THE CABIN - Bill Herzog

The restorative, healing powers of an old, creaky, moss covered cabin and how it saved one steelheader.

Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got ‘till it’s gone…

If you are a steelheader, born and raised in the Fourth Corner, where steelhead fishing began, you are all too familiar with those words. State of our runs aside, multiple decade anglers can usually pinpoint their best loved location, the place that brought them the most smiles. Could be a friends/relative’s house, could be a marina, a mountain, a campground, usually next to a special body of water. Mine was an old cabin, built just before WWII along the banks of the upper Sol Duc River on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. 

The cabin belonged to my great friend JD Love, who bought the property in the early ‘80s. It was the “guest cabin” to all the friends and who ever was in the area to fish for steelhead. It was certainly not a five-star hotel. The cabin was probably twenty by twenty. The roof had sixty years of moss on it, nearly a foot deep of green that probably was the only thing keeping the Forks area rains out. The cabin was a light blue, never repainted and most of the original color was replaced by green algae and more moss. The porch leaned a good six inches down to the creaky, ready to collapse stairs. The door, when you could shut it, would open on its own. No one dared lean on the wobbly railing around the front porch. We had to deal with at least one chimney fire a winter from the rusty stove. 

The inside is what made the cabin the cabin. As you enter, the fly-tying bench took up a quarter of the area. Three chairs around the bench are where we spent our evenings, tying flies for the next days’ swinging opportunities and sampling the half dozen potent potables visitors brought. The CD player in the corner always had some Grateful Dead, War, Bob Dylan or Mountain Goats playing softly. Next to the bench was a two-foot stack of old school nudie mags, some dating back to the 70s. A three-foot square cork board next to the door was full of photos from Forks rivers from the last thirty years, with old Hot Shots and spoons stuck to the sides. The old stove and a stack of wood made up one side, the other a futon for guests which sometimes folded back, sometimes not. 

The centerpiece of the cabin was right above/next to the tying bench. On a one foot wide by two-foot-high section of warped wall was “The Wall.” Every time we caught a steelhead on a fly, that fly was donated to The Wall. After fifteen or so years, summer and winter, the fly wall grew. At its zenith there was approximately one hundred flies stuck in the wood, each had its own tale to tell. After we hung a fly or two in the evenings after a trip, we would toast the days happenings and re-tell the battles. 

This is where we spent countless hours in anticipation for the next day’s fishing. Nights were usually spent passed out from hiking the rivers all day and possibly imbibing a bit too much each evening. You fell asleep to the sounds of the Sol Duc River just outside the windows and the several million little mice that bombed all over the cabin when things finally got quiet. All those imperfections is what gave the cabin its unique character. 

When I would call JD and tell him I was coming up to fish, I never stayed anywhere but in the cabin. He would always say, “The cabin is all ready for you!” There was always the warm fuzzy you got pulling down the long dirt driveway and seeing the cabin, it was my “escape pod” from work. Little did I know, or was prepared for what was coming and how much this old, worn down, creaky old cabin would play in my future. 

A perfect storm of unfortunate events in the early winter of 1999 sent me off into a spiral of depression I did not believe possible. At my current sales job, the dickhead manager/owner just put a very large commission of mine into his own pocket and told me basically tough shit. I had lost the opportunity to be to take over the night shift of one of Seattle’s major rock stations, beaten out for the gig at the twelfth hour by someone, ironically, from Wenatchee where I would go to live years later. It was my dream job to be on the radio, and I lost it. Two day-apart deaths in my family plus my mother laying on her death bed was just the straw. All this took place in a very short time and my psyche just snapped. This is where my amazing wife, Brenda, stepped in. 

She could see, plus the doctor visits after a full renal nervous breakdown told that I needed some help, pronto, before my crazy ass did something wholly stupid. And yes, that thought was heavy on my crushed mind. She sat next to her broken husband and said, without a second thought, “Why don’t you call JD and ask him if you can spend some time in that cabin you love so much? Go fish, be with your people. Come back to me when you find your smile.” 

I left for Forks and the cabin the next day. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would spend most of February and March there. I remember sitting in my ride as I got to JD’s place, pulling up to the cabin. Just seeing the place broke me down. The light on the porch was like a helping hand. It took a few days just to get right, to get into a rhythm again, to put some tackle together to begin rehab, if you will. 

The more things change, the more they stay the same…there was the evenings of fly tying, hanging out with fellow anglers, always surrounded by the positive, the happy. After a week or so the days started melting into one. JD would come down in the morning, before he met his clients and bring coffee. We would stand outside the cabin and discuss where we would fish that day. That was my biggest concern, thank-fully, where I was going to fish. 

Every day I would wake up when I would wake up. Fix some oatmeal or something easy, lookout the windows of the cabin and watch the Sol Duc go by. I usually went down to the Hoh or lower Bogachiel with my Spey rod, fished without hurry or really caring to find a steelhead. It’s a wonder when hooking a fish is not priority that hookups seem to come easier and with greater frequency. I had some outstanding fishing during those two months, The Wall of flies grew exponentially during my time there. Steelheading was still pretty good at the edge of the century. It didn’t seem to matter how many anglers were around or if the section of river I went to had been fished that day, it seemed I always found a player or two.

After a few months, my mental health reclaimed by the regenerative forces of being on a river, and of course looking for steelhead. You really cannot think of anything else when you are doing this. I came home a new person, new husband, new friend and with a great smile…thanks to the cabin.

I can never thank my friends JD Love and his wife Sandy for letting me stay there. They literally saved my soul.

It went on for many more years, this thing of ours, enjoying the life and times the cabin provided for so many who loved to be there. The loud, drink filled nights, friends stumbling off the tilted porch in the dark to go pee. The fly tying. The music. It was a somewhat mournful time when JD told me they were selling the place and moving to Montana. Our time at the cabin was short, scheduled for removal by the new owners. 

I regret never taking any photos of the cabin, or of our raucous times there. We assumed, like everything, that it would always be there, and why would anyone want a picture of that old place? It’s just the cabin, after all. It is a reminder to always take shots of something other than just gripping a steelhead and smiling. The photos I cherish most are the ones, at the time, that just seemed like a waste of film. We have one—just one—picture of the cabin, appropriately it has my first Spey rod leaning on that ever-so-sloped, ultra-leaky porch awning. My times at the cabin is where I first started to swing flies for steelhead. That pic is now framed and hanging above my head as I type this. I wouldn’t trade a thirty-pound steelhead for it. 

A few days before JD and his family were to move to Montana, we fished for Bogachiel summer runs one last time, then went and hung out where the demolished cabin used to be. It went down as a tired, weak structure should, a little too easy I thought. I stood approximately where we tied so many flies, told so many steelhead stories and tried to drink Scotland dry. You could feel the old energy, seventy years of it, twenty-five just on my end. The ghosts of years putting their hands on our shoulders, saying farewell in silence. 

Most of the wood was removed, a sliver of dull blue laying here and there. Beneath the broken bits of cabin in the black dirt I saw a speck of hot pink. I grabbed it, carefully brushed it off, it was one of our flies from The Wall. I knew exactly which steelhead it caught, and from where. That fly still hangs on the visor of my Jeep. Out of all the sentimental items we accumulated in the cabin, I wish we would have saved the wall of flies. Each one told a story. 

JD was leaving the next day for Montana, saying good-bye to thirty years of guiding Olympic Peninsula steelhead. I moved to Wenatchee a week later. This was an end of an era for both of us. We stood next to where the sloped, creaky porch used to be, where we drank a zillion coffees in the pre-dawn for decades, where we used to weigh our options for the day and shared a smoke. 

“You know,” JD said, “We bought this property thirty-five years ago because it had that cute little cabin right next to the river. My family and I lived in it until the main house was built. I don’t think my life would have gone down the path it did if the cabin wasn’t there.” 

I could not agree more, my friend. 

 

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