My Log Cabin 1985

“The summer after I finished school I set off into the mountains of North Carolina to build a log cabin, armed with a few books, and hand tools, but no experience or skills. I set up my tent and expected it to take six weeks to build. Six months later I still hadn’t finished the chimney or started the roof. But this is what it looked like on a misty November morning a few years later.

I lived here for about eight years, and owned it for about fifteen years after I built it in 1976 with local fieldstone and oak logs I cut, peeled and notched on the site, working alone with hand tools. It had no plumbing, I carried water from a nearby spring, and I heated it in winter with about half a cord of wood a week which I cut and burned in the open fireplace. Eventually I moved into Asheville and had to sell it, but it was a large part of my life, and I miss it more with each passing year.”