A small cabin, purchased off Craigslist and tucked in Washington State's Cascade Mountains, becomes a life-changer for Patrick Hutchison, who amusingly details a rather impulsive, woodland adventure in his first memoir, Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman.
While his contemporaries pursued advanced degrees, careers, and starting families, Hutchison was unsure of what he wanted out of life. His dreams of becoming a writer were slow going. Having worked a host of random jobs, he'd landed somewhat steady employment as a copywriter in Seattle. However, he felt stuck in corporate life, suffering a "quarter-life crisis" and itching to find meaning.
One night, while scrolling the Internet, he became inspired by a picture of a 10x12-foot cabin nestled in a forest: "The cabin begged for someone to cozy up inside, light a fire, take a slug of whiskey, and let the world drift away, all for the price of a used Hyundai. They were asking $7,500." The name of the mountain town, "Wit's End," sealed the deal.
Hutchison's "sexy-cool cabin-fix-it-guy dream" was set in motion. Over the course of 28 chapters, Hutchinson comically details every step of his journey with a cabin that was "charming in a dystopian sort of way." While maintaining his day job, he and a band of his equally adventurous friends escaped regularly to the mountains, intending to spruce up the isolated, shabby cabin that had not "so much as a light switch."
Hutchison and his party-boy crew share good times drinking beer, cooking steaks, and enjoying BB gun target practice. But when it comes to rebuilding the cabin--beyond chopping wood and learning the "power of power tools"--they display a complete lack of experience. Even when offered advice, they balk at assistance. What ensues is a comedy of errors where headstrong, learn-things-the-hard-way-Hutchison is drawn down a winding path that ultimately leads to personal enlightenment.
Readers will become immersed in Hutchison's down-to-earth quest to "plant a flag of responsibility, to show others or maybe just prove to myself that I was doing more with my life than just sitting at a desk churning out marketing emails." And the best part is readers won't have to rough it in an outhouse or suffer mosquito bites in order to experience the great fun of Hutchison's grand adventure. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines
Shelf Talker: A fun, adventurous memoir about how sprucing up a cabin in the mountains of Washington State brought fulfillment to a restless young copywriter.