I love our cabin and I feel lucky to be sort of the de facto caretaker of it.
It’s been in our family for generations and remains a center of my life.
I think I was more influenced by the cabin that my siblings and cousins. Actually, I know this is true. I was always excited about getting out of the air conditioning to enjoy nature and the cabin with my dad. He was super into getting out of the city and back into the wood. I grew up in the city but he didn’t. I don’t think he even had residential HVAC until he got out of college and I’m not even sure he had air conditioning then. Dad and I got out to the cabin quite often. We always invited cousins, aunts and uncles along as well. They just weren’t as eager to get out of the air conditioning to rough in the woods. This is still the case now that dad is gone and I’m taking care of the cabin. In fact, I have recently taken my family’s reluctance to get out to the cabin. And after some thought, I decided to upgrade the cabin a bit and that included adding some modern HVAC technology. There is a wood stove for heating in the winter. But I added a ductless heat pump to try to get more attendance in the summer. Now that there’s air conditioning, I’m hoping I can coax my extended family to the cabin a bit more.