Two blog posts I read this week had me reminiscing about our cabin in the woods. I’m referring to Wynne Leon and Brian Hannon who have their own blogs as well as writing for The Heart of the Matter. Here’s Brian’s post about a cabin on Writing From the Heart with Brian. Wynne’s blog is called Surprised By Joy and that is a link to her post about a recent vacation in a cabin.

Both of their cabin stories hit a soft spot in my heart. The photo above is the cabin my mom and dad built before I was born. My dad designed it and mom and dad used their own two hands to bring the idea to life. The large-paned windows came from my grandmother’s shops in Marysville, Wash. The cabin was located in Robe Valley on the Stilliguamish River.

I say “was located,” because years ago my brother and I decided to tear it down. It had been repeatedly broken into, trashed and even lit on fire. It was a hazard. All that remains is the beautiful property and the fireplace.

I have many memories from my cabin when I was very young. There used to be a sandy beach that I loved on the edge of the river. As you can see the river has changed — it’s all rocky.

We fished, rode the rapids on air mattresses with friends and jumped off the giant rock into the river. We used our cabin in the summer. There was no running water, no electricity, but it did have an outhouse. I remember fishing early in the morning and late in the afternoons. Mom would fry trout on the wood burning stove. Outside the cabin was a pump for water.

We spent my early days with grandma and other relatives. It was a gathering place. Then as we got a little older, my brother and I got to bring friends to the cabin for weekends.

There was a certain smell of evergreens at Robe along with a musty tinge inside the cabin. It had one room with steep stairs to a loft and the balcony overlooking the river.

My grandma was an artist and painted a picture of the cabin as well as one of me playing in the sand.

You can see the giant rock we’d jump off of across the river.

Here’s the sandy beach plus the large glass windows in this painting.

The story I heard from Mom was that her father bought a mile of riverfront property during the Great Depression. He envisioned it as a place where family would gather for generations. He gave parcels of land to his three children, plus to other relatives. When they first started using Robe, the family stayed in “The Lodge” which was formerly a post office for the town of Robe. Robe was once a silver mining town with a railroad. When my grandfather bought property there in the Great Depression nothing of the town was left, except the abandoned post office building.The road into Robe is straight and was the railroad line. I’d like to research history of Robe. I see a project in my future to find out more.

My extended family on my Mom’s side holds an annual family reunion at Robe each summer. I’ve gone a few times, but mostly I don’t go. I honestly don’t know the ever growing family except for my aunt and first cousins.

On my mom’s birthday two years ago, my aunt and I drove up to Robe to spread her ashes in a place my mom loved. I wrote about that HERE.

What special memory do you have from childhood of a family place you’d visit or spend vacation?