Book Review
by Carol Wallwork
Cabins of Minnesota,
Published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007
Price: $19.95
Cabins of Minnesota is a compact 128-page book of color photographs published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007. This seemingly simple book prompts us to slip from clamorous modernity to the summertime shores of a Minnesota lake cabin, within sight of a weathered dock, water lapping the posts. Or to a cabin deep in a pine forest on a crisp autumn morning, the tiny icebox and stove waiting for us to start the bacon sizzling, coffee brewing, flapjacks bubbling.
These cabins of Minnesota are far removed from more typical magazine or book depictions of upscale retreats that never look lived in. Instead, we find the comfortably quirky, paint peeling, cobbled together, one-of-a-kind, mostly humble cabins at peace with their surroundings.
Doug Ohman’s photographs are as straightforward and comfortable as the cabins. He captures the warp and woof of this culture, such as cabin owner signs like horizontal totem poles, paying homage to well-lived lives. Or old yard chairs at water’s edge, with a feel of empty pews at church just before service.
Coupled with Ohman’s photographs, Bill Holm’s sensitive narrative is part philosophy, part cabin living basics, part small bit of interesting personal history. He makes magic with this reticent subject, and together with Ohman, they create The Cabin Fugue, a metaphor for their examination of cabin life from many variations (one variation is the richness of making music while at cabin).
Holms shares the wisdom of international visionaries starting with Thoreau:
Here, embedded in Walden, is the credo of the cabin, of American idealism, of the “meaning of life.” Even Americans who have never read Thoreau hear the echo of this passage in their inner ear or their conscience. Here is Henry:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and
not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
A chapter is devoted to Ernest Carl Oberholtzer. Oberholtzer helped preserve the lands and waterways that became Voyageurs National Park and Boundary Waters Canoe Area. He started building his Rainy Lake cabins in the 1920s. They are lovingly described and photographed, inspiring another generation to the great cabin ethos: natural beauty, simplicity, hospitality and music.
Never far from Cabins of Minnesota is the soul of its subject, the wilderness, and water:
The country around Rainy Lake and Lake of the Woods’ give the illusion that you are the first to set foot on that ground. When you fly over this section of the state in a small plane on a moonlit night, you see perhaps one lonesome narrow road threading its way through the dark woods, but a multitude of lakes, ponds, sloughs, marshes glittering in the moonlight. In the dark spaces between the water live wolves, bears, moose, bobcats, deer, coyotes, more of them than of us, I hope. And cabins.
The places named sing of cultural influences from more optimistic and lyrical times Clearwater Lake, Cry of the Loon Resort, Wigwam Bay, Lake Irene, Koochiching County, Mille Lacs, Rum River.
The book’s size and layout are light and comfortable in the hand. It is printed on acid-free paper and is sturdily stitched. The only unappealing production note is that this very paean to Minnesota ingenuity was printed in China.
Ohman and Holm are born teachers. This book captures the heart and soul of the Minnesota cabin tradition and why such places matter.
