Recently I was invited to go on a three day trip to get away from the normal bustle of daily work - a time to be alone with Christ and retank. My host was a kind member, Stefan. He played his role as host very well.
In 1920 a forester built this one room "house" in which he and his wife lived for 9 months out of the year. There is no running water and the outhouse is part of daily life.
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Spending time at this location is a throwback to a by-gone era - unless you are the unibomber. It is definitely a break from the normal grind of daily life. Cooking food is done open fire, an art that Stefan has mastered. |
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| The owner of the cabin also own acres and acres of forest, which provides the wood that heats the cabin and stokes the fire pit. Not much in the way of hard wood is to be found, but an abundance of pine is available. |
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| Part of our duties were spent downing trees, cutting to an appropriate 3 foot length, stacking the cordwood and storing it for a year - drying it before usage. Wood that had already been stored was then cut into one foot lengths and then split by hand for usage in the cabin's oven. |
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| In that the forest in centuries past belonged to royal land owners, the plots were bordered with stone markers - and each stone carries a special chiseled feature roughly what a brand would look like on cattle in the western US. |
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Staying in the forest with time to talk and contemplate, I watched as local birds showed me their housing. Although I did not get a photo of the colorful little blue bird, amazingly a pair had build a nest in the roots of a tree. Apparently they have meticulously covered all entry points with mud except one small entrance that is only large enough for them to enter and exit. Also, the height off the ground is surprisingly low. |
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Thanks, Stefan, for the kind gesture and the willingness to serve your pastor. I will always be grateful for the generosity. Just a tip: Have you shown kindness to the one that ministers to you spiritually? |