There is a deserted cabin that I will visit someday.

It is high in the mountains. It is near no roads, and there are no attractions to lure the hungry tourists. It is a lonely, lonely place, and that is why I will love it.

Up there, the trees -- the pines, the firs, the spruce, the aspen -- are thick as honey, and the air smells like the wet dreams of the Pine-Sol people.

The animals of this mountain are calm and relaxed, because they do not worry about the encroachments and violations of humankind. The animals are calm and relaxed, like small jazz musicians. Sometimes you may even see a bear try to snap his fingers, or you may hear a rabbit sing scat, or you may hear a quail tuning his sax. The animals are cool, like small jazzmen, but that does not mean they should perform. They cannot play worth a damn.

Why would anyone build a cabin here? There are no other homes. There is no work. There is no electricity, or water, or other modern conveniences. One cannot farm or ranch here. The animals mistreat the memory of Billie Holiday.

Why would anyone build a cabin here? Only the builder can say. But I know why I will love this deserted cabin. I will love it because it is old and alone and still has the courage to stand up day after day.

I will love it because the wood is rotten and warped and splintered and beautiful. I will love it for the rusty nails and broken glass and cobwebbed corners.

I will love it for the mornings, when the sun peers through the pines and the songbirds sing the music of their ancestors. I will love it for its long, lazy days. I will love it for the night, when the moths revel, the wolves howl, and the moon presides over all like a fat laughing monarch.

I will love it for the hot summer, when all life searches the sky for cooling rain clouds to batter tree leaves and stray wasps with beloved water. I will love it for the autumn, with its golden skies and its whispering breezes that fill your dreams with dry, crackling creekbeds. I will love it for the winter, when snow and ice clench the trees like greedy misers, and the wind makes you shiver in your blankets with a chill born of the cold and memories you can't quite remember. I will love it for the spring, because -- who wouldn't?

I will love it for all these reasons and for reasons that I can never put into words.

This is the deserted cabin that I will visit someday, high in the mountains where the roads do not go.

It is an old and broken place, but someday, I shall be an old and broken man, and we will need each other. I will not expect anyone to understand. I will expect to be called a hermit and to be laughed at. Maybe it will be true. Maybe I will deserve the laughter.

But I won't care.

It is a lonely, lonely place, but I will love it.

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