Christmas in the cabin

My break had a rough start-due to snow and ice I landed at 1am in Denver, made it my friend's house at 2:30am and found out later in the morning I had dropped my phone in the snow. But thankfully everything improved from there! The phone was found, the skies cleared and soon I was snowshoeing into our family cabin on Casper Mountain to celebrate Christmas. Sadly none of my other siblings could make it-my sisters were with their in-laws and my brother had to work. Nonetheless, my parents and I kept our family traditions-Fondue Christmas Eve dinner, stockings Christmas morning, and Red and Green Breakfast.

Maintaining our traditions requires new efforts when celebrating inside a log cabin lacking the normal amenities of a house.

1-Supplies

whatever you want at the cabin, you need to be willing to carry in for a mile through the snow. Typically we load up a few sleds and pull them behind us while snowshoeing.

2-Water

This requires puring fresh gas into our generator and filling up cartons with ice cold water as fast as possible to keep your hands from freezing. The ground is cold enough that the water that spills gathers at your feet instead of soaking into the earth. We have plumbing inside but the pipes are too cold to pump water through in the winter. This is our water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, etc.

3. Heat

It was 10 degrees outside when we arrived, and 12 degrees inside the cabin. Our wood burning stove was our indoor heating and also used to heat up water occasionally. It was idyllic to curl up on the couch with a good book and warm up after a good hike through the woods. The fire and candles also provided our lighting during our fondue dinner.

4. Bathroom

after we shoveled a clearing into the cabin and packed down a path to the outhouse all you needed were slippers and a warm jacket on your way back and forth

5. Baking

Our family loves bread, preferably homemade. At such a high elevation though rising takes a long time, and a few prayers.

6. Generators

we set up a wind generator and solar panel to power an electric outlet for our light (singular) inside and to charge our phones (otherwise we might have to use flares to communicate)

7. Whipping Cream

It took a while but eventually I made whipping cream from scratch for our crepes. thankfully the other red and green elements of our breakfast were prepared more easily.

Was it worth this extra effort? Yes!

Christmas was wonderful. It has snowed 30in in less than a day on the mountain so we had fun sledding, snowshoeing, and cross country skiing the next few days. I got to sleep in, read books, watch movies, and play games. It was nice to go into "kid" mode around my parents-they helped pay for me to come out, made me meals, asked what I wanted to do, bought me treats (cheesecake), my mom even cut my hair despite doing it outside the cabin in the cold! It was also refreshing to not think about school-studying or teaching-for a few days. I met several of my parents' friends and one couple actually served each of us a roasted hen for one meal. Many of their friends are my age, which i think is there way of compensating for us kids being so far away. Christmas is always full of memories and i am grateful I could add a few more this time around.