I Wanted to Be Like Woodswoman
Anne LaBastille's book about her Adirondacks cabin and how it came to be
When I moved to North Carolina in the early 1990’s and was looking for a little house, I came across Anne LaBastille’s book Woodswoman (1978). It’s nice when you discover a book by accident. (But recommendations can be felicitous, too!)
LaBastille was devoted to convincing others to treasure our natural world and she built a strong, active following. But her books are the great allure. She doesn’t hide the realities of her life in the Adirondacks, but neither does she tarnish the fantasy of providing for oneself the comforts of home in a harsh wilderness.
I myself had built a couple of bookcases with a hand saw and a power drill, and was still young enough to imagine building my own house. I actually met a woman here who was getting the final inspection on hers. As I recall, she had worked long and hard to build her stove chimney to code.
Around that time I found and bought a house in town. I built another bookshelf and kept a large paperback book on it that I’ve now either given away or lost, about women building their own homes.
Anne LaBastille sited her cabin in a balsam forest on Black Bear Lake (actually Twitchell Lake). To protect the woods environment and her solitude she didn’t cut in a road, so her forty-five logs were delivered by boat. The main room would be 12’ by 12’ and the walls 6-1/2’ high.
Anne writes about furnishing the inside of her cabin.
[With] my chain saw [I built] rustic bookcases and little benches. … [Other furnishings were] … a glassy black Boston rocker, authentic red, black, and white Navajo rugs, a gay red cupboard, two filing cabinets under a long smooth desk top, an antique cherry dresser … hand-woven red and white Guatemalan Indian curtains [hung] on dark green painted window frames.
For the care of spirit, mind, and body, she set a pot of red geraniums on the porch along with fire extinguishers, a Brazilian hammock, a barometer, a maximum-minimum thermometer and a battery-powered radio. Later, she installed a bathtub and a water heater in her tiny basement.
My new home, the first real home of my adult life, was ready for occupancy.
Earlier I said that Woodswoman balances fantasy with reality. I want to tell you two things.
Soon after LaBastille set up housekeeping, a man docked his boat, marched up and knocked hard on her door. She had “foolishly” neglected to read the “three feet [of] legalese” in her deed covenant, and her cabin sat 12 feet too close to the lake. She had built in a clearing, not wanting to cut trees further inland. It took lots of friends, equipment and five days to move the cabin 12½ feet. But she did it.
Here’s the second thing, and this is the how-to part.
You may remember I mentioned LaBastille’s two filing cabinets under a desk. The last chapter of Woodswoman is called “Cabin versus City Life”. Anne was born in New York City, earned a doctorate in natural resources from Cornell, did consulting, filled writing assignments, and at the end of this book works for eight months at “a highly paid position with a prestigious Washington [DC] conservation organization”.
Woodswoman shows that these two aspects — persisting past roadblocks, and earning a good living — make a potential fantasy-escape author into a mentor if you read her early enough in your life.
I was a little late reading her, but every year that I lived in my little house I set out pots of red geraniums for the summer, and was very happy.
Most women build their own "houses", either by saw, hammer and nails or by blood. sweat and tears. Each produce different dwellings but by necessity are inhabited; spiritually or physically.