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About a third of the way into its swing path, the bottom of the door caught against the floor, indicating that either the door, or the floor, or both, were not level. The inside smelled like a good scotch, wet earth, and punky wood, which didn't bode well for the hopefully dry interior of a house or cabin. Even with three windows, there was not much light inside. The floor was mostly dirty plywood. In the corner were scraps of even dirtier linoleum. Some of the walls were covered haphazardly with cedar boards that had at one point been painted a shade of pink whose name, if you were to come across the swatch at a hardware store, would likely be Pepto Bismol but Gray Somehow. Where the walls weren't covered, exposed hunks of pink fiberglass insulation hung loosely from within the cabin's framing.

Beneath two of the windows was a small cabinet that I didn't dare open for fear of getting ambushed by a startled woodland creature. Opposite the cabinet, a crude ladder led me to a dark, cramped loft. The loft floor appeared to be made of more plywood, held on by a parade of rusty, half-driven nails. There was a window opposite the ladder, but I was too unsure of the date of my last tetanus shot to consider making the hands-and-knees journey to see if it was operable.

Back on the main level, I tried to picture where things might go, what work might have to get done. New flooring, new wall coverings, and fixing the door or the floor or both for starters. I'd need to cover the deck, figure out a place to poop, and fill in the swamp of a driveway. That was just off the top of my head. In reality, it was a dark, musty, disgusting hole. There were spiders everywhere, skittering around the floor like extras in a Godzilla movie. It was the sort of place where you wish your shoes had shoes. There was no electricity, no water, no plumbing, no wires, no bathroom, no lights, no Wi-Fi, no cell service. If you counted gravity and rain, the total number of utilities would have been two. It was a wooden box with a roof and a door. It was perfect.

Like a new parent with a hideous baby, my eyes glazed over the flaws. At that moment, I only saw what I wanted. Weeks later, I would see the holes in the floor. I would see that not a single support beam was level or straight. I would see the gaps in the siding. The rotting rim joist failing to support an entire corner of the cabin would eventually catch my eye, and a militia of mosquitoes would soon welcome me to the neighborhood. But I noticed none of it then. I didn't see that there were signs of a leaking roof or of a rampant mouse infestation. I overlooked the swamp of a driveway and the tetanus-riddled loft and the old wood and the bent nails. Instead, I saw the flushed faces of friends after a day of snowshoeing. I saw boots drying by a woodstove and a pot of soup warming on the fire. I saw summer days, the car filled with new wood, a trunkful of tools. I saw only potential, and I saw a version of myself that was capable of making it better. Not great, necessarily, but better. Most importantly, for the first time in a while, I felt the pull of something a bit bigger, a grand pursuit, a thing to dive into that was different and new and exciting. I could buy a cabin and fix it up. Why not?

As I locked up the door and replaced the key, a new wave of anticipation began to grow inside me, one that obscured the meth houses and scrap-filled yards from my vision on the way out. Instead, my eyes belonged only to the waterfall, the trees, and the mountain, and I took them all in while wondering how much a circular saw might cost.

CHAPTER TWO

DOING THE DEED

The drive home sobered me up a bit. Reflecting on the sexy-cool cabin-fix-it-guy dream as I waded through traffic on my way home, I admitted to myself a few potential problems. Small problems. For example, I didn't know how to fix up a cabin. I could hang a picture and put IKEA furniture together with the best of them, but I hadn't held a saw since my adolescent days building tree forts when I considered sap to be a fundamental component of a structure's integrity. As such, I was also a poor judge of the cabin's current condition. It was either a few swift kicks from crumbling to the ground, or it was merely the victim of many aesthetic shortcomings. My total lack of experience made it impossible to tell.

Beyond the cabin, there were other issues. The neighborhood and its gallery of horrors were certainly not inviting. The cabins on Wit's End were charming in a dystopian sort of way, but the abandonment was troubling. It was clear others had the same idea as I did, to create a cozy escape in the woods. But the evidence indicated their dreams were unanimously abandoned. I worried there was a reason.

I also had to admit how far I'd come from the initial idea of a cabin, an idea partially born out of a desire to plant a flag of responsibility, to show others or maybe just prove to myself that I was doing more with my life than just sitting at a desk churning out marketing emails. It felt absurd to think that a leaky, moss-covered box in the woods was just the thing to propel me into the alum of adulthood. Even so, there was something about it that felt right. When I got back into town, I decided to play it slow with Tony. I'd take a few days to decide if I even wanted it, then I'd offer him $5,000 and definitely not pay more than $6K. I dialed the number. He picked up after the second ring.