Spirit of America

Spirit of America

Thanksgiving was late this year and I feel the urge to replace the fall bouquet at the Old Vernon Cabin with something celebrating the fresh new Christmas season. The dogs and I don’t have much time on this crisp Dec morning but trail lights on the hiking sticks and dogs wearing their flashing neon collars, we start off on a mission. The early predawn is especially dark with a new moon, and at 26o, the stars glitter as they only do with the frost-filled air in the atmosphere. The ground is crunchy under my boots and the wreath I’m carrying is jingling with every step. It seems like it would be frighteningly intimidating to hike off alone into the dark frozen woods, but with three blinking dogs leading the way I feel safe and confident. I can’t actually see the dogs, but as long as there are three sets of lights moving in a reasonable radius, I can safely assume that there is nothing hiding, waiting to ambush me within that radius. The only real danger is the life-sucking cold…if I was injured and had to stop moving, things could go bad relatively quickly, but for now I am relying on the body heat of movement and the expectation of a sunrise within the hour to be a safety buffer. As we hike, rapidly, to build up body heat, I think about the cabin as I often do when I take this trek to pay it a visit. 

The cabin is a refuge from modern reality for me and somehow, maybe unfairly, it represents a simpler, closer to life, more honest time. There were three families of homesteaders who built in the late 1800’s: the Taylor Place, the Ecks Place and the Nicoll Place.  The Taylor family who settled here and built the cabin I have known as Vernon Cabin, picked a perfect location. The cabin borders tillable meadows to the south and southwest and had a perennial stream a few hundred feet to the northwest. It is surrounded by mature pines which would have been saplings replacing the cut trees used for the at the time. These pioneers hand-cut the logs for the cabin and hewed the inner sides flat, leaving the outer sides rounded. They took the time to wallpaper the interior with laths holding paper firm and installed a stove and stovepipe in a corner. There’s a front and side door, which certainly allowed good airflow in warm months and closed, would have kept the interior warm with the wood stove burning in colder months. These homesteaders undoubtedly worked long hard days during the growing season, clearing the large meadows of rocks and making long rock walls and piles from the endless basalt. There’s a lone cottonwood tree near the dam they built across the drainage leading North away from the cabin and apple trees in the meadow to the SW. They also eventually had neighbors in all directions less than a mile walk apart, right next door for a horseback ride! The Nicoll cabin to the SW still has a foundation and easily identifiable corrals and outbuildings but the Ecks Place is mostly gone now.  According to my research, these pioneers grew dry-land wheat and potatoes in a relatively welcoming climate and had abundant water. As the climate dried, they dug an extensive network of canals still easily visible and followable to the more condensed watershed on the southern higher elevation plateau, draining some upper wetlands and meadows. Eventually, survival from farming here became impractical and the locals turned to timbering and cattle. Descendants of these first homesteaders still run cattle with historically leased grazing rights granted in 1878 and used the then mostly abandoned cabin as a cattle drive stop over and camping spot into the 1950’s. Eventually, as Vernon grew, most settlers moved into town and the small settlement of Vernon cabins was abandoned to the elements. Old Vernon cabin, The Taylor Place, is the only one of this collection of cabins that still stands whole as a testament to the hard work and adaptability of these first Vernon residents. 

Why is this old cabin important to me? To me, this cabin and its present-in-spirit residents, represents what I learned and believe about what being American truly means. 

I have two early memories that are fixed permanently into my consciousness. Of course there are other things, but these two find their way to the forefront on a regular basis. My earliest of these memories is one of visiting my baby brother, who was maybe 2 at the time, getting heart surgery: I was about 3. I distinctly remember being lifted to an incredible height to look through a window at my brother in a crib, attached to tubes, way down at the bottom of a very deep cavernous room. Of course, now I know that I was very small and my brother was certainly in a regular infant recovery area, but the experience was so profound at the time that even today I can see the impossibly high window and deep room he was in. The second memory takes us back to the cabin and why it is important to me. My second completely ingrained memory is of learning about our flag in elementary school in the 1960’s, about when this old cabin was last in regular use. I remember being taught what the red, white and blue on our flag stood for: red for bravery, hardiness and bloodshed for our country, white for purity, honesty and independence and blue for perseverance and justice for all. I learned that our flag should never be disrespected, never touch the ground, never be left in the dark and never be destroyed in ways other than symbolic burning. These things remain as strong in my heart as the memory of that high window in the hospital, and it’s hard for me to see our flag flying tattered and dirty off the back of a pickup truck, flown with lettering across its face or used as a political weapon. To me, our flag represents us all as Americans, past and future, and deserves our full respect. 

The sun is beginning to rise as we arrive at the cabin, and as we walked, I collected some stray pine and piñon boughs to add to the wreath I was carrying. This cabin has always had an American flag and a bouquet of flowers at the left of the front door. As seasons change, locals refresh the flowers and replace the flag as is gets weathered. Today I am making a Christmas offering to the spirit of America represented by this cabin: perseverance, strength, honest hard work, struggle and probably some bloodshed. These homesteaders and their descendants lived their lives relatively free from outside influences and would have values including family, friends and neighbors, helping each other whenever needed and celebrating life’s successes together. Babies born, elders passing on and being buried near the cabins they homesteaded and life lived well.  To me this lone cabin standing strong against the elements is not a lonely abandoned place: it is full of reminders and memories and welcomes me each time I visit. It defines strength, honesty and steadfastness and no matter what the season or temperature, it exudes a welcoming and spiritually renewing warmth. The seasonally changing bouquets and wreaths represent to me the spirit of America, respect for the past and hope for future generations. The flag represents all of the qualities mentioned and, I think, helps protect this cabin from vandalism. Seeing the presence of a flag ought to stir something of respect in any true American. Somehow, this flag resting against the hand-hewn logs and being in the darkness each night does not bother me as the brilliant stars across the sky sprinkle down their light.

My visits to this cabin renew my faith and remind me of the impermanence of life and the importance of being present in one’s life as well as trying to leave something that matters behind as we move on. As long as I am able to hike, bike or walk, I’ll continue to care for this cabin, seasonally changing bouquets and refreshing our American flag. Hopefully someone new will continue the tradition as long as the cabin remains standing. 

Merry Christmas to everyone and here’s hoping that you are able to celebrate family and friends in a simple and non-stressful way. Here’s also hoping for the continuation of the American spirit our flag represents and that was unwaveringly ingrained in me from a young age, many years ago.