Cabin

Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman

by Patrick Hutchison

A memoir of the author’s journey from an office job to restoring a cabin in the Pacific Northwest, based on his wildly popular piece in Outside magazine.

Wit’s End isn’t just a state of mind. It’s the name of a gravel road, the address of a run-down, off-the-grid cabin, 120 shabby square feet of fixer-upper Patrick Hutchison purchased on a whim in the mossy woods of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State.

To say Hutchison didn’t know what he was getting into is no more an exaggeration than to say he’s a man with nearly zero carpentry skills. Well, used to be. You can learn a lot over six years of renovations.

Cabin is the story of those renovations, but it’s also a love story: of a place, of possibilities, and of the process of reconstruction, of seeing what could be instead of what is. It is a book for those who know what it’s like to bite off more than you can chew, or who desperately wish to.

HC