The cabin has always been called the cabin. As in The Cabin. As in there is only one and it’s a proper place. And for my family that’s true.

When Josh asks me to write a book about the cabin, I want to say: as soon as we finish the bathroom, put up new the window shades, replace the dry-rot planks on the deck, fix the toilet, and do all the other never-ending work I’d be happy to write about it; if it doesn’t burn down first (my biggest fear). Of course this isn't going to satisfy him nor is it a good plan.

Josh wants me to tell him stories about my childhood at the cabin. And he has very precise directions for this book : 265 pages, navy blue hard cover, and the same gold font on the spine used on the Harry Potter series he owns.

While not as specific, my friend Heidi made a similar suggestion when she visited. “You should write about the cabin,” she said.

I know they are both right: that the cabin is a place like no other. A place that inspires serenity and anxiety in equal measure…a place that brings out the best and worst in its owners…a place that is breathtakingly beautiful to look at and backbreaking laborious to tend to. A place that deserves to have its history recorded.

But how do you write about a part of your life that isn’t unlike your right thumb—it’s there, you can’t imagine life without it, but it doesn’t have any real drama attached to it?

Oh sure there have been some epic family fights at the cabin, some wild party days and nights and some criminal behavior—mostly in the form of underage drinking and smoking. But no one has died at the cabin. No one has dropped a kerosene lantern and turned it to ashes. No one has been killed there by a local meth addict—unlike the poor woman on a neighboring property.

But there are lots of stories I can tell Josh and these are those stories. Because memory is not the most reliable historian, other people may have stories that are different than mine. But these are my stories about the cabin I grew up at, the cabin I’ve inherited, and the cabin that will one day become Josh’s.