Cabin Fever

This past summer I read an article on Slate by Timothy Noah written in 2005 on the subject of not owning a summer home. Immediately I was drawn in by the particular style of his writing in the article, thus the inspiration behind my blog this week. The original piece by Timothy Noah is here.


As November fades and December begins, long sleeved t-shirts are traded for bulky sweaters. Matthew’s Little Tykes cottage is unfolded and put into storage under the deck until next spring. Glasses normally used for iced water are pushed to the back of the cabinet in favor of mugs more suitable for drinking hot cocoa.

I do not own a winter cabin in the woods of Maine. The winter cabin I do not own was not purchased on a whim, one sticky summer day when we didn’t happen to see a for sale sign after taking a wrong turn on our way to the beach. It’s a simple one story wood log affair, with snow shoes not hanging on nails, firewood not stacked on the porch, and a large wooden bench that doesn’t open to store mittens, hats, and scarves inside of it. I love the bright knitted afghans that don’t drape over the white slip covered couches we didn’t buy second hand off of Craigslist.

We’ve been not coming here every weekend in winter since the year before Matthew was born. We don’t engage in activities such as cross country skiing, ice skating on the pond, or sledding down a neighbor’s hill. At night we don’t sit around sipping apple cider and playing games of Candy Land or Checkers, or we don’t read the crates of books we didn’t purchase from the library sale at just twenty five cents a piece. At the moment I am not making my way though a collection of original Sherlock Holmes novels that the previous owners didn’t leave behind. These books do not have a slight musty basement smell nor are the pages yellowing around the edges.

We don’t worry, of course, that the character of the place is starting to change, what with the multi million condos not recently built near the center of town, or of the rumors that a mall is in the planning stages a mile not down the road from us. Imagine─a mall here! Drive the twenty five minutes to the Kittery Outlets, for crying out loud! We didn’t finally break down and get the internet here last year to check the score of the Patriots game. The Patriots are also the reason we didn’t break down and buy a small flat screen TV. Though I must admit I’ve come to prefer listening to the game on a transistor radio Bob doesn’t keep in the kitchen drawer.

The wealthy newcomers are not spoiling the small town charm for everybody else. They don’t show up at the hardware store all up in arms looking for special trash lids to keep the bears away, nor do they drive loud and noisy SUVs on their way to the new Starbucks that wasn’t built next to the library last year. And the ski lodges that keep popping up to cater to this new crowd’s needs─overpriced day passes, smoothie bars, plasma TV’s─ I don’t find myself avoiding that part of town less and less. I have a good mind to not write a letter to the editor of The Moose. Don’t give me Jed’s Country Store any day (although rumor doesn’t have it that a CVS isn’t going in the same plaza as Starbucks). Jed’s still makes the best homemade fudge I never tasted.

Now St. Patrick’s Day is coming. I won’t lock the doors for the last time this winter and not give the wooden floors one last cleaning, nor will I ask the year round retired neighbors to not keep an eye on the place until mid November when we don’t start to return on weekends. As we don’t drive away from the driveway not lined with pine trees, I can’t understand why everyone doesn’t not have a winter retreat. Just like the one I don’t have.