The Cabin on Trails End

My obsession with cabins started when I was 19 years old. I was living in a one stoplight town named Smiths Station in South Central Alabama. At the time I was living in a single wide trailer in the back of my daddy’s lot with my then fiancé. I worked in the garden department at the local K-mart in the neighboring town of Phenix City. We had been living there for just over two years, moving there from the plains of Colorado.

I was about seven months along in my pregnancy with my first daughter. I had a few items but was not nearly as ready as I should have been considering I was bringing a baby into the world in just two months. See my fiancé, Deke liked to party a lot and most of our money went to support that cause. One thing that I had been trying to find was a crib that we could afford, but they were all way out of budget. If I pressed Deke too much about buying baby items it would cause an argument, so I just kept quiet to him. My stepmom and a couple other ladies in the neighborhood were finding a lot of cute items at yard sales and I was hopeful one of them would find me a crib before my little one arrived.

I was at work running the register in the garden department when an equally pregnant lady with a toddler in her buggy came through my line. We started talking about the little lives blooming in our bellies. We conversed about cravings, sleepless nights, heartburn, and all the other fun things that come along with creating humans. A few more customers got in my line behind her, so we stopped visiting and I finished checking her out. I wished her well and moved on to my next customer in line.

Shortly after she walked out of the store she came back in and stopped behind my register. I asked her if everything was okay, and she assured me it was. She said she just had something to ask me when I finished checking out the customers in my line. She stood there while I checked out three more customers. Once my line was cleared, I turned to her and she said, “I hope I am not being to forward, but something is telling me to ask you if you have a crib for your baby.” I of course protected my ego and said we haven’t picked one out yet. She must have seen through my guise as she went on to tell me that she has a crib that she is no longer using and would love to see it go to a good home. She shared that it was the crib she used for her first baby, and it was in good shape. I asked her how much she was selling it for, and she responded, “I don’t want to sell it to you, I want to give it to you.” I was ecstatic inside but held my cool as I accepted her offer. She gave me her address and told me she would have it ready for me to pick up that Friday evening.

I was so excited to tell Deke when he got home from work. He wasn’t nearly as excited as me. He thought we didn’t need charity. This time though I held my ground and told him I really wanted to get the crib. I shared that if we didn’t like it, we could just get rid of it. He agreed to take me Friday night to go pick up the crib.

Friday night came and Deke wanted to back out, but I talked him into keeping his word and he begrudgingly took me, see I wasn’t confident enough to drive yet. The address was about 30 minutes away from where we lived. The drive was beautiful. The path to her house was taking us into the deep woods of Alabama. Everything was lush and green. The pine trees were so tall they appeared to almost reach the blue sky above. I was so full of joy, even Dekes complaining couldn’t bring me down. We found the address on the outside of the mailbox and turned into a wooded driveway. In front of me was one of the most beautiful houses I had ever seen. It was a real-life log cabin just sitting there all magnificently in the middle of the woods. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes as I had never seen a log cabin in real life. I asked Deke if he was going to go with me and his response was, “this is your thing, I didn’t want no charity.”

I jumped out of the car and slowly walked to the door trying to absorb all the beauty around me. I knocked, Kathy the lady that I had met previously at K-mart opened the door. She greeted me with a hug, and I gushed about how much I loved her home. She told me it was her dream house. She led me to where the crib was. She had gotten it all cleaned up and even adorned it with a big red bow. She was right, it was a beautiful crib. It was dark wood with decorative rails and sides. I felt like I had just won the lottery.

I didn’t visit for too long as I knew Deke would get mad if I kept him waiting. I let her know he was waiting in the car, and she called her husband to help me bring the crib out. When we got to the car Deke was nice enough to pop the trunk for us. Kathy’s husband loaded the crib in the trunk and closed the trunk. Kathy gave me another big squeeze, we wished each other well, I thanked her for the beautiful gift and then I got in the car. I recall her and her husband standing in front of that beautiful log cabin waving to me as Deke and I turned the car around and headed back to the main road. This would be the last time I would see Kathy, but the impact she had on my life would live on forever. While I didn’t say it out loud, because Deke didn’t appreciate my lofty dreams, I dreamed a little dream. I said to myself, in my head of course, that one day I wanted to be like Kathy and have a cabin in the woods too.

We got home and Deke carried the crib in and sat it against the wall in the room where we were getting ready for the baby. It sat there and sat there. I tried to figure out how to put it together, but I couldn’t figure it out by myself, and Deke kept blowing it off.

It was baby time, after 12 hours of labor I welcomed my first daughter my first love Jordan Renea into world on July 18th, 1997. I stayed at the hospital for three days. Deke was supposed to have the crib together when we got home, but it never happened. He said that some of the parts were missing. Luckily my stepmom had found a pack-n-play at a yard sale that had a bassinet attachment. That is what we ended up using for Jordan’s bed when she wasn’t in the bed with me.

Times got even tougher after Jordan was born. Dekes addiction grew along with his anger. The memories of Kathy’s kindness and my dream of a log cabin got pushed to the back of my mind.

I lived in 21 different places over the next 15 years. Some of these places were with Deke or living with family. Other places were homeless and domestic violence shelters. A couple moves were to transitional housing programs or section 8 rentals. It was a lot. I didn’t dream during this phase of life. Survival was the goal and there wasn’t much time left for anything else. Blind faith carried me as I put one foot in front of the other until the next phase of life came into view.

I had finally made it off public assistance and was renting a nice two-story house with my daughters in Arvada Co, a suburb of Denver. I worked in financial services and life was pretty good. I eventually met a wonderful man named Matt and we started dating. He lived 15 minutes away and we hit it off immediately. I guess you could say we were two like peas in a pod. He was living alone with his two sons; I was living with my two daughters. We both worked 10-15 hours a week of overtime, as raising 2 kids on one income was tight. After a year and a half of dating on July 21, 2014, Matt asked me to marry him on the banks of lake McConaughey while we were vacationing in Nebraska. I said yes. We celebrated our engagement in Sturges the following month and discussed possibly looking for a house together.

Matt and I looked at one mountain house. It was beautiful with spacious views of the Rocky Mountains. We put an offer on it, but luckily it did not work out. I was on my lunch break at work and scrolling through Zillow when I found an old log cabin for sale in the woods of Colorado. In that moment, I thought of Kathy, her kindness, her beautiful log home and my lofty dream to one day have my own cabin in the woods. I sent the listing to Matt, and he was just as intrigued as me. Long story short, 3 months later we were moving into that cabin in the woods in the middle of a blizzard.

The cabin had been built in 1925 and had some additions added in the late 1950’s that increased the 1-bedroom fishing cabin to 2800 sq ft (about the area of a tennis court) home. It had 3 decks, 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, a sunroom, a loft and even a guest cabin. I dubbed it my mountain mansion. The interior looked like it had not been changed since the early 70’s. It needed a lot of love that is for sure, but we were happy to love it. Matt said it was going to be our forever home, and he was never going to move again. My response was” I never say never.” We spent the next 6 plus years rebuilding that old mountain mansion together. It was a labor of love and a busy time in my life. Not only were we rehabbing the cabin, but I was doing some extensive work on Amy, the person. I enrolled in Regis University and started working towards my undergrad degree in business. This period of my life was a special time. As we rebuilt that old beat-up run-down cabin, I was being rebuilt too.

In this home Matt and I made together, I started writing again, which has always been a passion of mine. Granted it was mostly for college courses and work, nonetheless it reignited the spark that had been stomped out so many years before. My humanities classes really made me dig deep and look at the many bumpy broken roads I had traveled. The spirit of understanding came over me as I started to look at my journey in a new light. As I remembered Kathy, I now knew that encounter was not about the crib but about awaking a dream in me for a better tomorrow paved with giving and gratitude. I realized that as I traveled those broken roads, with each step I took, I was leaving behind generational trauma, breaking chains. I was also fulfilling another dream I had held since I was little and that was to be a good mom. By me taking the hard road, walking it with gratitude and conviction, I was ensuring that my daughters would never travel that same path I had endured. I was casting different shadows than the ones that were cast for me, and as a result my daughters knew that this world was there’s for the taking and they needed to take a backseat to no one. I showed them that with perseverance dreams really do come true.

Before the dream of owning a cabin in the woods, I had dreamed another dream and that was to come home one day, and for me home is Florida. I was born in Tampa and lived here until I was 13 years old. We lived in extreme poverty in a rundown trailer park. Myself and all the other kids around where I grew up were not in good homes. Many of our parents struggled with addiction and we were surrounded by people who had given up on making a positive impact in this world, which is never a good thing. When we moved away when I was 13, I vowed to one day come back to my beautiful exotic home state and live a different kind of life. I was on a mission to show the world that I was more than the little girl with a brutally broken home and maybe even inspire others who are stuck in this life because they were being led by the blind.

When Covid hit in 2020 the housing market in our area went crazy. We had real estate agents calling us left and right wanting to see if we were open to selling. Everyone wanted out of the congested city and wanted to run to the hills. For fun one night we started looking at the value of our home and let’s just say we were in a pretty good spot should we decide to sell considering all the work we had done to bring this mountain mansion back to life. We started talking about moving to Florida. I naturally set up a search for log cabins and found quite a few. As a kid our family visited Hernando and Citrus County several times for mini vacations and those memories are some of the brightest spots in my childhood. So, Matt and I ended up narrowing our search to these two areas. We originally placed an offer of a beautiful cabin in Brooksville, but someone outbid us. One morning before Matt left for work, I was scrolling through Zillow and came across a log cabin on a wooded lot in Floral City, FL. I showed Matt the listing as he was heading out the door for work. He noticed the address and said, “hmmm trails end road, maybe this one is our trails end.” Tears came to my eyes, and I sent the listing to our agent to learn more.

March of 2021, we hopped on a plane and headed to Florida for our inspection period for the purchase of this little cabin. One of the things I always loved about my home state was the beautiful Oak trees. I remember telling Matt I wanted a place where the trees arched over the road and kissed creating a tunnel of sorts to drive through. When we turned on Orange Ave in Floral City and traveled down the Historic Ave of the Oaks towards our new cabin in the woods, I knew I was in the right place.

We bought the cabin. And went home to Colorado to sell our mountain mansion. It sold quite timely and just two months later we were on the road, and I was coming home. It was a hard choice as my daughters decided to stay in Colorado. They were proud of me and wanted me to chase my dreams. I knew that they too had dreams and I was confident that the foundation I had raised them on would be strong enough to see them through even if I was physically many miles away.

The plan was that I would continue to work in finance at TIAA (Teachers Insurance Annuity Association) from home while Matt would take the first year off to rehab another run-down cabin I just had to have. It’s funny how life sometimes has other plans for you.

Once we started to settle in our new home, I learned that the internet service available in Floral City was nonexistent back on Trails End Road with the exception of satellite. We had the satellite installed. The morning, I was to return to work I learned that the satellite powered Wi-Fi was not fast enough to get me through the security firewall for TIAA’s system. I ended up having to resign.

Now neither Matt nor I had a job, but luckily for us we had some savings from the sale of the mountain mansion we had planned to use to rehab our new cabin. I still had all my securities licenses, and Matt held his CDL, so we were employable and could have found work quite easily. Embracing the dreamer in me I said, you know Matt we could continue to work for the man, or we could try something different. I reached out to a business broker inquiring about a trailer park/ RV resort in Ocala. We probably could have gotten it financed and made a go of it. But the overhead was not something I wanted to deal with. Next, we investigated buying a nursery, after some research we decided against that one too. The business broker then sent us a list of all the small businesses for sale in the area. We sat on the front porch swing of our new cabin home and looked through the list of opportunities available.

We came across a listing for a small advertising magazine. I read the listing out loud, and Matt said, “that one doesn’t sound too bad.” “I could do the delivery part, do you think you could do the other parts?” Like the little engine that could I said, “I think I can.” As we chatted about the possibilities Matt started telling a joke, that is just his nature. The joke he told went something like this….

There was a guy in his house, and it was raining like crazy, the storm waters were rising, and they were evacuating the area. The rescue team showed up on a boat and told him to come with them. The guy responded I’m a Christian god will save me. The waters continued to rise. Another boat came to the guy and said get in and we will help you. The guy responded I’m a Christian god will save me. The flood waters continued to rise, and the guy eventually ended up on the roof. A helicopter came and told the guy, come on, I’m going to save you. The guy responded I am a Christian god will save me. The guy ended up drowning and as he was entering heaven god asked him what he was doing there. The guy responded why didn’t you save me. God responded I sent two boats and a helicopter.

I took this as a sign and looked at Matt and said, “I think we should buy it.” It was the beginning of June 2021 when I went to meet with the owner of the little advertising magazine to inquire about buying it. Long story short, we became the official owners on June 29th, 2021. As I write today, we have owned the paper for just over three years. It is a dream I never knew I had. In the three years we have had the little advertising magazine, we have transformed it into a community paper. In all my travels I have never felt so at home. This paper has awakened the spirit of community in my soul, something I never had the privilege of feeling before. Today as is sit in my very own cabin in the woods I think back to Kathy, the crib, and her cabin in the woods. I now realize that when Kathy walked through my checkout line that warm spring day in South Central Alabama so many years before it was about so much more than a crib or a cabin in the woods. It was about inspiring me to dream a little dream.

About the Author:

Amy Amdahl is the publisher of Central Florida’s Most Fun Community Paper, the Peddler’s Post. She is an ambassador against domestic violence. She has a heart for public speaking and sharing her journey with the world. This story is her first published story, originally published in the “Spirits of the Nature Coast” Anthology written by the members of the Citrus Writers of Florida. Get your copy here: Spirits of The Nature Coast – Kindle edition by Writers, Citrus. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.