Speaker 1: When it comes to a great deal, Virgin Mobile doesn't
Speaker 1: play around introducing our new symplan price locked at fifteen
Speaker 1: euro month for life with unlimited data, calls and texts
Speaker 1: and ninety nine percent coverage. Switch today at Virginmedia dot
Speaker 1: Ie Virgin Media It's playtime.
Speaker 2: TCNZ supply fifteen europer month locked in while a Virgin
Speaker 2: Mobile customer twelve month contract include the limited data, standard
Speaker 2: calls and texts. All Irish networks off for ends. February eighteenth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six. See Virgin Media dot e.
Speaker 3: Hi There twenty twenty four. Ali here to say this
Speaker 3: is a cozy encore of an episode that is a
Speaker 3: pure delight, such a treat. I love it, one of
Speaker 3: my faves, and it's woodsy, it's chill, it's cozy. We
Speaker 3: recorded it a few years back, but I've added in
Speaker 3: some updates. Okay, enjoy.
Speaker 4: Oh hey, it's that friend who can't sit at a
Speaker 4: diner table without making modular sculptures with the half and
Speaker 4: half creamers. Can't not do it. Ali warret back with
Speaker 4: another episode of nomologies. Okay, but before we hit the road,
Speaker 4: let's make a pit stop at thank Youville to say
Speaker 4: thanks to all the folks supporting this podcast on Patreon.
Speaker 4: I literally could not make the show without you. Thank
Speaker 4: you to all the folks wearing ologies merch on your
Speaker 4: actual physical bodies and talking up the show to your
Speaker 4: fam while you make pies. Thank you to everyone who,
Speaker 4: for zero dollars rates and subscribes and leaves the reviews
Speaker 4: for me to read, because you know I do like
Speaker 4: a lady creep, and then I read you one aloud,
Speaker 4: such as this fresh one from Crazy Dog Mom twelve
Speaker 4: twenty seven, who compared me to a gently excited Richard Simmons,
Speaker 4: but for science instead of high kicks, and said that
Speaker 4: I'll teach you about all sorts of things, especially things
Speaker 4: that you didn't think you'd find interesting. Here's looking at you, ticks,
Speaker 4: they say. Also, thank you fabulous with four a's for
Speaker 4: the review. You have my permission to cry in the
Speaker 4: car now on the way to work. Okay, cabinology, who
Speaker 4: howboy howdy? Let me say right now, I love cabins.
Speaker 4: I think I'm obsessed with them, like I look for
Speaker 4: cheap deal to rent them. I have dreams about them.
Speaker 4: I pinterest them. I don't pinterest anything. I covet them.
Speaker 4: I admire them, and in fact, this past week I
Speaker 4: found a photo in my phone from five years ago.
Speaker 4: I took of one of this guest's books without even
Speaker 4: knowing who he was or that I would meet him.
Speaker 4: I follow many hashtag cabin porn instagrams, which has everything
Speaker 4: to do with cabins, literally nothing to do with naked people.
Speaker 4: I see pictures of cabins that I want to hug
Speaker 4: too hard, like something cute that you'd squeeze to the
Speaker 4: point of peril. So let's dive into a subject I
Speaker 4: could not be more excited about. Okay, So the word
Speaker 4: cabin comes from the Latin for hut and ps cabana
Speaker 4: is related. How did I never realize that?
Speaker 1: Duh?
Speaker 5: Wow?
Speaker 4: Okay. So cabinology is a relatively new but established term.
Speaker 4: It was coined in relation to this ologist's work and career.
Speaker 4: I first became aware of this ology blissfully enough actually,
Speaker 4: while in a lodge in the wilds of Montana. It
Speaker 4: was the summer of twenty seventeen. I was surrounded by
Speaker 4: my huge, weird family that I love. In side note,
Speaker 4: my dad is one of eleven kids and so the
Speaker 4: Ward family reunions the roughly half the size of like
Speaker 4: a summer music festival theraugh party, and I was drinking
Speaker 4: and evening margarita out of a chipped coffee mug and
Speaker 4: the sounds of my elders crushing each other in a
Speaker 4: pinacle game. Two tables over. I thumbed through this outdoorsy magazine.
Speaker 4: I saw the byline of this very guest touning himself
Speaker 4: as a cabinologist. It was like hot damn. I vowed
Speaker 4: to myself, I will find this cabinologist when I finally
Speaker 4: launched that ologies podcast in my future, and I will
Speaker 4: interview him. And so indeed I did, and you were
Speaker 4: about to listen to it. The stuff dreams are made of.
Speaker 4: So I made my way to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where his
Speaker 4: headquarters of his architecture from art. It's Sala, which he
Speaker 4: said means special room in Italian, and it also stands
Speaker 4: for the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. So I
Speaker 4: went up some breezy stairs to his crisp downtown office
Speaker 4: filled with light wood and clean lines, high ceilings, a
Speaker 4: lot of airy white, and we cabin chatted. So we
Speaker 4: cover what is a cabin? When does a cabin just
Speaker 4: become a house? And why are they so cozy? And
Speaker 4: what makes cabins horror flick fodder? How does a summer
Speaker 4: cabin visit different than a winter one? How do you
Speaker 4: build one? What about those weird franking cabins built out
Speaker 4: of old stuff from a bunch of different buildings. How
Speaker 4: big should the windows be and which way should they face?
Speaker 4: How do you even design a cabin? And in all
Speaker 4: caps bold italics, why are cabins the best? So come
Speaker 4: watch the sunset, drag chair to the fire pit, pour
Speaker 4: a mug of whatever's handy, and breathe In an episode
Speaker 4: with architect, author expert and a warm, bright lantern of
Speaker 4: a person, cabinologist Dale Mulfinger, and I might make you
Speaker 4: scooch into these just a little bit more. Yeah, these
Speaker 4: are like stage mics, so they're like, get on up
Speaker 4: in it. I know you are a cabinologist.
Speaker 5: I am a cabinologist.
Speaker 6: It was anointed upon me by an external person, actually
Speaker 6: a radio personality, who, upon hearing that I was researching
Speaker 6: cabins with students at the university, he announced on the
Speaker 6: radio that I must be a cabinologist. So I consider
Speaker 6: myself having an instantaneous PhD.
Speaker 4: How long ago is that? Oh?
Speaker 5: That was probably about fifteen years ago.
Speaker 4: Were you like, well, I'm changing my business cards.
Speaker 5: That's it. Yeah.
Speaker 6: I adopted it immediately. I've been using it since, and
Speaker 6: I wrote a book called cabin after it. And I
Speaker 6: always credit this person who you know, who gave me
Speaker 6: that name. I didn't invent it for myself.
Speaker 4: Quick aside, credit goes to Minnesota garage logic radio host
Speaker 4: Joe Sachery for dropping that sword so so many years ago. Now,
Speaker 4: as for Dale's bibliography, it's extensive. So between designing cabins,
Speaker 4: he's also managed to churn out a bunch of books,
Speaker 4: including The Cabin Inspiration for a Classic American Getaway, The
Speaker 4: Getaway Home, Family Cabin Inspiration for Camps, Cottages, and Cabins Cabinology,
Speaker 4: a Handbook to your Private Hideaway. So in his author
Speaker 4: bio he is credited as a cabinologist. The dude has
Speaker 4: earned it. You've been a cabinologist for you know, at
Speaker 4: least fifteen years. But how long have you been a
Speaker 4: cabinologist in practice, not just entitle.
Speaker 6: Well, probably about thirty years ago. As a part of
Speaker 6: my architectural practice, which we designed residential homes, I was
Speaker 6: asked to do my first cabin design. And I realized
Speaker 6: then that I didn't grow up. Although I grew up
Speaker 6: in cabin world, I'm Minnesota and Wisconsin, I didn't grow
Speaker 6: up with a cabin of my family background, so I
Speaker 6: had not spent much time there. And as I might
Speaker 6: often do, when I get asked to design something I'm
Speaker 6: not used to, I try and do some research. And
Speaker 6: in this instance, I thought, well, it'd be fun to
Speaker 6: do some research with my students at the university. So
Speaker 6: I hustled a few students over to do a summer class,
Speaker 6: and the essence of the summer class was, well, let's
Speaker 6: go out into cabin land and every student and in
Speaker 6: myself included, would have to document ten cabins, and out
Speaker 6: of that ten cabins, we would say which cabin feels
Speaker 6: more cabin like than any of the rest and why,
Speaker 6: and so as I was telling them, search for the
Speaker 6: quintessential cabin. So we did that, and we I think
Speaker 6: learned a little bit along that process. And a good
Speaker 6: friend of mine, who had was editor of a local magazine, said, well,
Speaker 6: if you find anything interesting in this process, why don't
Speaker 6: you write an article in my magazine? So I wrote
Speaker 6: my first article and then I wrote my second article,
Speaker 6: in third and fourth and ultimately seventy two articles.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, over twelve years.
Speaker 6: Yeah, always researching, and so these were little brief vignettes
Speaker 6: about some cabin that interested me for some reason. So
Speaker 6: vertical log We're all familiar with horizontal log cabins, but
Speaker 6: all of a sudden there I noticed some that I
Speaker 6: have vertical logs, which turns out that it's an old
Speaker 6: French trappers method. So coming into Minnesota, in the northern
Speaker 6: part of the country, in northern Wisconsin, you have French
Speaker 6: trappers who made quick cabins, and the vertical log technique
Speaker 6: allowed them essentially single handedly to make a simple shelter.
Speaker 4: Okay, so side note. I looked these up and apparently
Speaker 4: vertical log cabins are also easier to build because you
Speaker 4: can use a bunch of ten foot tall logs up
Speaker 4: and down instead of having to find and drag perfectly
Speaker 4: straight twenty to forty foot logs to lay horizontally. Now,
Speaker 4: in addition to vertical logs just being more slimming than
Speaker 4: horizontal logs, they were also tested by time. So before
Speaker 4: the French fur trappers traped about harvesting beavers and such,
Speaker 4: indigenous folks like the Eric tribes and the Chinook peoples
Speaker 4: had been building vertical plank houses out of Cedar and
Speaker 4: the Pacific Northwest for thousands of years.
Speaker 6: They knew what was up and that tradition sustained itself
Speaker 6: for a while. So, you know, finding out why for
Speaker 6: vertical log who did it that? You know, all those
Speaker 6: things are fun. It's fun to see somebody turn a
Speaker 6: building that you wouldn't expect to be a cabin into
Speaker 6: a cabin, a church or a small church or a
Speaker 6: school or whatever, a box car, train car, a caboose,
Speaker 6: you know. So that so a lot of cabins are
Speaker 6: inventive as to somebody's got a crazy idea and they say, oh,
Speaker 6: that'd be fun as a cabin, and so they just
Speaker 6: try it. Metal containers, buildings.
Speaker 4: So Dale explained two things that separate cabins from houses
Speaker 4: or one. Cabins typically don't have garages, and the master
Speaker 4: bedrooms don't usually have own suite bathrooms. So rather than
Speaker 4: hide away in your big bedroom using your toilet away
Speaker 4: from the rest of the family, all the bedrooms tend
Speaker 4: to branch off a main living space, so people can
Speaker 4: spend this time in nature bonding together and being lovingly
Speaker 4: in each other's business.
Speaker 5: So privacy is not a particularly big issue when it.
Speaker 4: Can tell me a little bit about square footage. Can
Speaker 4: you have a two thousand square foot cabin? Yes, okay,
Speaker 4: you can't. Sure, So what makes it a cabin?
Speaker 6: I think what makes it a cabin are some of
Speaker 6: its attributes, how it flows, whether it captures views or
Speaker 6: things that are important to the land that you're connected to.
Speaker 6: But yes, you can have a larger structure that is
Speaker 6: a cabin, maybe because you're gathering a lot of people there.
Speaker 6: So my last book that I wrote was called The
Speaker 6: Family Cabin, and it probably has projects in it that
Speaker 6: range from four hundred square feet to twenty five hundred
Speaker 6: square feet practically. And some cabins are created for extended family.
Speaker 6: So I have one for two sisters. They're each married,
Speaker 6: so they have husbands. They each have four kids. So
Speaker 6: now we're talking about whatever that is twelve people, Graham
Speaker 6: and Grandpa show up, there's fourteen. You can't do that
Speaker 6: in a four hundred square foot structure. So you need
Speaker 6: more space, more place for the activities of those youth
Speaker 6: as they're growing and changing and they're eventually bringing the
Speaker 6: boy scout trip with them or whatever. So yes, cabins
Speaker 6: can be of quite a variety of sizes. At some point,
Speaker 6: when they get too large, we might call them a lodge.
Speaker 4: Oh, I thought about that.
Speaker 5: The family lodge.
Speaker 4: I wonder if there's a logology out there there?
Speaker 5: You got it, somebody's going to have to step into
Speaker 5: the void.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 4: Side note, I found one record for logology from nineteen
Speaker 4: sixty one, and I wanted to tell you about it.
Speaker 4: It's from the University of Montana, when the student union
Speaker 4: gathering center was called the Lodge and logology was deemed
Speaker 4: by students the most popular course in sport on campus.
Speaker 4: One student said the most popular phases of the logology
Speaker 4: course are smoking one a one and advanced time killing
Speaker 4: two to one, which I suppose nowadays, I guess would
Speaker 4: be upgraded to introduction to vaping, perhaps extra credit fixing
Speaker 4: the cultural and climatological mess we have inherited to get
Speaker 4: you dark. Anyway, enough of lodges, Where are cabins now?
Speaker 4: In terms of the culture of cabins in this part
Speaker 4: of the country. Because there are more lakes, are there
Speaker 4: more cabins? Is this the best place to be a cabinologist.
Speaker 6: I think this is one of the premier places to
Speaker 6: be a cabinologist, because we really really do have an
Speaker 6: incredible cabin culture here, particularly in the Twin Cities, and
Speaker 6: we go out to the Lakes of Minnesota and or
Speaker 6: the Lakes of Wisconsin, because although we may be better
Speaker 6: known for our lakes, Wisconsin actually has quite a numberment
Speaker 6: as well, so we probably have more cabin users per
Speaker 6: capita than any other part of the country. And part
Speaker 6: of that is that when you're on the coast, for instance,
Speaker 6: where there certainly are getaway places, often when you have
Speaker 6: a place on the coast, it might be referred to
Speaker 6: as a cottage, seaside cottage rather than a cabin.
Speaker 4: Cabins plus Etymoli, I'm dying right now. If you can't
Speaker 4: hear this in my voice. I was like starry eyed,
Speaker 4: floating in a cloud. This entire interview. Dale Mulfinger is
Speaker 4: like the Beyonce of cabin designers.
Speaker 6: There are some names that that cabin competes with, and
Speaker 6: if you go into the Adirondacks or in Upper New England,
Speaker 6: you will come across the name camp which is commonly
Speaker 6: used for what we weave here in the midwest end
Speaker 6: or further west might refer to as a cabin. And
Speaker 6: the name camp shows up again down in the Bayos
Speaker 6: of Louisiana. I'm not quite sure of the origins of that,
Speaker 6: other than I think a lot of cabins in there
Speaker 6: in the early days in New England were created as
Speaker 6: a part of an ensemble of many structures, and we're
Speaker 6: part of what we might think of as a camp environment.
Speaker 4: Oh look, maybe there's a main lodge and then some outbuildings.
Speaker 6: There are the camps, right, And also the name cottage
Speaker 6: shows up. So you can take the same structure and
Speaker 6: slide it. First out of min Minesota, it might be
Speaker 6: called a cabin in Minnesota, but head for the east
Speaker 6: and get to Michigan, it might be called a cottage particular,
Speaker 6: particularly if it's along like Michigan. And then if you
Speaker 6: hit the adiron decks, it'll be a camp. And then
Speaker 6: if you slide it all the way to the coast
Speaker 6: of Maine, it'll be back to being a cottage again.
Speaker 4: And what are some of your favorite styles of cabin
Speaker 4: A frame, log, cabin, modern.
Speaker 5: All of the above, all of the above. I really am.
Speaker 6: Fascinated by the variety so no one singular thing stands out.
Speaker 6: I'm as fascinated with an a frame or a log cabin,
Speaker 6: or a very contemporary structure or one made out of containers. Yeah,
Speaker 6: they all interest me, and I love designing all of them.
Speaker 6: So it's not just a matter of recording what others
Speaker 6: have done, but also being faced with a challenge of
Speaker 6: design and trying to trying to determine with my clients
Speaker 6: what seems most applicable for them in their situation.
Speaker 4: So he likes to freestyle as well as harkback to
Speaker 4: traditional designs of your now speaking of history, Dale grew
Speaker 4: up on a dairy farm, and according to a twenty
Speaker 4: thirteen article in the Star Tribune, he had said about
Speaker 4: dairy farming that when he was a kid, in his
Speaker 4: blue ribbon yearling died, he knew that he didn't want
Speaker 4: to be a farmer, but he was great at drafting,
Speaker 4: So he enrolled in the Institute of Technology at the
Speaker 4: University of Minnesota. In a time when you had to
Speaker 4: be really good at rulers and pencils and precision. There
Speaker 4: was no command z there's no one new buttons and
Speaker 4: getting to your design career, when did you start an architecture.
Speaker 4: When did you know that you were an architect?
Speaker 6: I went into the university wondering what I might be doing.
Speaker 6: But I was had excelled in drafting in high school
Speaker 6: and so started into architecture at the university and gradually
Speaker 6: got to enjoy it more and more and more and
Speaker 6: did quite well by the time I was exiting school,
Speaker 6: not so well when I started. And then I worked
Speaker 6: for the first day Gate actually in urban design, so
Speaker 6: nothing to do with small little buildings, but rather city
Speaker 6: planning and large scale structures. And then probably in about
Speaker 6: ten years out into my working career, I started gradually
Speaker 6: to work on smaller things. When I got to houses,
Speaker 6: I really enjoyed being invited to dinner after you were
Speaker 6: all done. So out of that came a firm which
Speaker 6: is now Sala and an initial partner Sarah Susenka, who
Speaker 6: wrote a book called The Not So Big House, which
Speaker 6: made her kind of famous, and so we had a
Speaker 6: pretty swift start as a career in her and I
Speaker 6: and creating a firm that does houses. And out of
Speaker 6: houses came neither the possibility of doing a second home
Speaker 6: for someone, which then led.
Speaker 5: Me to Kevin World.
Speaker 4: Okay, so quick side note. I was wondering how many
Speaker 4: people have a second home though it's so hard to
Speaker 4: get just one, So I looked it up and according
Speaker 4: to twenty seventeen stats, nine point three million Americans live
Speaker 4: in a house that has a second home, so a
Speaker 4: very slimp percentage. But I did some digging and one
Speaker 4: figure estimated that folks in the state of Minnesota are
Speaker 4: three times more likely to own a cabin or a
Speaker 4: lake house than the rest of Americans. But the average
Speaker 4: age of cabin ownership is sixty eight, and no one's
Speaker 4: quite sure what's going to happen. Are millennials going to
Speaker 4: take over the cabins? Are they going to sell them?
Speaker 4: Who knows? But Minnesota is the land of ten thousand lakes.
Speaker 4: That's a lot of shoreline to cozy up to. So
Speaker 4: Dale's in the right place. But what about the rest
Speaker 4: of the country or world. Are there places in the
Speaker 4: country where it's more common to have at a house
Speaker 4: that you would go enjoy this seasons in? Is there
Speaker 4: something maybe about the cold weather that you really appreciate
Speaker 4: the snow, I really appreciate this spring or summer.
Speaker 6: Well, I think people who appreciate being outdoors in the snow,
Speaker 6: whether you're cross country skiing, downhold skiing or ice skating
Speaker 6: or whatever. Those people enjoy their cabin year round, or
Speaker 6: if they just enjoy sitting by the fire reading a
Speaker 6: book when the snow is falling outside. Obviously, if you
Speaker 6: have a cabin in the Rocky Mountains, it might be
Speaker 6: because you really enjoy skiing and therefore you've chosen a
Speaker 6: location next to big sky, you know, or something like that.
Speaker 6: Here in the Midwest, people seem to vary. Either they
Speaker 6: are truly just one season cabin goers, or they actually
Speaker 6: enjoy going year round as I do.
Speaker 5: I love the solitude of.
Speaker 6: Winter and some cross country skiing, even though it might
Speaker 6: be minus twenty degrees out to it.
Speaker 4: I know, I don't know how you guys. I literally
Speaker 4: don't know how you survive as a California And I'm
Speaker 4: like the amount of layers if I could grow a beard, though,
Speaker 4: I think I would get that's helpful.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a lot. I'm gonna tell you, do.
Speaker 4: You have a favorite cabin that you've designed. I know
Speaker 4: it's got to be so hard, but something that's really
Speaker 4: memorable or was a challenge the next one, the next one.
Speaker 5: I think, one that I did up.
Speaker 6: On Madeline Island where people wanted a unique retreat and
Speaker 6: one of the couples that I want something quite unique
Speaker 6: for me, and I designed one hundred foot long wall
Speaker 6: with a portal in the middle, and after you pass
Speaker 6: through the wall, you step into a glass pavilion and
Speaker 6: look out over Lake Superior, and then if you want
Speaker 6: to go into a private space, you walk down inside
Speaker 6: the wall to a blue box where you have a
Speaker 6: private sleeping area. It's a very unconventional structure and it
Speaker 6: probably still stands out in my repertoire of work as
Speaker 6: a very unique structure. And it's all about the notion
Speaker 6: of a retreat, having a phenomenal place of a retreat
Speaker 6: that leaves the other world behind. And I think that's
Speaker 6: one of the things that when you say cabin be
Speaker 6: a your round house. One of the challenges of that
Speaker 6: is cabins often work best when they are the other world.
Speaker 6: That when they're not the every day they're.
Speaker 4: Kind of like the mistress of the house world.
Speaker 6: I guess so, yes, sweetie, it's a sweet piece.
Speaker 4: And does a cavin have to have a fireplace?
Speaker 6: No, it doesn't, And in fact, woodstoves can be an
Speaker 6: economical way of having fire without say having the cost
Speaker 6: of a fireplace, and woodstoves are very effective in terms
Speaker 6: of really heating space. Do they have to have fire? No,
Speaker 6: I mean a cain can We did a We've done
Speaker 6: cabins without any fire in them, and it helps with
Speaker 6: the insurance.
Speaker 5: Rates if you don't.
Speaker 4: And what do you think about you know, in the
Speaker 4: last few years the tiny house movements and tinier spaces.
Speaker 4: Where do you feel like cabins fit in with that
Speaker 4: or is it a completely different thing?
Speaker 6: Well, there's an overlap between tiny houses and cabins. I
Speaker 6: think the tiny house movement is a fleeting movement and
Speaker 6: it'll disappear as fast as it arrived because I think
Speaker 6: resale on it is challenging so much like dome homes
Speaker 6: and other fads that we jump into every once in
Speaker 6: a while. I think this one will leave, but I
Speaker 6: think cabins will remain in having a tiny structure via
Speaker 6: cabin will still be out there. So I and I
Speaker 6: think tiny homes as far as as actually being one's
Speaker 6: home and a living in at thirty six, three hundred
Speaker 6: and sixty five days a year, you know, it'll be
Speaker 6: questionable whether people do that in the long haul, or
Speaker 6: whether it'll just be for two years of their life
Speaker 6: or a segment of their life and then they'll move on.
Speaker 4: To whatever I will say. In researching tiny home living,
Speaker 4: a little abode tends to cost between twenty to thirty
Speaker 4: thousand dollars on average to build, and in looking this up,
Speaker 4: oh my god, I stumbled upon an article about a
Speaker 4: woman who built a one hundred and ninety six square
Speaker 4: foot tiny house out of an old five hundred dollars RV,
Speaker 4: some upcycled wood palettes. Very resourceful. But then she adopted
Speaker 4: a great Dane, a one hundred and fifty pound great Dane,
Speaker 4: to live in it with her. Oh, then she got
Speaker 4: married and then they had a kid, And I had
Speaker 4: to stop reading in the middle of this article and
Speaker 4: just pace the floor and do like a meditation, because woman,
Speaker 4: what So sometimes life throws your curveballs in the form
Speaker 4: of quadruple the number of people living in a space
Speaker 4: the size of a kitchen. Also, I asked Dale about
Speaker 4: this Danish concept that's all about cozy living all year round.
Speaker 4: But I had to ask my Swedish friend Simon Yetch
Speaker 4: aka the Gismology episode Gismologist aka the host of shitty robots. Also,
Speaker 4: she just turned her Tesla Model three into a truck
Speaker 4: and named it Truckla. It's glorious. I had to ask
Speaker 4: her how to pronounce this word that looks like higgey.
Speaker 4: She helped me.
Speaker 7: Out, so it's pronounced hi get hey get.
Speaker 4: I know that you have talked about Cavin's and huga,
Speaker 4: and I would love to know a little bit about
Speaker 4: that concept and how you think it relates to the
Speaker 4: feeling of a cabin, not just the architecture, but the
Speaker 4: emotions of being in that kind of retreat.
Speaker 6: Well, I think huga comes from comes from Scandinavia, and
Speaker 6: it's been common in Scandinavia to live in small space.
Speaker 6: They don't really need luxurious houses in Scandinavia haven't felt
Speaker 6: they've needed it, so they have defined ways of using
Speaker 6: space that are effective. And therefore the notion of huga
Speaker 6: overlaps with the notion of cabins as we understand them.
Speaker 6: So how you use that space and how you not
Speaker 6: say over decorated, over you fill it with too many things?
Speaker 6: I think there is some common overlap. I must confess
Speaker 6: that I'm rather new to the term who got and
Speaker 6: so I've been been playing with it, if you will,
Speaker 6: and doing a little writing about it, but I'm probably
Speaker 6: not as well aversed in it as others may be
Speaker 6: in this country.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I came across it pretty recently myself. I have
Speaker 4: a friend who I'm who married a Norwegian woman and
Speaker 4: so their instagram is just rife with who got in
Speaker 4: the winter, and so I'm like learning about what it is,
Speaker 4: but just shout out here to the Lapidopterology episodes, Butterfly
Speaker 4: expert Phil Taurus and his charming and kind new bride
Speaker 4: Cilia Danielson just get all up in their instagrams for
Speaker 4: some breezy summer living, some really high quality cozy winterness.
Speaker 4: They got it on lock. Okay, speaking of how do
Speaker 4: you feel that social media culture or instagram culture has
Speaker 4: maybe changed the way we appreciate these remote buildings or
Speaker 4: structures or retreats.
Speaker 6: Well, one big difference is that we now can rent
Speaker 6: structures everywhere, and part of that is made accessible through
Speaker 6: social media. So we can now not just have say,
Speaker 6: our own cabin, but we can rent anybody on everybody
Speaker 6: else's cabin almost anywhere in the world. And I think
Speaker 6: that's really changed. And then we can immediately share that
Speaker 6: experience with an innumerable number of people. So, you know,
Speaker 6: those are probably the big things that have changed through
Speaker 6: the media as we understand it today.
Speaker 4: Are you okay? Are you okay with that, with that
Speaker 4: with cabin sharing? And are you sure?
Speaker 5: Sure? Absolutely?
Speaker 6: In fact, I think one of the phenomena about cabins
Speaker 6: is that we feel much more comfortable with sharing our
Speaker 6: cabin with others than we say to our home, so
Speaker 6: we're less likely to offer up our home as a
Speaker 6: place for strangers to stay in, whereas cabins traditionally were
Speaker 6: places where maybe we weren't a lot, we weren't accommodating strangers,
Speaker 6: but we were accommodating Uncle Harry and cousin Beth and
Speaker 6: the colleague we work with, you know, so we've often
Speaker 6: shared our cabin with diverse people.
Speaker 4: Do you have any memories of being in a cabin
Speaker 4: that are some of your favorites?
Speaker 6: Well, I think no falling and sitting quietly reading a
Speaker 6: book with a fire crackling and my wife's good cooking
Speaker 6: smells in the background is probably one of my best experiences.
Speaker 6: Or looking out the window and seeing the five or
Speaker 6: six deer that are reading the corn just set out there.
Speaker 6: You know those are some of the best. And I
Speaker 6: think then I've had an opportunity to gather larger family
Speaker 6: groups together, not necessarily in my cabin because my cabin
Speaker 6: is a bit too small for that, but through the
Speaker 6: borrowing of friends cabins or renting a friend's cabin, I've
Speaker 6: been able to gather say, sixteen of my wife's family
Speaker 6: members together. That made for a special occasion.
Speaker 4: Okay, quick aside, I made you a list of things
Speaker 4: you can do in a cabin. You can play dominoes.
Speaker 4: You can read a book. You can gossip. You can
Speaker 4: ask older people important questions about their lives. You can
Speaker 4: carve spoons. You can learn to needle point. You can
Speaker 4: roast marshmallows. You can write of all the things you
Speaker 4: want to do in your life. You can make your
Speaker 4: friends all tell stories about how they met each other.
Speaker 4: You can enjoy a poem. You can make a pie.
Speaker 4: You can sip coffee out of one of those metal
Speaker 4: enamel mugs that they sell in camping stores. You could
Speaker 4: write a short story. You could learn to fry a fish.
Speaker 4: You could nap. You can throw your phone into the lake.
Speaker 4: You can quit your job. You can disappear from the internet.
Speaker 4: You can live off the land like that Walden throw guy.
Speaker 4: Hope you don't get arrested. You could wish on a
Speaker 4: shooting star. I also like playing Rummy Cube. Okay, now,
Speaker 4: let's say you want a taste of that cabin life,
Speaker 4: but maybe a little closer. You could fashion a garbin,
Speaker 4: which sounds like a portmanteau for garbage and bin, but
Speaker 4: it's actually a cabin you fashion in the rafters above
Speaker 4: a garage. A garbin. Now, what about a straight up
Speaker 4: cabin in your backyard?
Speaker 3: Is that?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 6: I've certainly recorded cabins that occur in the backyard of
Speaker 6: somebody's home. Now, they might think of that cabin as
Speaker 6: a man cave to game to or her writing, you know,
Speaker 6: place that she can retreat to for writing. We call
Speaker 6: that a scriptorium.
Speaker 4: Oh, I've heard it, called it she shed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she said so.
Speaker 6: I think that's not uncommon, and I've recorded a few
Speaker 6: of those in books I've done and in articles I've written.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess a cabin is kind of like our
Speaker 4: childhood version of a fort, but realized and with.
Speaker 6: Plumbing, yes, well, you know, and some not with plumbing
Speaker 6: or the outhouse or whatever nearby. But yeah, it might
Speaker 6: have some modicum of plumbing in it, some some way
Speaker 6: to heat it up, which may be our little fort
Speaker 6: when we were kidneying either of those.
Speaker 4: Did you have a treehouse or a fort when you
Speaker 4: were growing up.
Speaker 6: I grew up in a farm, and a fort might
Speaker 6: be a few bales of hay thrown together with a
Speaker 6: tarp over it, or something quite temporal. And there were
Speaker 6: lots of places to go build and in the forest nearby,
Speaker 6: and so yes, I had all kinds of inventions of
Speaker 6: space that were getaways to hide out so I wouldn't
Speaker 6: have to do the chores.
Speaker 4: I wonder if that's something about the mindset of a
Speaker 4: cabin or a shed or anything that we get out
Speaker 4: of our normal space to go to a new space.
Speaker 4: Do you think that makes people more creative? Do you
Speaker 4: think it freezes us up emotionally?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 6: I think when these environments are small enough, we imagine
Speaker 6: that maybe we can have a hand in making them,
Speaker 6: because it's not a super task to do that. I'm
Speaker 6: always amazed as I drive to my cabin and I
Speaker 6: pull up behind a pickup truck loaded with things that
Speaker 6: are going to in someone's cabin, whether it's a door
Speaker 6: they just pulled out of the church remodeling, or and
Speaker 6: I'm often tailgating and my wife is complaining that I'm
Speaker 6: too close to the back of the pickup truck because
Speaker 6: I'm trying to figure out how the heck are they
Speaker 6: going to put that thing in their cabin. So I
Speaker 6: think cabin's to have some freedom of personal expression attached
Speaker 6: to them. That makes them special places. So you're inclined
Speaker 6: in a cabin to say, cut the notches of the
Speaker 6: height of your children as they're growing, you know, to
Speaker 6: score that in the in the doorframe.
Speaker 5: And you wouldn't do that in your house.
Speaker 6: You know, that would be that would be defacing your
Speaker 6: house in a way you wouldn't accept.
Speaker 5: And a cabin you're willing to do that.
Speaker 4: See, cabins are casual. They are the taking off your
Speaker 4: pants as soon as you walk in the door vibe
Speaker 4: of the architecture world. They allow us to dream of
Speaker 4: a life with fewer restrictions. Perhaps this is because there
Speaker 4: were fewer judging neighbors in the middle of the woods.
Speaker 4: Maybe I don't know. Do you ever dream about cabins?
Speaker 5: No, I don't.
Speaker 6: I don't dream very much about cabins. No, it's not
Speaker 6: not a pervasive dream.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was just wondering, I wonder if I have
Speaker 4: this dream. Okay, tell me if you've ever had this
Speaker 4: where you're in your house or you're in some house
Speaker 4: that you live in or whatever, and then you realize
Speaker 4: that there's a door or a cabinet that you've never
Speaker 4: noticed before, and then there's another room or another area
Speaker 4: that you've never realized that you've had. Have you ever
Speaker 4: had that dream?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 6: But I think we should talk about your dream for
Speaker 6: a while because it's gonna tell a lot about you.
Speaker 6: You know, there's this place you're trying to escape to,
Speaker 6: but you're just trying to escape to one of my cabins.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 4: I just I just really want a cabin Okay, I
Speaker 4: look this up. Virtually every decoding dream website seems to
Speaker 4: just plagiarize directly off each other verbatim. But apparently this
Speaker 4: is really really common dream. It means that we're discovering
Speaker 4: new abilities and strengths within ourselves. Okay, so let's say
Speaker 4: this is not flimplam and has some kind of psychological merit.
Speaker 4: I just decided to stare out the window for a
Speaker 4: minute and think, Okay, what part of me am I
Speaker 4: neglecting truly, Like, let's get honest with myself. And the
Speaker 4: main thing that came to mind was just general grooming.
Speaker 4: But I think I also had these dreams more when
Speaker 4: I was working from home. It's just living in a
Speaker 4: studio apartment, which isn't quite like Great Dane's spouse and
Speaker 4: baby level cramped, but it's a little tight.
Speaker 3: Also, twenty twenty four, Alley from the Future to say,
Speaker 3: since this episode came out, two things have happened. One,
Speaker 3: I have built a shed in my yard. Well, I
Speaker 3: didn't build it myself, if I'm being honest, I paid
Speaker 3: someone to assemble it for me, and I hang out
Speaker 3: in it and I write in it. I love it.
Speaker 3: It smells like the woods, it has spiders in it.
Speaker 3: It's my dream come true. Oh, speaking of dreams, we
Speaker 3: have a two part episode now that has come out
Speaker 3: since this aired on dreams from one of the world's
Speaker 3: most foremost expert onneerrologist, doctor g William Domhoff, and we
Speaker 3: will link that in the show notes. Also a treat any.
Speaker 4: Usal dreams, Windows to your gross soul. Now, speaking of windows,
Speaker 4: when you are designing a cabin, do you decide to
Speaker 4: face the windows a certain way or is it different
Speaker 4: for every oh where do the windows go e?
Speaker 6: It bends on the view, depends on the sunlight. So
Speaker 6: if you told me, boy, I really like waking up
Speaker 6: in the morning with sun coming in where I'm going
Speaker 6: to have my morning coffee, Well that's the east and
Speaker 6: or you know, or there are trees over here that
Speaker 6: are going to block you know, this kind of sun
Speaker 6: or whatever. So, yes, windows, window locations are extremely important.
Speaker 6: And here in the Midwest, we are putting our cabins
Speaker 6: quite often at lake on lakes, and I have to
Speaker 6: remind my clients that lakes are a horizontal view on
Speaker 6: a vertical view. So we see a lot of people
Speaker 6: building cabins with very tall windows, climbing up under the
Speaker 6: roof for what to see more and more and more sky,
Speaker 6: not more and more and more lakes. So horizontally banding
Speaker 6: windows here is great.
Speaker 5: You don't know.
Speaker 6: If I'm in the Rocky Mountains, their views are often
Speaker 6: very vertical, looking up trying to catch the mountain peak,
Speaker 6: and then then a different kind of architecture evolves out
Speaker 6: of it.
Speaker 4: Huh, that's so brilliant. That's so interesting to know anything culture,
Speaker 4: any cabins that you've loved in movies or TV, or
Speaker 4: maybe like a cabin in the woods is always a
Speaker 4: scene for a horror setting.
Speaker 8: Oh it's a cabin in the woods.
Speaker 4: We need to go hot over there.
Speaker 8: Oh man, I'm not going in there. Reminds me of
Speaker 8: a horror movie. I want saw what a horrible the
Speaker 8: one with the cabin in the woods.
Speaker 4: How do you feel about how we see cabins.
Speaker 6: Well, oftentimes I think cabins are connected to some of
Speaker 6: the horror films. You know that they're out in that
Speaker 6: dark wilderness of heavy forest and or they're next to
Speaker 6: a lake and some somebody drowns or whatever. So they
Speaker 6: are often attached to that genre of movie in a way.
Speaker 6: There's certainly exceptions to that, where the cabin is seen
Speaker 6: as a tranquil place of escape.
Speaker 5: I don't think I.
Speaker 6: Have any singular cabin or the singular movie that jumps
Speaker 6: out at me. And you know, on Golden Pond, yas
Speaker 6: going to be what I mentioned.
Speaker 4: Okay, So on Golden Pond is a classic nineteen eighty
Speaker 4: one Academy Award darling starring Peter Fonda, Katherine Hepburn and
Speaker 4: Jane Fonda, and involves a lot of sun shimmer on
Speaker 4: a lake, a lot of soft focus filters, some difficult
Speaker 4: family relationships or some emotional reflection, some struggle. There's some trout,
Speaker 4: some growth. Also Katherine Hepburn wailing in ecstasy multiple times
Speaker 4: about loonsd the Lund and welcoming us back. I get
Speaker 4: a cat. Wombs are tits, which, yes, is an egregious
Speaker 4: ornithology pun. What about myths about cabins? What about something
Speaker 4: people misunderstand about cabins that.
Speaker 6: You'd well, I think they they think they're not going
Speaker 6: to be high maintenance.
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 6: They do require levels of maintenance depending on what you
Speaker 6: want to be there when you show up. They're not
Speaker 6: inexpensive to make, even though you might think Welsh and
Speaker 6: something primitive andhouldn't I be able to find labors in
Speaker 6: remote places that are going to work for dirt cheap.
Speaker 5: No, you know, almost.
Speaker 6: Anywhere today you're going to pay pretty much the same
Speaker 6: price for a decent window, and you're probably going to
Speaker 6: pay as much per hour for a craftsman in the
Speaker 6: woods as you would for a craftsman in the metropolitan area.
Speaker 6: So yeah, those are probably a few of the myths.
Speaker 4: And is there an easiest type of cabin to make?
Speaker 4: Is it a log cabin? Is it a shed type
Speaker 4: of cabin. If someone is like, I'm desperate for a cabin,
Speaker 4: maybe don't have all the resources, what would you say,
Speaker 4: is like an entry level setup.
Speaker 6: Creating a cabin that only has four corners rather than
Speaker 6: twenty is a good start. Log construction is a possibility,
Speaker 6: and certainly homeowners have educated themselves on how to do
Speaker 6: log construction and done it for themselves. It is a
Speaker 6: lot lot of unique attributes that people don't think about.
Speaker 6: It looks more attainable than it is, and there's a
Speaker 6: lot to learn about the nature of what happens to
Speaker 6: a tree after you cut it down, and how it shrinks,
Speaker 6: shrinks in diameter, not in length, And so you set
Speaker 6: log upon log upon log, they're all shrinking in diameter,
Speaker 6: which means your wall is starting to drop and it
Speaker 6: will crush the top of the door, the top of
Speaker 6: the window if you haven't designed it to take it.
Speaker 6: So there's a lot of nuance to log that people
Speaker 6: don't fully understand. You know, a little kid might have
Speaker 6: a Lincoln log set and think, well, that's a really
Speaker 6: easy way to build, but it's probably much more complicated
Speaker 6: than just a standard frame wall made at a two.
Speaker 5: By four US.
Speaker 4: Did you ever see that PBS? Well, it was on PBS,
Speaker 4: But did you ever see a Dale were Nicky's cabin
Speaker 4: in the woods?
Speaker 2: It was good to be back in the wilderness again,
Speaker 2: where everything seems at peace.
Speaker 5: I was alone, just me and the animals.
Speaker 4: Oh man, Oh side note, Oops, I meant Dick Pernicky,
Speaker 4: not Dale were Niki? Who's Dale or Nikki? I don't
Speaker 4: even know where what the hell ward? Also, thanks to
Speaker 4: Jared Sleepers very on brand gift of this DVD set
Speaker 4: a few years ago, I own this in its entirety
Speaker 4: and it's been a dream of mine to host like
Speaker 4: a screening party with a mandatory flannel dress code. Friends
Speaker 4: all just hanging out, maybe silently whittling as we watch.
Speaker 4: But if you need some Dick Pernicky asap, a quick
Speaker 4: Google will bring you to a YouTube clip of Alone
Speaker 4: in the Wilderness, which, by the way, has eleven million views.
Speaker 4: So apparently we are just united in our lust for solitude.
Speaker 4: He's just filming himself on like an eight millimeters or
Speaker 4: six just hand hewing and just oh my god, how
Speaker 4: is he doing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's to actually do logs and do them well
Speaker 6: so they're gonna last. Is a skill that you don't
Speaker 6: get overnight. And I certainly know plenty of people who
Speaker 6: have done their own log cabin. But I've also known
Speaker 6: that a lot of people who might have done their
Speaker 6: own log cabin that had a lot of problems with
Speaker 6: it later because they didn't really understand some of the nuances.
Speaker 6: And on the other hand, in many of the areas
Speaker 6: of cabin world, there are log vendors who will do
Speaker 6: these things for you, and they will build the log
Speaker 6: cabin at their what they call their yard, which is
Speaker 6: where they work in their place, and they dismantled the
Speaker 6: cabin and number the logs as they're dismantling them, and
Speaker 6: then they reassemble it on your.
Speaker 4: Site like a puzzle exactly.
Speaker 6: So it may take them five months to make the
Speaker 6: cabin in their yard, but then only three days to
Speaker 6: reassemble it on your site. Oh wow, And they'll bring
Speaker 6: it all there in a big truck.
Speaker 4: And is there a cabin that you have on like
Speaker 4: a lifelong goal list that you really want to see
Speaker 4: some cabin on a cliff and Iceland or.
Speaker 6: Now not a singular cabin. I mean I love the
Speaker 6: cabin experience. One of the fun things about being a
Speaker 6: cabinologist or someone who designs cabins is I haven't get
Speaker 6: to stay in the cabins that I've created for others.
Speaker 5: So it's pretty easy to ask.
Speaker 6: A cabin owner for whom we've done a cabin to say,
Speaker 6: can I use this some weekend when you're not there?
Speaker 6: And I prefer the weekends when they're not there because
Speaker 6: I love bringing my wife along and she's one of
Speaker 6: my toughest critics. Of course, the spouses will be and
Speaker 6: you know, but I like waking up in the morning
Speaker 6: and saying, how does this thing really work? Is the
Speaker 6: sun coming in where I thought it was going to
Speaker 6: come in? And you know, how does it feel with
Speaker 6: a wind outside? So that's been a nice opportunity in
Speaker 6: this line of work.
Speaker 4: Oh man lesson design things you want to use for yourself.
Speaker 4: It's sneaky and I like it. And can I ask
Speaker 4: you some a couple of Patroon questions?
Speaker 6: Sure?
Speaker 4: Okay, great, great, okay, But before we get to your
Speaker 4: Patreon submitted questions, we'll take a break and chat about
Speaker 4: some spots I really like. But for that the sponsors
Speaker 4: make it possible to donate a portion of the ad
Speaker 4: proceeds to a charity of theologists choosing. And this week
Speaker 4: Dale would like the episode to support the Clarence Wiginton
Speaker 4: Fund at the American Institute of Architects of Minnesota.
Speaker 3: According to their donation website, quote, the Clarence Wigginton Minority
Speaker 3: Architectural Scholarship recognizes the extraordinary professional and civic accomplishments of
Speaker 3: the first African American municipal architect in the United States.
Speaker 3: He was also the first licensed African American architect in Minnesota. Quote. Now,
Speaker 3: this program provides an ongoing partial twition scholarship to students
Speaker 3: who identify as Black, Indigenous, or a person of color,
Speaker 3: who seek to pursue a professional education architecture, and who
Speaker 3: hold promise for succeeding in such a career pursuit, they say.
Speaker 4: And Dale adds that it's really well administered and it
Speaker 4: assigns mentors to each recipient. So thank you Dale for that.
Speaker 4: And there's a link to find out more about that organization.
Speaker 4: In the show notes that's the Clarence Wigginton Fund at
Speaker 4: the AIA of Minnesota. Okay, so some ads from sponsors
Speaker 4: apologies when.
Speaker 1: It comes to a great deal. Virgin Mobile doesn't play
Speaker 1: around introducing our new symplan price locked at fifteen euro
Speaker 1: month for life with unlimited data, calls and texts and
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent coverage. Switch today at Virgin Media dot
Speaker 1: Ie Virgin Media it's playtime.
Speaker 2: Tcenz supply fifteen euro per month locked in while a
Speaker 2: Virgin Mobile customer twelve month contract include the limited data,
Speaker 2: standard calls and texts. All Irish Networks offer ends February eighteenth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six. See Virgin Media dote.
Speaker 4: Okay, so back to your questions.
Speaker 3: Okay, so for this first question, think about thick socks
Speaker 3: looking out the window. It's snow shuffling down from the
Speaker 3: gray morning sky, but your coffee is still warm and
Speaker 3: it has an absolutely shameful amount of creamer in it.
Speaker 3: A fresh log is on the fire. Maybe you smell
Speaker 3: pancakes being cooked by someone who's not.
Speaker 4: You, but you're under one of those heavy quilts that
Speaker 4: your aunt made in the late eighties out of old
Speaker 4: denim when she was going through divorce. Okay, ginger Nut
Speaker 4: wants to know why do wood cabins seem like the
Speaker 4: coziest thing. Ever, what is it about wood that makes
Speaker 4: us feel cozy?
Speaker 6: Well, I think wood. It has variety built into it.
Speaker 6: It also feels like it's connecting us to the forest
Speaker 6: that might be right around it, around us, so it
Speaker 6: might be a local wood. And it has a nice
Speaker 6: auditory characteristic, So it's a softening. It softens the sounds,
Speaker 6: whether the sound is crackling fire or the chatter, the
Speaker 6: quiet chatter of the friend dere with. And it's something
Speaker 6: pretty to look at, so it creates a nice background
Speaker 6: to a warm, welcoming environment.
Speaker 4: Let's repeat that because it's like peak huga cabinology vibes.
Speaker 6: So it's a softening. It softens the sounds, whether the
Speaker 6: sound is crackling fire or the chatter, the quiet chatter
Speaker 6: of the friend dere with.
Speaker 4: Cydney bound wants to know to maker still utilize techniques
Speaker 4: at homesteaders used back in the day.
Speaker 6: Somewhat Yes, obviously, the log building was common to homesteaders.
Speaker 6: I have a log cabin on my property that I
Speaker 6: use as a guest cabin, and I'm quite certain that
Speaker 6: its original life was that of a settler's cabin. I
Speaker 6: don't think it actually was originally on my property.
Speaker 5: I think it was put on you know.
Speaker 6: Was one of the things about logs is you can
Speaker 6: dismantle a log cabin and reassemble in another location, and
Speaker 6: I think that happened with a lot of settler, early
Speaker 6: settler cabins. So in this area where there was a
Speaker 6: preponderance of wood available within arms reach practically of where
Speaker 6: settlers were coming in, they often built log structures. And
Speaker 6: some of our earliest cabins that we associate with getting
Speaker 6: away to kind of places were the recreation or actually
Speaker 6: the reuse of those early settler cabins.
Speaker 4: Oh, I didn't realize that, Okay aside here because for
Speaker 4: all of the history of North American settlers, there's also
Speaker 4: the history of indigenous displacement and resource exhaustion and architecture
Speaker 4: borrowed from Native customs. So that narrative is a huge
Speaker 4: part of American history and can't be ignored. I was
Speaker 4: doing a little more research. I just found a book
Speaker 4: through the University of the Tennessee Press called Native American
Speaker 4: Log Cabins in the Southeast, which was published no joke
Speaker 4: last week. I looked at the publication date and I
Speaker 4: was like June twenty nineteen one, so good timing there,
Speaker 4: and it tracks the origins of Native American cabins and
Speaker 4: building traditions. They look at the Cherokee Creek, Choctaw, and
Speaker 4: Katamwa People's.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty four Ali here to say, we also have
Speaker 3: some great episodes that delve more into that history, like
Speaker 3: the Bisonology episode and the Indigenous Queisanology episode about Native foods,
Speaker 3: and a recent episode that we did on genocide. Also,
Speaker 3: this book, Native American log Cabins in the Southeast looks
Speaker 3: at elements of this architecture introduced by people of African
Speaker 3: heritage who are enslaved in America, and the Smithsonian National
Speaker 3: Museum of African American History and Culture has actually relocated
Speaker 3: plantation cabins that were used as quarters for enslaved people
Speaker 3: and put them on exhibit as a reminder of our
Speaker 3: countries not too distant history. Speaking of horrors, where do
Speaker 3: cabins factor in the apocalypse?
Speaker 4: Mike Wanakawski wants to know what's the biggest obstacle of
Speaker 4: going off the grid if one wanted to do that.
Speaker 5: Water.
Speaker 6: What's your access to water if you're off gridded you're
Speaker 6: going to be willing to have a say, a hand
Speaker 6: well or somehow treat water that you're getting out of
Speaker 6: a lake or stream. So that's probably one of the
Speaker 6: bigger challenge a toiletry. You know, what are you going
Speaker 6: to do about a bathroom or you're going to accept
Speaker 6: having an ounhouse and then bathing. A lot of people
Speaker 6: who are off grid in other words, they don't have
Speaker 6: power to run a well. Therefore they're not going to
Speaker 6: have a bath through them in the same sense, and
Speaker 6: they will often use a sauna as a form of bathing.
Speaker 4: Ps. If you're in Minnesota or around a finished person,
Speaker 4: don't you dare say sauna? Just say saana. Just say
Speaker 4: it with me, sauna. You're going to feel like a fraud,
Speaker 4: but you will avoid a lecture or correction. Also, many
Speaker 4: high fives to my sweet and gentle Innovation Nation producer
Speaker 4: Stephanie HAMANNGO for teaching me about how much fins dig
Speaker 4: saunas winter summer. You just go sweat it out in
Speaker 4: this wooden box. You beat yourself with a birch branch,
Speaker 4: jump in a lake. I'm so into it anyway.
Speaker 5: So they all have.
Speaker 6: A modicum of water available somehow they bring it with
Speaker 6: them and that may be enough to take a steam,
Speaker 6: you know, a steam sona. And that's so the sauna
Speaker 6: is really their form of bathing and cleanliness.
Speaker 4: And are there a lot of those up here in
Speaker 4: this yes?
Speaker 6: Yes, yeah, there are a fair number off grade. We
Speaker 6: did one just recently, an off grade Kevin and it
Speaker 6: has a sona and it has an out house and
Speaker 6: it has a hand pump.
Speaker 4: Well, oh what a dream. And Jen Anathys wants to
Speaker 4: know what eco friendly, upcycled or non traditional materials other
Speaker 4: than one can cabins be made out of? And I
Speaker 4: guess we did actually kind of cover this because we
Speaker 4: talked about anything from containers.
Speaker 6: Right, it could be made out of many many different things,
Speaker 6: from straw bales to and again, these are probably best
Speaker 6: if they're materials that are readily available to that region
Speaker 6: or area. So containers aren't the best product if you're
Speaker 6: building say high in a mountain cliff in Montana, because
Speaker 6: they're heavy and you have to have a big crane
Speaker 6: to lift them into place. But you can buy them
Speaker 6: dirt cheap, you know, for a thousand dollars, you have
Speaker 6: a twenty by four, twenty by eight foot by eight
Speaker 6: foot container. Well, to get it on your property might
Speaker 6: cost you another fifty thousand hour so and then you
Speaker 6: need a welding torch to open up a window in it.
Speaker 4: Right, good point, Hey, hi, I look this up for you,
Speaker 4: and you can buy a used forty foot shipping container
Speaker 4: for less than the value of my two thousand and
Speaker 4: seven prius, which, if you must now, according to Kelly Bluebook,
Speaker 4: is less than five thousand dollars. So soup up that
Speaker 4: container house maybe twenty thousand dollars later you can live
Speaker 4: in it. Just don't adopt a Great Dane, or if
Speaker 4: you do, just don't tell me about it, because I
Speaker 4: can't handle that stress right now. And Carolyn Butler wants
Speaker 4: to know. Do you believe that cabins should a be
Speaker 4: a minimalist escape from the modern world, or be that
Speaker 4: they can include most, if not all, of the features
Speaker 4: of a modern home in a more compact form, so minimalist.
Speaker 6: Or I think they can be either, and really has
Speaker 6: to do with your proclivity for what you want there,
Speaker 6: what you need there, what you feel comfortable with. They
Speaker 6: certainly can be primitive if, particularly if you enjoy the
Speaker 6: out of doors and all you're really looking for is shelter,
Speaker 6: you know that will warm me up a little bit
Speaker 6: and provide you a place to store a few articles
Speaker 6: and maybe some food. Then you really don't need much.
Speaker 6: But I and a lot of early cabins really are
Speaker 6: just that.
Speaker 5: That is to say, they are just shelter.
Speaker 6: And it was kind of common to imagine you're going
Speaker 6: to be outdoors to snip the beans, you're going to
Speaker 6: be outdoors to chop the wood, so you're gonna be
Speaker 6: outdoors a lot, and you're really just sleeping and maybe
Speaker 6: putting together a little bit of the food indoors, but
Speaker 6: you might actually be doing in front of the cooking outdoors.
Speaker 6: So that was common with settlers houses. Where settler's houses
Speaker 6: were primitive shelter, but a lot of their food prep
Speaker 6: and even some of the eating all occurred out of doors.
Speaker 6: So if you're going to be indoors a lot, if
Speaker 6: you're gonna use it in the winter a lot, then
Speaker 6: you probably need a few more facilities, maybe a bathroom
Speaker 6: and a proper kitchen.
Speaker 3: Your pod mother, Jared and I have a word for
Speaker 3: these type of liminal lifestyles that we envy, and that
Speaker 3: is ideod indoor outdoor places that are ideody for example,
Speaker 3: are an outdoor kitchen in a gazebo, being in a
Speaker 3: screened porch. Camping is ideot or oddly. The most ideoty
Speaker 3: place I feel like I've ever been to is the
Speaker 3: Honolulu Airport, which is just like an inside building, normal
Speaker 3: with a roof and terminals and gates and a food court.
Speaker 3: But then you look around and there's just no walls.
Speaker 3: There's no walls anywhere, perfect temperature, year round, no need
Speaker 3: for ac. Go ideot all the way. Now, speaking of
Speaker 3: energy bills, the next question is about offsetting the energy
Speaker 3: you use by way of generating renewable energy. J.
Speaker 4: CW wants to know is it financially worth it to
Speaker 4: build net zero energy cabins, which I don't really know
Speaker 4: what that is.
Speaker 6: Well, that depends on how you what kind of dollars
Speaker 6: you have upfront. It's going to cost you more to
Speaker 6: build net zero, but think of it as money that
Speaker 6: you're putting in upfront that you will save down line.
Speaker 6: But you have to have that money upfront available to you. So,
Speaker 6: as I say, it depends on how you get your
Speaker 6: money as to whether or not you can afford to
Speaker 6: build the extra, do the extra finances up front versus
Speaker 6: putting them into mortgage of paying them off over time. Right,
Speaker 6: and yeah, if you have the money, you can you
Speaker 6: can build net zero and save those dollars down line.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm, I guess yeah, Just what do you have
Speaker 4: in your pockets?
Speaker 6: And I think it might have to do with your lifestyle.
Speaker 6: A lot of a lot of saving energy has to
Speaker 6: do with making sure that you have a hands on
Speaker 6: approach to being a participant in how you use energy
Speaker 6: in your dwelling. You may think of it as passive energy,
Speaker 6: but it's maybe active in terms of your the need
Speaker 6: for you to participate in that, whether it's for you
Speaker 6: to chop the wood or for you to manage the
Speaker 6: thermostat through your iPhone or whatever, in order for you
Speaker 6: to keep tabs on just how energy is performing in
Speaker 6: that structure.
Speaker 4: So you can't just build it and then let it
Speaker 4: do the work you have to be Actually, it.
Speaker 6: Can do some of that work, like the extra insulation
Speaker 6: you put on. It's like putting on a warm coat.
Speaker 6: You know you can leave it on and you know
Speaker 6: all you.
Speaker 5: Have to do is but up some of the needs
Speaker 5: you have for.
Speaker 6: Energy performance, such as for solar panels that have battery
Speaker 6: storage something like that do require maintenance.
Speaker 4: Okay, just a little heads up. Your grandpa Dad sent
Speaker 4: me an article a few days ago about an Irish
Speaker 4: team of researchers who are using carbon nanotubes in batteries
Speaker 4: to increase energy storage capacity by two point five times.
Speaker 4: Everyone is just as hell about this. This is like
Speaker 4: a huge major leap. Hell yeah, nanotechnologists Filaria Nicolosi and
Speaker 4: chemical physicist Jonathan Coleman working on that. We all want
Speaker 4: better batteries. I owe you a margarita and a mug
Speaker 4: or a perfectly toasted marshmallow for that work. I think
Speaker 4: we covered a lot of these things already, so I'll
Speaker 4: ask the last two questions. I always ask, what is
Speaker 4: the most annoying thing about your job? Is there anything.
Speaker 6: About Well, I have to do a lot of driving. Oh,
Speaker 6: I mean, I enjoyed driving, but it is a lot
Speaker 6: of driving. So I put a fair amount of miles
Speaker 6: in my car. And I certainly know the Midwest extremely
Speaker 6: well because of all that driving. So you know, sometimes
Speaker 6: having to drive four hours five hours to a cabin site.
Speaker 6: And I never want to design anything where I don't
Speaker 6: see the land. You know, people will bring you pictures
Speaker 6: and they say, oh, we don't want to pay for
Speaker 6: you to go all that distance.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Land talks to me, and more than you, the owner.
Speaker 6: The land tells me a lot about what it is
Speaker 6: I need to do here, so I always want to
Speaker 6: go see land.
Speaker 4: Do you listen to audiobooks?
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 6: I listened to local radio stations a lot and a
Speaker 6: lot of public radio in various locales. And even though
Speaker 6: I'm I would consider myself a liberal politically, I sometimes
Speaker 6: the one and only time I'll listen to conservative talk
Speaker 6: radio is when I'm driving and I'd like to hear
Speaker 6: what the other side is talking about and how they
Speaker 6: say it. So I'm whereas I'm not likely to listen
Speaker 6: to that at work or in my home.
Speaker 4: When you get your cabin, then I guess you can
Speaker 4: decomprisse if it's been upsetting to you, right, Yes, that's right.
Speaker 4: What is your favorite thing about cabins or about what
Speaker 4: you do?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 6: I really enjoy the act of creating something out of
Speaker 6: nothing standing in a piece of land, whether it's in
Speaker 6: the Rocky Mountains or in New England or here in
Speaker 6: the Midwest, and using only one's imagination while you're standing
Speaker 6: there trying to figure out, well, how should I create
Speaker 6: this thing? Standing there just daydreaming about or doodling or
Speaker 6: pacing off, saying, well, it could be in this direction,
Speaker 6: about this big and you know, I need to borrow
Speaker 6: a ladder and climb up this tree so I can
Speaker 6: see what the views like on the second floor. And
Speaker 6: that's to me the most fun part is that very initial,
Speaker 6: as I say, going from nothing to something in one's
Speaker 6: imagination and then trying to record it on a sketch
Speaker 6: work or something so that you can start to manipulate
Speaker 6: that idea when you get back to your office, or
Speaker 6: sometimes sitting at the local coffee shop not far from
Speaker 6: the cabin and doing all ones doodles, you know, recording
Speaker 6: what you were thinking about when you were on in
Speaker 6: the land. I'm more likely to do that, to record
Speaker 6: it quickly before I even get back to my home
Speaker 6: or office.
Speaker 4: Do you give the cabin owners those sketches?
Speaker 5: Sometimes?
Speaker 6: I usually have nothing against giving it to them. I
Speaker 6: sometimes forget about giving it to them, but most of
Speaker 6: them certainly appreciate when you do it. And then fairly
Speaker 6: early on I make little cardboard models and that's Many
Speaker 6: of my cabin owners now have those models sitting in
Speaker 6: their cabin somewhere.
Speaker 4: Yah. I think it would be great to have that
Speaker 4: too at your desk at work, just so you have
Speaker 4: that to think of.
Speaker 6: I yeah, we make a lot of models in our office,
Speaker 6: and it's usually the designer themselves who makes the models,
Speaker 6: and not like wait, we're not hiring, say, student interns
Speaker 6: to make models. Where you models are are like our doodles.
Speaker 6: They're a form of our own artistic expression.
Speaker 4: This has been such a dream. Thank you so so
Speaker 4: much to work.
Speaker 5: So I was wondering if you like one of my books.
Speaker 4: Oh, I would start crying. I would love it.
Speaker 5: Well, oh my god, it's all yours. And if you
Speaker 5: want me to sign it, I'll do that.
Speaker 1: Too, duh.
Speaker 4: Yes, Oh this is so exciting. Thank you, so so
Speaker 4: so much. What a dream. So get yourself in the
Speaker 4: presence of an expert and then ask smart people, giddy
Speaker 4: questions all you want, and then maybe go in with
Speaker 4: some pals, save up for a night or two away
Speaker 4: if you can, or you can crash a friend's family reunion.
Speaker 4: If there are enough relatives, they may not even notice.
Speaker 4: That would happen at mine. So to learn more about
Speaker 4: Dale Mulfinger, go find his wonderful books. Just google Cabinology.
Speaker 4: It's going to lead you down a little sunny leafy
Speaker 4: path right to him. So his architecture firm is Sala
Speaker 4: and they're on Instagram Sala Architects and I'll link that
Speaker 4: in the show notes along with all the sponsor and
Speaker 4: donation links, and there are more links up at aliward
Speaker 4: dot com slash ologies slash Cabinology. We are at Ologies
Speaker 4: on Instagram and Twitter, and I'm at ali Ward with
Speaker 4: one L on both. You can do follow say hi.
Speaker 4: Thank you to Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch of the
Speaker 4: podcast You Are That for managing ologiesmerch dot com, where
Speaker 4: you can get bathing suits with the Ologies logo on
Speaker 4: you butt and T shirts and stuff. Thank you to
Speaker 4: Aaron Talbert for adminting the Facebook Ologies group. Thank you
Speaker 4: Jared Sleeper for supporting my love of cabins and for
Speaker 4: doing assistant editing on this. And to editor The Hearthstone
Speaker 4: Stephen Ray Morris for stitching together all these sound clips.
Speaker 3: Since the initial recording of this. We also have Noel
Speaker 3: Dilworth to thank for being our scheduling producer Susan Hale
Speaker 3: is our managing director of the whole show. Jake Chafey
Speaker 3: is a wonderful editor, and our new lead editor is
Speaker 3: Mercedes Maitland, who did touch ups on this odcore. Thank
Speaker 3: you Mercedes and involved. And also since this episode aired,
Speaker 3: Dale and I have kept in touch. I love him.
Speaker 3: We email back and forth when he sees an ology
Speaker 3: that might be fun, or if I find a picture
Speaker 3: of a cool cabin, or when I built the shed.
Speaker 3: And he wrote me last week that he was just
Speaker 3: working on an off grid cabin near the Boundary Waters
Speaker 3: Wilderness area and it used material recycled from another cabin.
Speaker 3: It has an open floor plan, he says, so everyone
Speaker 3: can smell the coffee brewing in the morning. And another
Speaker 3: client came to him recently for a well insulated cabin
Speaker 3: thick walls and triple paned windows. He wrote me right
Speaker 3: off the Lake Superior hiking trail. He said one could
Speaker 3: probably heat this cabin in cold Minnesota with a hair
Speaker 3: dryer and said you'll be able to step outside, strap
Speaker 3: on your cross country skis and go for miles. Happy holidays, Dale,
Speaker 3: Ugh Dude's the coolest, the loveliest cabinologist on Earth. I'm
Speaker 3: so glad you got a chance to meet him through
Speaker 3: this episode, and since you have stuck with us for
Speaker 3: the whole episode, what I do is I tell you
Speaker 3: a secret at the end this week. It's that I
Speaker 3: still have not made the acorn cookies. The acorns are
Speaker 3: still chilling in a jar in my refrigerator, which is
Speaker 3: currently two thousand miles away from me. But another secret
Speaker 3: is in the last couple of months, I have felt
Speaker 3: so disorganized and for some reason, around my house and office,
Speaker 3: I have, if I'm thinking in my head, I have
Speaker 3: probably six different canvas tote bags that are like half
Speaker 3: filled with stuff that doesn't belong in them. Like I
Speaker 3: took a tote bag for an outing and then came
Speaker 3: home and instead of taking everything out like melted lip
Speaker 3: bomb and maybe there's a pamphlet in there about a
Speaker 3: garden and a toothpaste sample from the dentist, instead of
Speaker 3: putting those away, I just didn't know where to put
Speaker 3: those things. So next time I left the house, I
Speaker 3: just got an empty tote bag. I took my wallet
Speaker 3: and keys, used the new tote bag, collected some extra
Speaker 3: ephemera and detritus like hotel pens or sewing kid or
Speaker 3: a magazine I read and maybe we'll use for I
Speaker 3: don't know, like a vision board in the new year.
Speaker 3: And so now I'm daisy chaining them, and like there's
Speaker 3: like half dozen totes and little corners that I need
Speaker 3: to just dump into a pile and figure out what
Speaker 3: to do with the stuff inside them. I don't know
Speaker 3: if this is something that happens to other people or
Speaker 3: just me, but it's a maybe it's a type of
Speaker 3: procrastination that's like I don't know where to put these things,
Speaker 3: and I don't have the mental space right now to strategize. Now,
Speaker 3: there are bigger problems in the world, trust me. That's
Speaker 3: probably one of the reasons why I can't manage to
Speaker 3: unpack a tote bag. But this is just one of mine. Okay.
Speaker 3: Enjoy a fireplace. Enjoy a campfire or a landscape of
Speaker 3: some kind of serenity. Maybe you do a game of
Speaker 3: rumming cube with the people you love, all right, enjoy
Speaker 3: you deserve it.
Speaker 7: Bye bye.
Speaker 4: Friday thirteen.
Speaker 8: No One with the Cabin in the Woods, Texas Chance Massacre.
Speaker 8: No One with the Cabin in the Woods ry uh,
Speaker 8: the One with the Cabin in.
Speaker 5: The Woods Play a waste project, No.
Speaker 8: Man, the one with the cabin in the woods, the
Speaker 8: monsters that wasn't in the woods, that wasn't even a
Speaker 8: damn movie.
Speaker 4: Look man, we ain't got time for this ship right now.
Speaker 8: We need to get to that cabin in the woods.
Speaker 1: When it comes to a great deal, Virgin Mobile doesn't
Speaker 1: play around, introducing our new Symplan price locked at fifteen
Speaker 1: euro month for life with unlimited data, calls and texts
Speaker 1: and ninety nine percent coverage. Switch today at Virgin Media
Speaker 1: dot Ie Virgin Media It's playtime.
Speaker 2: Tecenz' supply fifteen europer month locked in while a Virgin
Speaker 2: Mobile customer twelve month contract include unlimited data, standard calls
Speaker 2: and text to all Irish networks. Offer ends February eighteenth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six. See Virgin Media dot Ie