The film “Land”

I went to the cinema yesterday for the first time since 2019, to see “Land”, starring and directed by Robin Wright, in which her character, Edee, moves to a remote cabin in Wyoming following a tragedy in her former life. I think a lot of the reviewers have missed the point and in this post I dig deeper to explain how it worked for me, and how that’s based on the whole idea of living in a cabin in the wilderness.

I hadn’t planned to see the film but I was in Manchester for the first time this year and I had enough spare for its 90 minutes. I went through Victoria Station on my eventual way to the Vue cinema at the Printworks. The flowers and other tributes from the recent anniversary of the Manchester Arena bombing in May 2017 were still there, and I still had that grief at the back of my mind when I saw the film, in which grief is a major theme.

Memorials to the victims of the Manchester Arena bombing in May 2017

The film is an emotional journey set against the dramatic mountain landscape. The elements of suspense are in trying to understand the characters’ back stories as the clues accumulate. This post contains spoilers about Edee’s backstory. The further you read, the more spoilers. But there are no major plot spoilers here which are not revealed in the film’s own publicity, including the trailer.

The basic premise is that Edee is a lawyer who has suffered some terrible tragedy and leaves her life in Chicago and her concerned sister Emma behind. She presumably sells up most of her belongings, packs up what she needs in a rented car and trailer, and drives to the northwest of Wyoming, on the edge of the Shoshone National Forest which is adjacent to Yellowstone National Park. The movie itself was filmed in 29 days in Alberta, Canada, at an altitude of 8000ft, and it really shows.

Here she buys a large area of land: enough to be on a mountainside and own everything in the foreground of your view. To be unbothered by trespassers. That is what Edee wants as she is seeking to get away from people. She even arranges with the estate agent to have the rental car taken away when she arrives.

Her property has a log cabin on that mountainside with the majestic view, in which an old man lived and left all the tools needed for survival, including a rifle which she shies away from. The cabin used was built on site specially for the film.

We start to see flashbacks to Edee’s former life with her husband and little boy. We assume they’ve died and this is why she has withdrawn from society. She also imagines them there with her, enjoying the forests and river and feeling at home and happy there, as she struggles with it all.

She has brought supplies for the winter, but she finds her life at the cabin very difficult. For example, she is dependent on firewood for heating, but flounders as she tries using a saw and an axe to turn a small tree trunk into usable logs. She tries using a book about hunting and fishing to supplement her supplies, with mixed results. Even the rather grim and derelict outdoor toilet is daunting.

The setbacks accumulate as predators and winter draw in, but she is eventually helped by a hunter who lives in a nearby town: Miguel, played by Demián Bichir, with a rich and hard to place accent that’s somewhere between his native Mexico, French Canadian, and Native American. They agree he will teach Edee to trap and hunt, and then he will leave her alone.

Miguel teaches Edee how to hunt

You could make another film using those elements. Probably one with Reese Witherspoon earlier in her career: helpless city woman flees to a cabin in the woods, flounders around with axes and fishing rods, but is helped, befriended and then loved by a taciturn local man, who himself learns how to open up his feelings. I wonder if these thoughts were lurking in the minds of some unimpressed reviewers?

With Miguel’s help she does indeed learn to live on the land she has chosen. She becomes confident and competent, and can finally lead the isolated and self-reliant life she came to the wilderness to experience. This next clip summarises where she’s got to, and how she sees it. Edee says: “I want to notice more. Notice everything around me more. Know more about here. Be able to survive here and appreciate it.” Miguel responds that she can indeed survive there alone now.

Edee and Miguel

This is not a romantic comedy though, and their relationship progresses no further than deep but arm’s length respect and affection, and intermittent meetings. Eventually she is able to move forward, and make contact again with her sister Emma.

The film has 69% on Rotten Tomatoes, with generally favourable reviews but some negative and lukewarm responses. Some of the reviews have accused the film of being predictable, which has some merit. But their case isn’t helped by the apparent universal missing of the point.

Here we get to a major spoiler. For me, the key image of the film is a drawing by Edee’s son Drew. It’s shown in passing in the trailer, and you can see it here. It’s revealed when Edee gives it to Miguel. I’m guessing it’s the most precious thing she has.

“Where I want to live”

Drew’s drawing shows her dead husband and son fishing in a lake, beside a cabin in a forest, as Edee looks on smiling. The title is “Where I want to live”. I don’t mind admitting that I filled up at this point, alone in a completely empty COVID-compliant cinema. Edee has clearly been trying to live the life her son wanted, based on time spent with his father in the wilderness. An environment that she did not understand or feel comfortable in. She wants to experience that life to better understand her dead son. That’s why what eventually brings her peace and the ability to move on is to “be able to survive here and appreciate it”.

There is also a theme of kindness and redemption, especially due to Miguel’s own back story of grief, and the old idea of withdrawing from society to work through your problems yourself: Miguel even refers to her as his “hermit friend” at one point. Many of us have experienced first hand the healing power of time in nature, both before and during the pandemic.

The final spoiler is the nature of her husband and son’s death.

They were killed in a mass shooting, which explains Edee’s initial reluctance to pick up the previous owner’s rifle despite living in bear country. Perhaps that also explains my deeper emotional connection to Edee’s journey, coming straight to the cinema from those memorials to the mass killing at the Manchester Arena.

The film is in British cinemas now and will no doubt make it to streaming services here in due course. The landscape has a role of its own in the movie, but it’s not shown in sweeping, immersive shots which demand a viewing on the big screen. I’m glad I did see it in a cinema though.

Finally, Robin Wright has given this revealing interview about the production and themes, which goes beyond some of the usual chat show interviews she’s had to do in promoting it.

Spring at the log cabin video

I spent two nights of the Easter weekend at our off grid log cabin at Century Wood. I’ve made this video about staying there, and I also talk through the basic 12V electric system, the kitchen sink and drain, and how I use the wood stove.

The North Pond Hermit

Last week I read Michael Finkel’s book about Christopher Thomas Knight, the “North Pond Hermit”, who lived alone in the woods of Maine for 27 years from 1986 with only two incidents of human contact. I wasn’t so much interested in Knight’s way of life, but rather the description of the community of cabin owners that he stole food and basic supplies from.

I’ve found it very difficult to find photos that I can use of Knight or his ramshackle encampment of tents and tarpaulins hidden amongst a cluster of huge boulders in the woods. However, this short video from a news report shows the state game warden and the state trooper who caught and then arrested Knight, and his encampment.

The Michael Finkel also has a page of photos on his website about his book about Knight, “The Stranger in the Woods“.

Anyway, with that out of the way, what was the area like? This Google aerial photo shows:

Most of the cabins targeted were around North Pond, with some also by Little North Pond. Knight’s camp was to the west of Little North Pond, and in fact only three minutes walk from the nearest cabin. Knight lived there for the whole of his decades in the woods, within earshot of his neighbours voices at times.

He only ventured out to steal from unoccupied cabins, eventually becoming an expert burglar, able to get in and out without leaving obvious signs. He chose midweek nights, ideally during rainstorms, to cover his tracks and avoid accidental contact with cabin owners. But people gradually became certain that the food packets, propane bottles, and batteries that they were certain they’d brought were in fact stolen and not just forgotten. This led to a huge amount of nervousness and fear, and for many people spoilt the joy of owning a weekend cabin by the lake.

He also regularly stole from Pine Tree Camp, which provides outdoor education and experiences to people with disabilities, and that’s where he was eventually caught, after a silent alarm set of Sgt Terry Hughes, a Maine state game warden, woke him up at home in the middle of the night. Reading Finkel’s description it sounded very like Broomlee that I went to myself as a child.

Finally, this documentary video has interviews with several cabin owners, showing their cabins, and giving a sense of what the community there is like: a mix of locals and regular weekenders who know each other as neighbours.

Lego Log Cabin rebuilt as Thoreau’s cabin

I’ve always loved Lego and this time of year is a great time to build things together. We have the 5766 Log Cabin set from 2010, and have been building the three different huts it has instructions for. I’ve also rebuilt it as Thoreau’s cabin in the woods by Walden Pond. As you might expect, I photographed the whole lot.

You can see the three official designs here, as Lego’s own description says: “Escape to the LEGO countryside in this 3-in-1 Log Cabin! Packed with great details, including an open fire with rotisserie, wooden logs, tree and opening doors and windows, this log cabin is an ideal wilderness getaway. Minifigure included and ready for backwoods adventure, with backpack, paddle and canoe. Rebuild into a country retreat or a river hut.”

Next is the Log Cabin itself in more detail, with lift-off roof, canoe, and joints of venison roasting above an open fire!

The second design is the Riverside Retreat, and is hinged at the side so you can open it up and see inside.

The third design is the River Hut, with a A-frame design and a bridge over a stream. Again this has a lift-off roof.

Finally, my Thoreau cabin built entirely from pieces in the set. It has a lift-off roof again, and I reused the tree design from the Log Cabin instructions. The last picture is the base layout to get you started if you want to build it yourself.

Here’s a slide comparison of my effort in Lego vs a reconstruction of Thoreau‘s:

Even though the Log Cabin set is discontinued, Lego still have a page about it with PDFs of the instructions to build the three official designs. If you have a good Lego collection already, you may be able to put it together without the set – especially if you have lots of sloping roof pieces. Second hand sets can be found on eBay and here are links to Amazon for some similar sets and the Log Cabin itself – I get a percentage of Amazon sales, which helps pay for the website 🙂

Mountain Hut 31025

Log Cabin 5766

Log cabins on YouTube

The cabin-in-the-woods is part of the folklore of North America and it’s not surprising that there are a lot of videos about them on YouTube. Some are quite conventional second homes that just happen to be built of wood, but at the other extreme are basic log cabins built by the owners using the surrounding forest. This post is a collection of some of those YouTube channels that are worth looking at, and that might be relevant to woodland hutting in Britain.

Continue reading “Log cabins on YouTube”

Log cabin updates from Century Wood

This month I’ve made two hutting related posts over on the Century Wood blog: “Storm Alex in the log cabin” and “A rocking chair”.

“I’d planned to spend most of the weekend at Century Wood before the warnings about Storm Alex started, and after a close look at the forecasts I went ahead. Despite 18 hours of continuous rain, the overnight stay was comfortable and I got a lot done on Sunday which was dry.” more …

“Last month I invested in a wooden rocking chair for the log cabin. There have been benches there for years but on an evening you want something you can sit back in. Henry David Thoreau famously had three chairs in his cabin in the woods: ‘one for solitude, two for friendship, and three for society’. more …

The Glamping Show

We went to this year’s Glamping Show today at Stoneleigh Park near Warwick. Glamping has expanded over the years to include camping pods, newly-built shepherd’s huts, and tiny houses as well as the luxurious tents, yurts etc. I’ve included a gallery of some of the photos I took which gives you a flavour of the event, and points where glamping now overlaps with hutting.

The show is explicitly aimed at landowners wanting to diversify into glamping, and had stands from everyone from wood-burning hot tub makers to online visitor booking software. In the main hall were (mostly) smaller stands and three seminar spaces. Outside were a wide selection of the kinds of tents and cabins on offer.

Hutting tends to be about having the hut or cabin or shed or whatever for much longer than glamping, where you might just hire it for a week. Most hutting is about owning the structure and maybe even the land it sits on. However, there’s now a lot of similarity in the buildings, even if the glamping huts are quite neat and commercial. They’re a lot more soulful than caravans though.

So it was really interesting to see a fun talk by Max McMurdo about upcycling and glamping, and the idea that you might furnish or even construct glamping huts or tents with reclaimed materials to get away from a manufactured feel. He also made some good comments about the experience of glamping which resonated with the experience of hutting: such as the way daylight becomes so important when man-made light is not just available at the flick of a switch; and how satisfying the most ancient human technologies such as lighting a fire can be, especially when you’re living free of wifi and “being connected”. During the questions at the end Planning Law reared its head (as it always does sooner or later), and there was also lots of good advice (like looking for materials to reclaim in skips!) Max has also got a new book out about upcycling.

dsc_0021Back in the outdoor area,  I was really pleased to have a chance to look around the tiny house from Tiny House UK. This is the first time I’ve seen one in person and I hope we see more of them in Britain. Since the ones on wheels or liftable by a crane count as a caravan in planning law,  they have the potential to make all those situations where you’re allowed a caravan to be a lot more attractive. One of these is forestry, where you’re allowed to live on site in a caravan when doing forestry work as long as it’s “less than a season”.

If you’re at all interested in doing glamping as a business then I’d recommend looking at the magazines Open Air Business and Glamping Business for the adverts and articles. There are a lot of options, including DIY approaches all the way up to companies who do all the work and share profits with you in return for use of your land.

 

Shed of the Year 2015, grand final roundup

It’s been more than a fortnight since the grand final episode of Channel 4’s 2015 Shed of the Year competition but the #shedoftheyear tweets are still being posted, and there was a lot of newspaper coverage in the day or so after the final was broadcast.

The episode began with the “Cabins/Summerhouses” and “Workshops/Studios” shed categories. For the first category, I liked Teasel’s Wood Cabin and the Pixie Cabin. For the second category, I liked the Cabin of the Green Man, and its mention of chainsaw carving. I always like anything about the Green Man anyway.

My overall favourites were Cormac’s Bothy and the Corrugated Cottage from the first and second episode, but the judges’ choice and series winner was the Inshriach Distillery from the previous episode.

During the programme, #shedoftheyear was again one of the top hashtags for the UK, and this itself generated some confused responses:

https://twitter.com/Snowripper1106/status/620340068016877568

Stories about the result appeared across the spectrum of newspapers, including the ones in The Independent, in The Scotsmanin The Daily Mail, and in The Daily Star. The Telegraph produced a gallery of photos from the competition. As a pub shed, the winner was also picked up by the drinks trade press.

This breadth of coverage was itself reflected on Twitter:

Businesses made use of the hashtag, some with interesting content to promote:

As did Glasgow University Archives:

And beach hutters:

Finally, the hashtag prompted this gem from the city of skyscrapers:

Watching the stove vs watching TV

Last week we were at the log cabin for Sunday and Monday, and I brought my computer which has a plug-in TV tuner so we could watch Episode 3 of Shed of the Year. It was good to watch it, but it felt very out of place.

Our log cabin is deliberately simple and it gets us away from the kind of urban, electronic environment we have at home. There are no electricity, water or sewerage services, and very patchy cell phone reception. So we have a wood burning stove, a sink with water from a water carrier,  and camping gas for lighting. Nearby is a composting toilet with another water-carrier wash hand basin. We do have a digital radio for the cabin which we can play music from our phones through too, and it runs off 12V batteries charged by a solar panel.

Once it’s getting dark after we’ve finished whatever forestry or tinkering or sitting in the sun we’ve planned for the day, entertainment in the cabin has been a mix of reading, listening to music, cooking and eating and drinking, listening to the radio, and above all talking to each other.

It’s hard to explain but really simple things like keeping the stove going and boiling a kettle become interesting: when it’s more than just flicking a switch and waiting for the click, because you have to split the logs you set aside a year ago, then keep an eye on how they’re burning, and wait for the slow build up of the whistle. Everything in the cabin is at a slower pace and we manage to enjoy doing nothing in particular for hours on end.

But as I said, last week we had television as a guest for an hour. It was like having one of the visitors that come to the wood, say hello, have a chat, and then head off  in their car as soon as they can. The ones that don’t want to get muddy and wander off through the trees.

So we finished watching “Shed of the Year” then put some music back on, and later the radio. Radio seems to “get it” somehow. It doesn’t expect you to look at it when you’re messing around with the hotplate from the stove for a start. It’s usually our only connection to the outside world while we’re there.

Sunday was the day of the Greek bailout referendum and we tuned in to hear what was happening. No fancy graphics and footage of leaders getting in and out of cars. Just one person at a time talking to you over the airwaves about what’s going on. Very fitting for the log cabin again. Before the midnight news on Radio 4 was Mark Tully’s “Something Understood” about “Desire Lines”. It included Peter Seeger singing “Little Boxes” in 1963 which starts:

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

Which is very much what we’re not about too.