Walden but fun

What I learned at the cabin - nice things are a conduit

During the fall, I was lucky to spend time in a beautifully modernized log cabin on 124 acres of land. My lease was ending in a city apartment where the good parts of a city were shuttered, the rent remained, and work would be fully remote into 2021. So I made a change.

The cabin was in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, just 90 minutes outside of DC. My plan was to spend the time reflecting on a turbulent year, forest bathing, and reading. And I had hopes for visitors, calling the time "Walden, but fun" in pitches to friends through summer.

I made the most of nature and the quiet - hiking, chopping wood, making fires, reading, sketching, cooking, and making real progress on what I want out of the next couple years. And the cabin hosted several friends along the way. To make a stretch of an analogy, it felt like my own personal Ferney, except I was there by choice (while Voltaire was exiled from France).

At the end of the time, friends who happened to be the first and last visitors to the cabin asked what I learned. My answer was along the lines of "it was a great excuse for people I care about to visit". And I think that's right.

Far and away the most important thing about the time at the cabin was the deepening of and investment in relationships. Even reflections in solitude are clarified after talking through them with someone.

Put another way, what I really learned was that anything nice in life is a conduit for experiences with people you care about and, importantly, care about you.

Nice things are nice, but only found fulfilling through love, learning, and joy - the same qualities that allow you to flourish if the nice things are taken away. For me, it all centers around relationships with others.

Thanks to Leah, Geoff, John Garry, Eddie, Sarah, Pat, Meg, Michael, Maren, John Gallagher, Becca, Hannah, Chris, DJ, Bridgette, Mollie, and my family for making the trip out. It was a joy to spend from a day to a few weeks together.