Ah, the Peace!

Shotgun cleaned and shells resting in their cases.  Feeders up, trail cameras ready, and bow sighted in.  Yes, it is just about the time of year when hunters’ wives become hunters’ widows.

Realizing this by looking at the calendar and the trips planned ahead, I explained to my wife this last weekend would be hers.  Just a husband/wife getaway.  I suggested to her for us to get a small quaint cabin in the mountains and separate ourselves from reality.  She bought in.  In fact, she was all in.  From the moment I mentioned it she was looking for places to stay.

Now the difference between men and women has been documented for ages.  Not physically, but mentally.  This set up of this trip was much the same way a shopping trip evolves.  When I (men) think about shopping for clothes for instance, I (us men) can go into the store, check the size of a pair of jeans, and pick them up.  Then I (again, us men) walk over to the clearance rack, look for the section with the right size shirt, grab one, and then I’m off to the register.

My wife (women) handles things differently.  She looks for the clothes she likes.  She spots something that really catches her eye.   She picks it up and realizes it is the wrong size.  She puts it up and will search the store for another that is the same.  If I ran a clothing store, I would put all the same style clothes in the same area.  Evidently the women’s sections are not arranged that way.  Or at least that is the way I picture it as my wife works rack to rack like a bumble bee on a bed of flowers.

The worst part about shopping in this fashion is not the part of having to endure the flight of the bumble bee.  It is having to hear all the way home how she could not find anything after shopping from dawn to dusk yet somehow I was able to collect an entire wardrobe in less time than it takes to count one, two, thr…  See what I mean!

So my wife is investigating cabin after cabin, all the while asking how far this is from that.  Finally, I give in.  I take the busiest 2 minutes and 15 seconds of my day and send her a couple of links to cabin locations mentioning a couple of choices from each link that I like.  Now it was up to her to figure out from there.

We agreed on the cabin, and hit the asphalt toward our destination.  We put together a list of about three things we would be interested in doing while staying on our getaway.   And we decided we would not be disappointed if we did neither.  Rest and relaxation was the main goal.  That is why the cabin I chose had a kitchen out on the porch!  A little camping out without camping out.

Yep, my truck is as long as the cabin!

The cabin was all of 100 square feet of non-air conditioned space.  Hey, we are in the mountains.  We don’t need AC.  A fan and the outside air will do.  We did have television.  Three channels.  All three were PBS (to be fair, one PBS channel was actually PBS Kids).   But, to me, that was fine.  In fact, it was fine to my wife too. 

We broke away one evening for dinner.   Juicy burgers sitting under an umbrella while listening to a banjo.  We didn’t have to paddle faster either.  Everybody had their teeth.  Everybody had shoes on.  Peaceful.

Now what has this got to do with the outdoors?  Everything.  This was the outdoors.  Simple cabin, simple amenities, simple life.  Peaceful. 

We decided we may, yes may, invite the kids along and go there again.  It won’t be as peaceful.  But you can’t lock them up in the closet but so many weekends.  My daughter told me she would call Social Security next time I did that.  I told her it would be quicker to just call 611.  So much for peacefulness.