Cabin Living

  • Cabin in Wisconsin where I practiced survival skills for many years. Cabin in Wisconsin where I practiced survival skills for many years. My log cabin in Central Wisconsin where I practiced wilderness survival skills for 13 years.
  • My little log cabin in the winter where I got a lot of winter survival skills in. My little log cabin in the winter where I got a lot of winter survival skills in. Winter at my log cabin in Wisconsin.
  • My tiny 12x18 cabin in the summer. My tiny 12x18 cabin in the summer. This is where I'd practice my primitive survival skills all year.
  • Another long winter in my log cabin during the Wisconsin winter. Another long winter in my log cabin during the Wisconsin winter. The cabin in the winter after a warm spell.

Homesteading log cabin I built with hand tools in Northern Wisconsin. Cabin living at it's best!
This is the cabin I lived in for many years. Note the solar system, I put that up during my 4th year there.

I built a cabin using only hand tools and lived there alone for 12 years, 11 months and 10 days. It was by far one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. Since I was a kid, I envied Henry David Thoreau’s time living in his cabin. When I grew up, I decided to give it a try.

One of my favorite quotes from Walden about cabin living is:

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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.

Thoreau spent a little over 2 years living in his cabin, and that’s all I planned to spend in my cabin. But, I loved the solitude so much that I ended up living there for 13 years.

henry david thoreau's cabin near Walden pond
Henry David Thoreau’s experience in this cabin near Walden Pond was part of my inspiration to live alone in the woods.

The depth of what I learned about building, about myself, and about the rhythm of the woods is almost indescribable.

But, on these pages I’m going to teach you as much as I can about cabin living and building your own cabin in the woods.

Cabin Living

Preparation for building a log cabin. Before I built the cabin I had to find a place to put it, get the government’s permission, clear an area out, and get the logs ready. This page has those articles.