AUGUST 31, 2020 – As I prepared to return to the Red Cabin Saturday, my wife instructed me to get in touch with John, our reclusive next-door neighbor up here for 30 years. The top end of our drive cuts across his land, and he’d once said that with his “dirt toys,” he could regrade the incline that heavy rains have eroded.
Soon after arriving at the Red Cabin I called the number my wife had given me. I got voicemail.
“You’ve reached John,” the greeting said. “If you feel like leaving a message, go ahead. If I feel like answering it, I will. Have any kind of day you want to have.” BEEP!
Classic John: no BS. I felt like leaving a message.
When their four daughters were little, John, then a lawyer at Cargill but mainly the quintessential DIYer of all cabin projects, and Marilyn, his brilliantly activist wife, bought a place down the shore. My wife and I later acquired the small cabin right next to theirs.
In 1995, my wife and I built the Red Cabin on two lots east and adjoining Björnholm, my family’s land. We sold our old place to John and Marilyn (their cabin #2) for expansion space now that their kids were older and their dogs more numerous. The couple then bought the cabin next to that (their cabin #3), thus extending their ownership to our Red Cabin lot.
Sadly, Marilyn died, and the kids, well into adulthood with families of their own, are infrequent visitors to John’s compound. The woods between the Red Cabin and John’s cabin #3 are so dense we can’t see the unoccupied place. From a boater’s view, decades of shoreline growth have obscured all three of his cabins—including the view of his “cabin #1,” where he lives full time with his dogs. Long retired from “work,” he’s always working on major cabin projects.
Early Sunday he drove over on his “mule” (a glorified ATV with roll-bars, canopy, and cargo box), stepped up onto the back porch and knocked. I hadn’t seen him in months.
“Ready to take a ride?” he greeted me. Soon we were bounding along aboard the “mule” while John brought me up to speed on recent bear sightings and local real estate transactions. We first delivered a package that he’d accepted on behalf of an absent neighbor down the way, then to another neighbor’s steep (and nicely crowned) drive to see an example of John’s road repair skills, then through the 80-acre conservancy that a bunch of us established 30 years ago, and finally to the end of our badly eroded driveway.
John showed me what needs to be done. If I rake along each side of the troubled slope, he’ll do all the rest—with his tractor, grader, and gravel stockpile. He’ll whistle while he works, as is his habit.
Fortunately, John felt like answering my voicemail message. As I result, I was having a nice day—exactly the kind I wanted.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
