Lou and Paul/Courtesy: Lou Ureneck

The construction of the cabin unfolds over the course of a year, and as it passes through its many stages, the chapters in this book include a few asides. Digging holes for the foundation is an excuse to explore the glacial history of the region. Collecting logs for the siding allows for a history lesson about life among the Algonquin and Abenaki before the area’s forests were cleared to become farm and pasture land. Sometimes these digressions help to characterize the land upon which the cabin is being built, but too often they tend to drag. Parts of the book could also use some reorganizing. Readers are likely to find that it is the personal story being told that resonates most strongly.
     A memoir about, say, redoing a kitchen to stave off retirement age boredom doesn’t sound quite as appealing. But the lure of a cabin in the New England forest ensures that readers will be enchanted by the prospect of inhabiting such a space. Ureneck’s evocations of what it is like to come upon an unsuspecting bull moose at the edge of a pond or to observe the soft tones of the icy Maine landscape in wintertime palpably bring to mind the aspects that are most sacred in nature. And if he throws in an account of designing a septic system, that’s just another item on the checklist toward making the woods his own.