Growing Up in the Big Woods

When people ask Lynn Shafer about her cabin, they usually assume it’s on a lake. “No,” she says, “it’s in the Big Woods.” And that’s only the beginning of the getaway’s evolving story.

Lynn and her husband, Dean, began looking for some undeveloped real estate in the early 1980s. The land had to be within two hours of their Stillwater home and allow Dean, an avid hunter, ample opportunity to indulge his passion. They found, bought, and began camping on the land they wanted in Pine County, between Stillwater and Duluth. Dean, a 3M engineer, built the first building—an outhouse, complete with picture window—as a birthday present for Lynn. Five years later, they bought, sight unseen, a ten-by-twenty-foot former motel unit and had it hauled to their site. That was their cabin in the Big Woods for the next five years.

Needing more space for their growing family and their friends, the Shafers found and bought a gem of a log cabin on Wisconsin’s Namekagon River sixty miles away. Between midnight and 4 a.m., their moving crew eased the structure, including a stone fireplace, along deserted country roads and across the old Danbury bridge with an inch to spare on each side. More recently, the Shafers have purchased additional land at the site and their son, Dan, built a cabin. Daughter Lisa has taken over the newly remodeled motel unit and attached a porch.

Meanwhile, Dean has outfitted the log cabin with a new kitchen. Now retired, he has taken up metalsmithing and crafted a fine chandelier to complement the handsome accouterments purchased at local antiques shops. What’s next? The Shafers say stay tuned. 

Dale Mulfinger teaches architecture at the University of Minnesota and is a partner at Sala Architects in the Twin Cities. His third cabin book will be published by The Taunton Press in 2008.