I got back from a few weeks in America
about two months ago and I am just now getting around to writing this. My cousin got married in January in San
Francisco so they had a reception at our cabin in central Washington for their
friends and family up there. I also got
to see my nephew, Jaxon, for the first time since he was a month old. So here are a bunch of random pictures:
My mom has always wanted to go to the
Lavender Festival in Sequim, Washington, out on the peninsula. Mom, her friend Yvonne and her granddaughter
Zoey and I went out there. It is not the
manliest festival I have ever been to, but it was fun.
Just to explain my cabin: when I say
‘cabin’ I assume people have one of two images pop into their heads. The first is a manufactured log cabin that is
pretty much a house with a few trees nearby; the other is a small hunting shack
that could follow apart at any moment.
Well, it is neither of those. The
story, if I am remembering it correctly, is that during WWII my great grandpa
Vic bought scrap metal and then resold it to the government. He heard that a sawmill in central Washington
was going out of business. He offered to
buy the metal bits but was told the whole company was for sale. So he bought it, like you do.
The mill was started in 1906 (I think) and
a town sprung up around it (for my British friends imagine Bourneville in the
mountains, and on a smaller scale).
Basically, Gandpa Vic bought a town.
When great grandpa bought it there were houses for families, bunkhouses
for single male workers, a store/company office, a one-room school house next
door to the school master’s house, a butcher’s shop, a mill pond for floating
logs, a railroad running through the town and, of course, all the buildings and
machinery used for the mill. The mill
burnt down a few times, each time being rebuilt but smaller, until the last
time it burnt, sometime in the 80’s.
As the different families moved away my
family gave the empty cabins to other family members and family friends. Some of the cabins, like my aunt’s, are
composites of different cabins and bunkhouses, moved across the camp and
spliced onto a different cabin. There is
a river that runs on side of the property.
Every Spring when the snow melts the river bed fills with water and new
channels are carved. Once the water
recedes the deeper channels still run with water and we pick the best to use as
a swimming hole. We then make a small
damn to make the water a bit deeper (usually the deepest part is around one and
a half to two feet deep); we call it the ‘crik and it I the centre of the Cabin
Creek social scene.
On a good Summer day our schedule can go
like this (and did, while I was there): wake up; have breakfast either at your
own or at grandma’s or Jenny and Koko’s (Jenny is my aunt and Koko is her
husband, who used to own a fantastic restaurant in San Francisco before
retiring); maybe do a few chores or drive to town to go to Safeway for
groceries; then get together and walk to the ‘crik; Once at the ‘crik we sit on
chairs in the water, drinking beer, splashing ourselves with water to stay cool
(or just dunk ourselves…remember the water is from the mountains and is
take-your-breath-away cold), eating peanuts and talking. This goes on until the sun disappears behind
the trees (this summer that was around 5.30pm).
This year we found a much deeper swimming
hole about five minutes up stream from the one we usually use. It was really nice to be able to actually
swim in the water, as opposed to sitting in knee deep water.
