I did a bit of grumbling to myself about this, but not as much as I would have had I not spent the longest night of my life in an unheated "rustic" cabin in the Green Mountains of Vermont on Saturday.
My two sons and I arrived at Merck Forest and Farm Center around 4:00 on Saturday afternoon and prepared to hike the 1/2 mile or so to our cabin. As soon as I stepped out of the car after the drive from Northampton, I sensed I was in trouble because I was cold and the thermometer said it was 20 degrees. I knew there was nowhere for the temperature to go but down.
We piled our stuff on a sled and slipped on our backpacks and trudged to the cabins, where we met the rest of our party. Once we got settled, it was time to prepare dinner and soon enough, we were playing cards in our cabins by candle light and the light of one lantern.
I have limited experience with cabins. I stayed in cabins a few times as a young boy scout and during a grade-wide camping trip in sixth grade, but that's about it. And staying in the cabins at Merck, I wasn't reminded of those times so much as I was reminded of the cabins I'd seen in movies like The Great Escape and Stalag 17. The cabin we stayed in make those cabins look like state rooms on the QE 2. I couldn't shake this growing feeling that a cabin in the middle of the woods in the middle of winter wasn't where I wanted to be, yet there was nothing I could do about it. I didn't realize, however, how my feeling of uneasiness was impacting my mood until I picked up the notebook in the cabin that was used as a guestbook. As I opened it to read by candle light the comments left by previous visitors, I expected to read someone's desperate last words: "It's 3:00 am and the temperature is below zero. We're almost out of wood, but with my broken leg, I don't think we can make it to safety. Tell my wife I love her."
Of course, the notebook contained nothing of the sort, only records of happy visits and promises to return.
As it grew darker, we settled in for the night. I fell asleep around 9:30 and slept for about an hour. That would prove to be the longest stretch of sleep I'd get that night.
I woke up because I was cold and had to go to the bathroom. One of those problems was easily fixed; the other was not.
When I got back inside the cabin after answering nature's call, I checked on the wood stove and saw that the fire wasn't going as well as it should have been. I poked it and added some more wood, but that didn't work and it was the beginning of a frustrating and exhausting routine that I would keep up all night--trying to get the fire going. I wasn't very successful. It turns out that somehow a valve had closed, so that the fire wasn't able to get enough air. It wouldn't be roaring again until the next morning.
I couldn't sleep, worrying about the lack of heat and my kids. Both of them woke up at one point and complained about the cold, but for the most part, they were able to sleep through the night. I finally fell asleep at 3:30,but Owen woke me up at 4 because he had to go to the bathroom. After that, I lay awake waiting for daylight, counting the holes in the walls I could see as the sun came up.
When we finally got home, neither Sam nor Owen said anything about the cold. Owen talked about all the animal tracks he saw, like the one he claimed was a bison track but to me looked like an LL Bean bootprint. Sam mentioned that he was glad to back at home, where he had a thermostat to rely on for heat.
I couldn't agree more.
Outside the cabin on Sunday morning.
The cabins' interior.
Enter at your own peril.
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