The Cabin

     Consternation.  It's so much easier to not change directions.  Life on a straight line till it peters out.  One day the idea of selling the cabin seems wonderful.  Close that door with a thank you, it's been wonderful and move on.  See what new lies down the road.  Other days it feels a terror. A 'why in the world would I want to do that?'.   Hell, some of my blood is in the wood.  Thousands of hours have been spent sawing, hammering and filling the space.  There's a lot of love within those walls.
     Truth is, it was my baby.  My family was dragged along for the ride.  Kind of like our first visit to California back in the early '90s.  I got this bee in my bonnet (an appropriate phrase) to see the concrete stairway where Laurel and Hardy's "The Music Box' was filmed. Their only academy award winner and a classic if you like that kind of thing.
     It took us the better part of an afternoon finding the location.  A car full of grumbling in the Silver Lake district of LA.  Once there we found a torn up hillside of rubble.  It was gone as a stairway but remained as piles of chunked concrete and dirt.  No California gold to be seen.  You could hear the air come out of my sails all the way to Dodger Stadium.  Pssssssssss.
     Fortunately my sharp thirteen year old daughter said, "Why don't you grab a chunk, Dad?" And I did. Called it my piece of the Berlin Wall of comedy.
     The point is, it was my quest and I was dragging along three others who were way less enthusiastic.  And that was only for a single afternoon, not years.
     These days it's pretty much me and me alone who travels north to the cabin on Deadman Lake.  There are those who won't be dragged and those who would but can't.  The few who do come up are exactly that, few.
     Perhaps it's time for a new me.  But it ain't easy.