Notes from three months in a one-room cabin with a stove and a stack of books.
I spent three months in a one-room cabin last winter with a wood stove, a stack of books, a radio and a lot of snow. These are the notes I kept on the inside of the woodshed door.
Small routines
Mornings were for wood: split, carry, stack. Afternoons were for walking while there was light, which in December meant about four hours. Evenings were long, and the stove became the centre of everything: kettle, soup, wet socks, conversation.
You stop noticing the quiet after a week. After a month you notice everything else instead: the creak of the roof when the snow loads it, the exact sound of a fox crossing the crust, the day the light comes back a minute earlier.
Coming back
The hardest part was the return. Too many voices, too many screens, too much light. I still keep the stove lit in my head on bad days, and I still split wood when I need to think.
Written by
Tove Lind
Photographs the dark half of the year, mostly by candle.
