Six Favourite Books: Alone in a Cabin

Read time 5 mins

Ever fantasised about living in a cabin in some untrammeled back of beyond? These people did it and wrote the book.

Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin in the Middle Taiga

Sylvain Tesson

In 2010, Sylvain Tesson decided to live like a hermit in a rustic cabin on the shores of Lake Baikal in Russia. Consolations of the Forest is a record of his six-month stay. The book—written in diary form—details his struggles to survive in a hostile environment: his loneliness, his doubts, but also his moments of inner peace and harmony with nature. The book is engaging, full of humour, and asks some big questions about how to live.

Woodswoman: Living Alone in the Adirondack Wilderness

Anne Labastille

When Ecologist Anne LaBastille and her husband divorced, she found the 20-acre parcel of land in the Adirondack mountains and built a primitive log cabin that became her permanent home. LaBastille writes with precise, poetic language about her adventures on Black Bear Lake and her struggle to balance her need for companionship with her desire for independence and solitude. This is Thoreau re-imagined in feminism, which inspired a generation of women environmentalists.

Someday We'll Build Cabins

Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac wrote about his experience as a fire lookout in the wooden cabin on Desolation Peak in The Dharma Bums and Desolation Angels (both books I love). However, I’m intrigued by this new collection of his letters in correspondence with New York artist Jacques Beckwith – revealing that Kerouac longed to build a cabin in the forest – "I want to live in the woods where I don't even have to think about this evil world of wars and dishonesties," Kerouac wrote. I might pick this one up.

Shakespeare & Company bookshop link

The Way of the Hermit: My 40 years in the Scottish Wilderness

Ken Smith

Ken Smith has spent four decades in the Scottish Highlands, living alone in a cabin near Loch Treig, known as 'the lonely loch'. The Way of the Hermit tells his story: from his working-class origins in Derbyshire, to the formative years he spent travelling in the Yukon and finally how he came to be the Hermit of Loch Treig. The book is well worth a read as Ken reflects upon the reasons he turned his back on society, the vulnerability of old age and the awe and wonder of a life lived in nature.

Cabin: Off the grid adventures with a clueless craftsman

Patrick Hutchison

In 2013, city dweller Patrick Hutchison bought a cabin in a forest by the Skykomish River that he describes as an “oversize doghouse.” The book follows Hutchison’s adventures in carpentry as he sets about the place with power tools, saws and drills – hoping to transform the cabin and himself with it. HIutchison’s writing is warm and humorous. A great read for anyone dreaming of escaping city life.

Walden: Or Life in the Woods

Henry David Thoreau

Although I had a copy on my shelves at home, I first read Walden while staying in a cabin in the American wilderness. ‘Economy’ – the first chapter title – confirmed my suspicions that Walden would be a dull read. However, a few pages in, I was enjoying Thoreau’s ideas, his sarcastic humour and his acerbic criticism of consumerism and society. Living in the cabin at Walden Pond he says, was an “experiment in living” – something that we should all try at some stage in our lives.

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