitting on a fallen tree trunk to watch an owl surveil the frozen woods for prey – these are talismanic experiences. Nature offers a direct and uncomplicated relationship to the world. It is free of the distorting complications of ambition, shame, disappointment or pride – all of which pollute the joy and beauty that is so freely given by nature. Here in the woods, there was no spin, and nothing was false or insincere. Is it a coincidence that truth seems in short supply in those places that are bereft of nature?”
By the time the book ends, Ureneck and his family gather for a Thanksgiving feast in the cabin and a new tradition is born . . . and Ureneck is re-born. If you spend time in the woods, you’ll certainly appreciate this book. It’s not very fast paced book, but I guess that’s a reflection of its subject.
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