Snowbank Cabin

The trapper's cabin on Snowbank Lake wasn't much to look at from the standpoint of construction and architecture, for the logs were unpeeled and roughly chinked, there was no floor and only one small window, but in the light of artistry and atmosphere, it was a dream the way it faded into the tall black spruce of its background. That cabin hadn't been built for tourists or show. If it had been, it would have been on the lake shore where people could see it, instead of back from the water's edge in a dense jungle of spruce. It was built for only one purpose: to give shelter at the end of a long day on the trap line with the temperature down to forty below.

The cabin was small even as cabins go in the north country, just big enough for a man and his equipment, a bunk, a table, a stove in the corner, pegs for clothes and packs. That was all, but it was clean and smelled of balsam from the bed, and at night, when the trees cracked with the frost and the north wind whipped the unprotected shore, it was cozy and warm.

The roof was low with the rafters far out from the eaves as though the builder had forgotten to trim them. It gave the effect of the cabin merging with its surroundings, of squatting low beneath the trees, of being as much a part of the forest floor as a moss-covered boulder or an ancient hummock cushioned with duff. Only a few spruce had been cut for logs, and with the passing years the gap that was made filled in with growth until there was no perceptible break between the spreading roof and the low-lying brances of the trees.

But there were other reasons I liked the Snowbank cabin, and one of these was the feeling it gave me of coming down to earth and getting at the real and elemental business of living. Here all sham and superfluity disappeared and I felt as Thoreau did when he said, "Drive life into a corner and reduce it to its simplest terms." This was no spot for fancy or unnecessary equipment, this was a place for moccasins, buckskin and homespun wool. Nor was this a place for fancy thoughts, for here life was simple and complete and thoughts evolved about the primitive things one had to do in the woods, not with the complicated problems of society. If there was time at the close of day, thoughts sometimes merged with the close-standing spruces and one was conscious only of a communion with them and the wilderness of which they were a part.

I liked to lie on the balsam bunk in the corner and look up at the hewn rafters, at the deer mouse nest in the corner, at the lichens and fungi of various kinds that had taken hold on the shady side. I liked to watch the hole in the corner where a red squirrel sometimes came in to look for crumbs on the table, but most of all, I liked to lie there and listen to the spruces and the way they rubbed against the walls. Somehow, it gave me a sense of security and peace and belonging, for then I too seemed to fit into the background of the cabin on Snowbank Lake.