The cabin

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Someone was asking me about the cabin on my Facebook.

Gary had a heart attack 16 months ago. We were doing advanced scuba certification and were 60 feet down, when his instructor noticed blood in his mask. Gary says that he showed her the rise to the surface sign, and they did pretty rapidly. I was diving with my sister's husband, James, also a physician and we followed but made the 15 foot stops. When I got to the surface, Gary was already on the shore and I knew immediately that he'd had a heart attack. I don't know how but I also knew he was dead. I panicked and couldn't think to inflate my BC. Because we were diving in salty water, I had about 40 lbs of weight in my BC and was sinking, I was also screaming, basically drowning, my son, Jacob dived in to save my rear end. So did my sister. She and James told me Gary had passed. I felt so alone, my friend was dead. There were so many things I wished I'd told him, he had had a rough year, gone through a nasty divorce, so many health problems and he was gone.

But there was a new search and rescue guy on the shore and he would not stop doing CPR. Kevin is a hero to me, for 7 minutes, he performed CPR and he saved Gary's life. A truck took him out of the desert to meet an ambulance and from there he was driven to Life Flight and they flew him to Salt Lake City.

James, drove me to LDS Hospital. Gary healed quickly after they put the stents in his chest. After watching him for a week in the hospital, I realized that Gary was more than a family friend. I was in love with him. We married the end of October.

Well, in December we went ice skating on our 12 acres on the North Fork. One of the kids needed rescuing and Gary fell through the ice. There was a disgustingly dirty cabin on the property and the kids had been told NEVER to go into it. Well, we needed to get Gary dry and so in we went. The cabin had been abandoned ten years previously and several living critters had moved in and out, at some point. I removed my clothing, Gary removed his and then he put on my long johns and a dry pair of extra socks we had brought with. In the mean time, Miriam and Joshua got into a fight outside and Joshua ended up needing stitches...awful!!!

I got thinking about it. As much time as we spent playing up at the ranch we needed a warming hut. So we spent several evenings removing and burning the old furniture, taking stuff to the dump, bleaching and vacuuming. Then it moved to painting. Everyone loved the cabin. We had a baggie toilet and lots of wipes. The fireplace had a metal sill, so lots of hot chocolate and "soup in a cup" could be eaten. Gary refused to use the toilet...it was funny.

Then Gary had more health problems, he retired from anethesia and decided to retire. His ex had ended up with the majority of their assets and he had inherited every bit of debt. So I suggested we move into the cabin to save money. We built bunkbeds from the floor to the ceiling, five beds, remodeled the bathroom, eventually got running water and electricity. We lived there before we had those essentials, it was an adventure. The day we got running water, the children stood at the kitchen sink, water running across their fingers and squealed. There is a small loft and the ceiling height is about 4 feet. Jacob, Joseph and Caleb sleep up there. In the twin size bunkbeds are the rest of us. Gary and I share one. Yes, you heard correctly, we share a twin bunk bed!...lol. Then Miriam, Joshua, Gabriel and David have their own. So when I say, go to your room, it is pretty funny. We share the cabin with our two parrots, Davie and Drusey, our Yorkie, Harley and the odd critter needing help. The cabin is an odd shape, an elongated hexagon. I will have to draw the floor plan and take a photo of it. It is about 20 feet wide and about 30 feet long. Imagine a 12 x 20 foot rectangle with a triangle on either end. I have a photo of Joshua in his bunk.



When guests come to the cabin they love it. The kids' friends love to sleep over, they know that comes with helping out on the ranch with feeding etc.

When we got back from Ashton, after Christmas, a storage tent had collapsed under 4 feet of snow. Some friends turned up to shovel off the greenhouse and that ripped most of the new plastic on top, so we will have to redo it. In the photo you will see the collapsed tent to the right and a blue cover on the left. Last winter the snow slid off the roof and blocked the entrance, and exit, to the cabin, so this is our solution, for now. You can see a photo with the blue porch and one without.