My American Dream
Last week was our countries birthday and to antecedently celebrate it, I’m going to spend a little time closing my eyes and writing out one of my ‘American Dreams.’ Rather than a Pinterest board, I’ll just write it out. The books would say, “stop dreaming and go for it” but cooler heads prevail and while I envision this place, I like the business I’m in today and it’s important to stay focused, so I’ll stick with it and will actualize this dream at some point into the future when I need a break in the industrious grind. One day though, this American Dream will come true. The beauty of this country, more than anywhere else, is that you can put your head down, work hard and turn your dreams into a reality and get a bank loan to satisfy your passion project when the time comes!
I’m using the present tense because this is the vision and this will happen. It’s my matter of when, not if. (If you are working on something similar right now though give me a holler. I’ve searched far and wide for the best book shop, coffee shop, whiskey bar, outdoor clubhouses and drawn inspiration from a number of them.)
Introducing The Cabin:
You can enter right off Grand Army of the Republic Hwy heading west toward Avon, Colorado. Just past Route 6 Cafe you’ll see a big patch of land with a cabin looking facade set back about 60 feet from the road. The parking lot is plenty large for trucks, cars, bikes and trikes and the signage is apparent that something wonderous is just ‘beyonder.’ You park your electric car (plugging in of course) alongside a rack of freshly ridden and dirty mountain bikes. The Saturday morning ride just got back and did a 2,000 ft ascension and descent. You walk into the cabin, up a few stairs and flanked by a front facing porch with some empty rocking chairs. The cabin’s outdoor signage is a bit kitschy but you dig it for it’s wittiness; It’s a smattering of out of state license plates, ‘5 o’clock somewheres’ and punny placards that indicate a good time. This feels like a Route 66 staple. When you open the door, the layout feels compartmentalized but wondrous.
On the right is a cozy little nook with a throw rug, a couple chairs and smaller book shelf - like the one you had in your room when you were 5. The books in this corner are more juvenile, focusing more on the catcher in the rye style of literature, a quick escape with some fraught adolescence. There’s an older gentleman sitting in one of the chairs, cross-legged, reading what appears to be ‘Ready Player One.’ He’s clearly transporting to another world. He’s got a hot cup of coffee in front of him on the table, eschewing any notion of a coaster to protect the wood.
The left hand side of the cabin is a colossal display of adventures. The backdrop is a map of the world with various pins and photos appending to the continents and their subdivisions. These are clearly experiences held by someone, exhibited by Polaroid photos that feel like a few too many Kinshasa shots and couple wrong turns in the Corcovado. The map is surrounded by miniature bookshelves each with a varying theme. One shelf houses marked up guide books, a couple Rick Steves of course. One shelf houses a plethora of how-to-guides on everything from snow trekking to motorcycle mechanics. You get a sense that this place has too many hobbies and interests. One other shelf houses some of the ’starter kit books’ of entrepreneurship and financial freedom such as Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris, Rich Dad Poor Dad and How to Win Friends and Influence People. You could almost feel like Dale Carnegie would have brought his friends here for a quick brainstorming session!
As you walk about 25 feet into the cabin you arrive at the coffee bar. The bar is three sided, one facing the entrance, one as the connector walkway to the back and the last one is facing the back of the cabin. You walk up to the bar from the walkway side and dead on you see a wall of the finest and exotic whiskies and Scotches from around the world. We have a couple coffee items roasting and titrating from some fancy looking drip mechanisms that are entirely unnecessary but make for some aesthetic interventions. There’s a friendly post-college Denverite manning the point of sale and ready to take your order. Before you can place an order though, you have to answer the question of the day. Today’s question is ‘what’s one thing you keep telling yourself you’re going to do but you keep pushing it off until tomorrow?’ You can answer it there or you can buy a moleskin journal for $15 and start your journaling journey right there on the spot. Creative answers from yesterdays question sit in a ratty old journal right to the side of the coffee bar, creating an experience akin to a walk down memory lane of an Airbnb’s guestbook.
It’s only 11am so you order a coffee and grab one of the breakfast tacos that’s sitting freshly made in the warmer. At 530pm tonight, this place will totally transform into the perfect place for an aperitif before dinner followed by a nightcap spot for a peaty scotch overlooking the Eagle River. The Cabin is where you might go for your coffee before first chair lift in the winter and find yourself back for the apres ski to grab a scotch after a cold day on the slopes.
You grab your coffee on it’s coaster and find a table in the back portion of the cabin. This portion makes up about 50% of the square footage of the cabin and looks inviting. The right wall has eight foot book shelves lined with best sellers, newest releases, biographies and fiction to purchase. The meat of the back portion is lined with tables and chairs of various varietals. This is all a reminder of life’s adventure, a new table and chair for every season of life. The left hand side of the cabin is a continuation of the adventures from the front. Instead of a map though, the entire wall has a mix of sports and adventure memorabilia as well as art that celebrates the great outdoors and inventions of the past.
While there are no Ansel Adams, there are some beautiful profiles of the Himalayas, there are old golf clubs from Scotland, ski boots from Austria, fishing rods from the Great Lakes and more. The adventurous items are interspersed with old abacus machines, type writers, old feather point pens and more.
The last component of the back space is a small stage that’s occupied most nights by some form of entertainment. The lineup kicks off in the summer with acoustic guitarists on Monday and Tuesday playing light covers of recognizable songs. Thursday is Jazz night and Friday and Saturday are specials that I leave up to the community to decide what we’re going to host. Usually when famous authors come through the Rockies, they stop here for a book signing or an open mic. You grab one of the chairs at one of the tables.
This table just so happens to be an old suit case that’s got legs that look quite awkward on it but it’s something your great-grandfather might have lugged on his voyage across the Atlantic. You grab the journal that the barista handed you and snag one of the books from the shelves and sit down with your coffee. When you’re done reading a couple chapters of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter House Five and write a page in your new thin-back (opining on tomorrow’s to dos), you head out the back door to check out the river views.
The back patio is built of wood planks, the type you’d see on a rickety dock buoyed by foam over a lake. You walk out and there are Adirondack chairs of varying colors all slightly diagonal facing out over the river perch. The view of the Eagle River is gorgeous and there’s a nice 40 foot slope down to the river bank. There are stairs that lead from the back porch down to the actual river’s footing. Down at the bottom lies another dock down where you can bring one of your books to hang your feet over and sit about 3 feet from the river’s flow.
There’s a ladder that we built that climbs down into the river. Go enjoy a fly fish or just wade through the rocks. When the water flow isn’t too tumultuous we tie up floaties to a pole jutting off that bottom dock so that you can sit on a floatie, read a book and let the water rush under you without floating away. The cabin partners with local fly fishing outfits to take people down to this part of the eagle river followed by some whiskey and s’mores on the lower dock.
Now I’m really manifesting…
Laurelle comes by the cabin on weekends to help out after I finish the morning bike ride with the group and she likes to come for Jazz nights on Thursdays. Our kids learned to do service work here in the summers and are now off doing their own thing but they come back every summer and hang out at the cabin. It’s their internships before the real world. The Rockies adventure club always finishes their Sunday morning hikes at the cabin and Laurelle joins them once a month.
The cabin is my resting place and its my labor of love. It’s the special place that takes a mad man to put together but once it’s built you can’t envision life without and community forms around it. It’s where I spend my days working, but also creating, within the confines of the cabin. I write novels here, I plan my trips here, friends gather here and I’m still the one setting up the floaties at 6am for the day ahead for all to enjoy…
And while it’s not today’s reality, it’s today’s dream and one day in the future, the cabin will become reality.