A Trip for Dad

I’m only guessing, of course, but I bet if my dad had been alive, he would have enjoyed coming with me this past Thursday when I drove out of Fresno and up into the Sierra mountains in eastern Madera County.

After all, my first stop was in North Fork, where Dad and Mom (right) had spent the first couple of years of their marriage starting in 1934.

That’s where they helped run the general store, and that’s where Dad learned about a book written two decades earlier by the then-famous author Stewart Edward White.

That book was “The Cabin.”  In it, White described how he and Betty — newlyweds — had honeymooned in the mountains above North Fork.  They discovered a meadow they fell in love with and went on to build a summer cabin there.

The Whites spent five summers in that cabin, and in 1911, Stewart — already a prolific author — wrote the book about their experiences.  “The Cabin” received a rave review in the New York Times and went on to become a best-seller.

Thus — the cabin that White wrote about became one of the most famous in the world.

But by the time Mom and Dad arrived in North Fork — the cabin was deteriorating badly.  The Whites had left the meadow for good years earlier and sold the surrounding land to the Forest Service — which did not keep it up.

But Dad visited the cabin site back then — and told me about it, sometime in the 1960’s.  I blew it all off because — well, because I was a teenager and did not much care to hear Dad’s stories from the “early days.”

Yeah.  I was that dumb teenager.

By the time I finally got interested in both White’s book and his cabin — it was a half-century after I’d first heard about them.

A couple of years ago, friends took me to what had been the cabin’s site — deep in a forest above North Fork.

Alas, there was nothing left except stones from what had been the cabin’s chimney.

And even the sign that told visitors what had been there — had deteriorated so much that it was largely unreadable.

But on this past Thursday, I was determined to visit the site one more time — to see what I’d missed on my first visit.

And once again, friends drove me up into the forest for a visit.

It’s a winding journey on several narrow, sometimes-rutted mountain roads.  There are no signs directing anyone to “White’s Cabin” — you either know the way or you don’t. You won’t “run into it” accidentally.

Along the way, we saw the devastation that had been caused by the Creek Fire that broke out on Labor Day weekend in 2020 and torched nearly 400,000 acres. Of course, it will take generations for the burned-out forest to recover. Tragic.

That fire came within yards of the site of what had been White’s cabin.

I never could have found that old cabin site — though this was my second visit in two years.

Even the road that gets you closest to the site is far enough away that you’d need a guide to walk through the forest with you to find the cabin ruins.  There is no “path” from the road to the cabin.

But with a little help from my friends — actually, a load of help — there I was, again.

If you know the story about White’s book and his wonderful written anecdotes about life in the meadow over those summers, you can’t help but feel sorry that no one preserved the cabin.

Or that no one spruced up the sign that had told those who got to the site what they were seeing. When we had visited a couple of years ago, the sign’s lettering had faded so much it was almost unreadable.

At that time, I published an extended essay — a small book, really — using the term “faded legacies” to describe what had happened to White and his cabin and that sign.

It was my effort to keep alive the memory of both this once world-famous author and the cabin he had written so beautifully about.

This past Thursday, the three of us — my friends and I — walked around the old cabin site.  We looked down the hill at the meadow Stewart and Betty had enjoyed all those summers so long ago.

The meadow’s growth is different now, as are, of course, the trees surrounding it.

But we clearly got the idea of how it had appeared to the Whites.  And Dad would have, too, if he had been up there with us.

And I found myself wondering what he would have remembered about that meadow from that one day he had visited the deteriorating cabin back in the 1930’s.

Yes, Dad would have been disappointed that only chimney rocks are left from the cabin.  He also would have been disappointed that hardly anyone remembers — or cares about — Stewart Edward White.

But there’s one thing I know Dad would have enjoyed seeing on Thursday.

Seems that someone came along and carefully re-lettered the words that had been carved on what was left of the old sign (right).

They used white paint to go over that faded lettering — even keeping the grammatical errors that had been originally carved into the wood.  

Much of the sign has fallen apart, but what was left was enough — after the repainting — to give visitors an idea of what had been there.

I’m pretty sure Dad would have been proud that someone had taken the time and effort to painstakingly do that re-lettering.

I am, too.