Review: Cabin by Patrick Hutchison

Patrick Hutchison. Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2024. 

The excerpt from the Wall Street Journal brought this book to my attention. 

Hutchison grew up camping on weekends with his family and friends. He liked being outdoors. He also knew that he wanted to be a writer. After a series of other kinds of jobs, he landed a job as a copywriter. The pay and benefits were good, but it was not stimulating work for him. On a lark he searched the Internet for "cabin" to see what came up knowing that whatever was out there was outside his price range. Not so. A cabin in a remote area $7,500. He called the owner, visited, borrowed money from Mom, and bought the place. 

He has little extra money and a cabin that is in need of significant repairs. He owns no tools and is not handy. He is completely unprepared for everything that comes next. Hutchison tells a great story about how he and his friends learned basic carpentry skills and how the cabin became far more than a DIY project. The cabin became a place of pleasant work, creative problem solving, a retreat, and a focal point for everyone to step away from the noise of the modern world. No cell phone signal, no wi-fi, no indoor plumbing, no electricity, etc. Just friends getting together to be together, visiting, working, hiking. Hutchison learned that he enjoyed going to the cabin by himself for the true solitude. 

He writes. "The cabin, with its bucket plumbing system and ice-powered refrigeration and total lack of Wi-Fi or cell signals and laptops, was like a vacuum among the rest of the twenty-first century. In that space, the mind wandered, relaxed, repositioned itself. I read once that people typically check their phones once every ten minutes. The lack of everything at Wit's End gave room for our minds to explore spaces that took more than ten minutes to get to." 

Hutchison eventually arrived at the conclusion that he needed to change vocations. He and a friend left their writing jobs to focus on carpentry work as their full time work. They joined the ranks of men and women who learned that "the office" did not bring the satisfaction that they needed from work. 

A great book. Hope Patrick blesses us with another one.