Cabin by Lou Ureneck

 

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