When it comes to a great deal, Virgin Mobile doesn't play around introducing our new symplan price locked at fifteen euro month for life with unlimited data, calls and texts and ninety nine percent coverage. Switch today at Virginmedia dot Ie Virgin Media It's playtime.
TCNZ supply fifteen europer month locked in while a Virgin Mobile customer twelve month contract include the limited data, standard calls and texts. All Irish networks off for ends. February eighteenth, twenty twenty six. See Virgin Media dot e.
Hi There twenty twenty four. Ali here to say this is a cozy encore of an episode that is a pure delight, such a treat. I love it, one of my faves, and it's woodsy, it's chill, it's cozy. We recorded it a few years back, but I've added in some updates. Okay, enjoy.
Oh hey, it's that friend who can't sit at a diner table without making modular sculptures with the half and half creamers. Can't not do it. Ali warret back with another episode of nomologies. Okay, but before we hit the road, let's make a pit stop at thank Youville to say thanks to all the folks supporting this podcast on Patreon. I literally could not make the show without you. Thank you to all the folks wearing ologies merch on your actual physical bodies and talking up the show to your
fam while you make pies. Thank you to everyone who, for zero dollars rates and subscribes and leaves the reviews for me to read, because you know I do like a lady creep, and then I read you one aloud, such as this fresh one from Crazy Dog Mom twelve twenty seven, who compared me to a gently excited Richard Simmons, but for science instead of high kicks, and said that I'll teach you about all sorts of things, especially things
that you didn't think you'd find interesting. Here's looking at you, ticks, they say. Also, thank you fabulous with four a's for the review. You have my permission to cry in the car now on the way to work. Okay, cabinology, who howboy howdy? Let me say right now, I love cabins. I think I'm obsessed with them, like I look for cheap deal to rent them. I have dreams about them. I pinterest them. I don't pinterest anything. I covet them.
I admire them, and in fact, this past week I found a photo in my phone from five years ago. I took of one of this guest's books without even knowing who he was or that I would meet him. I follow many hashtag cabin porn instagrams, which has everything to do with cabins, literally nothing to do with naked people. I see pictures of cabins that I want to hug too hard, like something cute that you'd squeeze to the point of peril. So let's dive into a subject I
could not be more excited about. Okay, So the word cabin comes from the Latin for hut and ps cabana is related. How did I never realize that?
Duh?
Wow?
Okay. So cabinology is a relatively new but established term. It was coined in relation to this ologist's work and career. I first became aware of this ology blissfully enough actually, while in a lodge in the wilds of Montana. It was the summer of twenty seventeen. I was surrounded by
my huge, weird family that I love. In side note, my dad is one of eleven kids and so the Ward family reunions the roughly half the size of like a summer music festival theraugh party, and I was drinking and evening margarita out of a chipped coffee mug and the sounds of my elders crushing each other in a pinacle game. Two tables over. I thumbed through this outdoorsy magazine. I saw the byline of this very guest touning himself
as a cabinologist. It was like hot damn. I vowed to myself, I will find this cabinologist when I finally launched that ologies podcast in my future, and I will interview him. And so indeed I did, and you were about to listen to it. The stuff dreams are made of. So I made my way to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where his headquarters of his architecture from art. It's Sala, which he said means special room in Italian, and it also stands
for the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. So I went up some breezy stairs to his crisp downtown office filled with light wood and clean lines, high ceilings, a lot of airy white, and we cabin chatted. So we cover what is a cabin? When does a cabin just become a house? And why are they so cozy? And what makes cabins horror flick fodder? How does a summer cabin visit different than a winter one? How do you build one? What about those weird franking cabins built out
of old stuff from a bunch of different buildings. How big should the windows be and which way should they face? How do you even design a cabin? And in all caps bold italics, why are cabins the best? So come watch the sunset, drag chair to the fire pit, pour a mug of whatever's handy, and breathe In an episode with architect, author expert and a warm, bright lantern of a person, cabinologist Dale Mulfinger, and I might make you
scooch into these just a little bit more. Yeah, these are like stage mics, so they're like, get on up in it. I know you are a cabinologist.
I am a cabinologist.
It was anointed upon me by an external person, actually a radio personality, who, upon hearing that I was researching cabins with students at the university, he announced on the radio that I must be a cabinologist. So I consider myself having an instantaneous PhD.
How long ago is that? Oh?
That was probably about fifteen years ago.
Were you like, well, I'm changing my business cards.
That's it. Yeah.
I adopted it immediately. I've been using it since, and I wrote a book called cabin after it. And I always credit this person who you know, who gave me that name. I didn't invent it for myself.
Quick aside, credit goes to Minnesota garage logic radio host Joe Sachery for dropping that sword so so many years ago. Now, as for Dale's bibliography, it's extensive. So between designing cabins, he's also managed to churn out a bunch of books, including The Cabin Inspiration for a Classic American Getaway, The Getaway Home, Family Cabin Inspiration for Camps, Cottages, and Cabins Cabinology, a Handbook to your Private Hideaway. So in his author
bio he is credited as a cabinologist. The dude has earned it. You've been a cabinologist for you know, at least fifteen years. But how long have you been a cabinologist in practice, not just entitle.
Well, probably about thirty years ago. As a part of my architectural practice, which we designed residential homes, I was asked to do my first cabin design. And I realized then that I didn't grow up. Although I grew up in cabin world, I'm Minnesota and Wisconsin, I didn't grow up with a cabin of my family background, so I had not spent much time there. And as I might often do, when I get asked to design something I'm
not used to, I try and do some research. And in this instance, I thought, well, it'd be fun to
do some research with my students at the university. So I hustled a few students over to do a summer class, and the essence of the summer class was, well, let's go out into cabin land and every student and in myself included, would have to document ten cabins, and out of that ten cabins, we would say which cabin feels more cabin like than any of the rest and why, and so as I was telling them, search for the quintessential cabin. So we did that, and we I think
learned a little bit along that process. And a good friend of mine, who had was editor of a local magazine, said, well, if you find anything interesting in this process, why don't you write an article in my magazine? So I wrote my first article and then I wrote my second article, in third and fourth and ultimately seventy two articles.
Oh my god, over twelve years.
Yeah, always researching, and so these were little brief vignettes about some cabin that interested me for some reason. So vertical log We're all familiar with horizontal log cabins, but all of a sudden there I noticed some that I have vertical logs, which turns out that it's an old
French trappers method. So coming into Minnesota, in the northern part of the country, in northern Wisconsin, you have French trappers who made quick cabins, and the vertical log technique allowed them essentially single handedly to make a simple shelter.
Okay, so side note. I looked these up and apparently vertical log cabins are also easier to build because you can use a bunch of ten foot tall logs up and down instead of having to find and drag perfectly straight twenty to forty foot logs to lay horizontally. Now, in addition to vertical logs just being more slimming than
horizontal logs, they were also tested by time. So before the French fur trappers traped about harvesting beavers and such, indigenous folks like the Eric tribes and the Chinook peoples had been building vertical plank houses out of Cedar and the Pacific Northwest for thousands of years.
They knew what was up and that tradition sustained itself for a while. So, you know, finding out why for vertical log who did it that? You know, all those things are fun. It's fun to see somebody turn a building that you wouldn't expect to be a cabin into a cabin, a church or a small church or a school or whatever, a box car, train car, a caboose, you know. So that so a lot of cabins are inventive as to somebody's got a crazy idea and they say, oh, that'd be fun as a cabin, and so they just
try it. Metal containers, buildings.
So Dale explained two things that separate cabins from houses or one. Cabins typically don't have garages, and the master bedrooms don't usually have own suite bathrooms. So rather than hide away in your big bedroom using your toilet away from the rest of the family, all the bedrooms tend to branch off a main living space, so people can spend this time in nature bonding together and being lovingly in each other's business.
So privacy is not a particularly big issue when it.
Can tell me a little bit about square footage. Can you have a two thousand square foot cabin? Yes, okay, you can't. Sure, So what makes it a cabin?
I think what makes it a cabin are some of its attributes, how it flows, whether it captures views or things that are important to the land that you're connected to. But yes, you can have a larger structure that is a cabin, maybe because you're gathering a lot of people there. So my last book that I wrote was called The Family Cabin, and it probably has projects in it that range from four hundred square feet to twenty five hundred
square feet practically. And some cabins are created for extended family. So I have one for two sisters. They're each married, so they have husbands. They each have four kids. So now we're talking about whatever that is twelve people, Graham and Grandpa show up, there's fourteen. You can't do that in a four hundred square foot structure. So you need more space, more place for the activities of those youth as they're growing and changing and they're eventually bringing the
boy scout trip with them or whatever. So yes, cabins can be of quite a variety of sizes. At some point, when they get too large, we might call them a lodge.
Oh, I thought about that.
The family lodge.
I wonder if there's a logology out there there?
You got it, somebody's going to have to step into the void.
Okay.
Side note, I found one record for logology from nineteen sixty one, and I wanted to tell you about it. It's from the University of Montana, when the student union gathering center was called the Lodge and logology was deemed by students the most popular course in sport on campus.
One student said the most popular phases of the logology course are smoking one a one and advanced time killing two to one, which I suppose nowadays, I guess would be upgraded to introduction to vaping, perhaps extra credit fixing the cultural and climatological mess we have inherited to get you dark. Anyway, enough of lodges, Where are cabins now? In terms of the culture of cabins in this part of the country. Because there are more lakes, are there
more cabins? Is this the best place to be a cabinologist.
I think this is one of the premier places to be a cabinologist, because we really really do have an incredible cabin culture here, particularly in the Twin Cities, and we go out to the Lakes of Minnesota and or the Lakes of Wisconsin, because although we may be better known for our lakes, Wisconsin actually has quite a numberment as well, so we probably have more cabin users per
capita than any other part of the country. And part of that is that when you're on the coast, for instance, where there certainly are getaway places, often when you have a place on the coast, it might be referred to as a cottage, seaside cottage rather than a cabin.
Cabins plus Etymoli, I'm dying right now. If you can't hear this in my voice. I was like starry eyed, floating in a cloud. This entire interview. Dale Mulfinger is like the Beyonce of cabin designers.
There are some names that that cabin competes with, and if you go into the Adirondacks or in Upper New England, you will come across the name camp which is commonly used for what we weave here in the midwest end or further west might refer to as a cabin. And the name camp shows up again down in the Bayos
of Louisiana. I'm not quite sure of the origins of that, other than I think a lot of cabins in there in the early days in New England were created as a part of an ensemble of many structures, and we're part of what we might think of as a camp environment.
Oh look, maybe there's a main lodge and then some outbuildings.
There are the camps, right, And also the name cottage shows up. So you can take the same structure and slide it. First out of min Minesota, it might be called a cabin in Minnesota, but head for the east and get to Michigan, it might be called a cottage particular, particularly if it's along like Michigan. And then if you hit the adiron decks, it'll be a camp. And then if you slide it all the way to the coast of Maine, it'll be back to being a cottage again.
And what are some of your favorite styles of cabin A frame, log, cabin, modern.
All of the above, all of the above. I really am.
Fascinated by the variety so no one singular thing stands out. I'm as fascinated with an a frame or a log cabin, or a very contemporary structure or one made out of containers. Yeah, they all interest me, and I love designing all of them. So it's not just a matter of recording what others have done, but also being faced with a challenge of design and trying to trying to determine with my clients what seems most applicable for them in their situation.
So he likes to freestyle as well as harkback to traditional designs of your now speaking of history, Dale grew up on a dairy farm, and according to a twenty thirteen article in the Star Tribune, he had said about dairy farming that when he was a kid, in his blue ribbon yearling died, he knew that he didn't want to be a farmer, but he was great at drafting, So he enrolled in the Institute of Technology at the University of Minnesota. In a time when you had to
be really good at rulers and pencils and precision. There was no command z there's no one new buttons and getting to your design career, when did you start an architecture. When did you know that you were an architect?
I went into the university wondering what I might be doing. But I was had excelled in drafting in high school and so started into architecture at the university and gradually got to enjoy it more and more and more and did quite well by the time I was exiting school, not so well when I started. And then I worked for the first day Gate actually in urban design, so nothing to do with small little buildings, but rather city
planning and large scale structures. And then probably in about ten years out into my working career, I started gradually to work on smaller things. When I got to houses, I really enjoyed being invited to dinner after you were all done. So out of that came a firm which is now Sala and an initial partner Sarah Susenka, who wrote a book called The Not So Big House, which made her kind of famous, and so we had a pretty swift start as a career in her and I
and creating a firm that does houses. And out of houses came neither the possibility of doing a second home for someone, which then led.
Me to Kevin World.
Okay, so quick side note. I was wondering how many people have a second home though it's so hard to get just one, So I looked it up and according to twenty seventeen stats, nine point three million Americans live in a house that has a second home, so a very slimp percentage. But I did some digging and one figure estimated that folks in the state of Minnesota are three times more likely to own a cabin or a
lake house than the rest of Americans. But the average age of cabin ownership is sixty eight, and no one's quite sure what's going to happen. Are millennials going to take over the cabins? Are they going to sell them? Who knows? But Minnesota is the land of ten thousand lakes. That's a lot of shoreline to cozy up to. So Dale's in the right place. But what about the rest of the country or world. Are there places in the country where it's more common to have at a house
that you would go enjoy this seasons in? Is there something maybe about the cold weather that you really appreciate the snow, I really appreciate this spring or summer.
Well, I think people who appreciate being outdoors in the snow, whether you're cross country skiing, downhold skiing or ice skating or whatever. Those people enjoy their cabin year round, or if they just enjoy sitting by the fire reading a book when the snow is falling outside. Obviously, if you have a cabin in the Rocky Mountains, it might be because you really enjoy skiing and therefore you've chosen a location next to big sky, you know, or something like that.
Here in the Midwest, people seem to vary. Either they are truly just one season cabin goers, or they actually enjoy going year round as I do.
I love the solitude of.
Winter and some cross country skiing, even though it might be minus twenty degrees out to it.
I know, I don't know how you guys. I literally don't know how you survive as a California And I'm like the amount of layers if I could grow a beard, though, I think I would get that's helpful.
Yeah, a lot. I'm gonna tell you, do.
You have a favorite cabin that you've designed. I know it's got to be so hard, but something that's really memorable or was a challenge the next one, the next one.
I think, one that I did up.
On Madeline Island where people wanted a unique retreat and one of the couples that I want something quite unique for me, and I designed one hundred foot long wall with a portal in the middle, and after you pass through the wall, you step into a glass pavilion and look out over Lake Superior, and then if you want to go into a private space, you walk down inside the wall to a blue box where you have a
private sleeping area. It's a very unconventional structure and it probably still stands out in my repertoire of work as a very unique structure. And it's all about the notion of a retreat, having a phenomenal place of a retreat that leaves the other world behind. And I think that's one of the things that when you say cabin be a your round house. One of the challenges of that is cabins often work best when they are the other world. That when they're not the every day they're.
Kind of like the mistress of the house world.
I guess so, yes, sweetie, it's a sweet piece.
And does a cavin have to have a fireplace?
No, it doesn't, And in fact, woodstoves can be an economical way of having fire without say having the cost of a fireplace, and woodstoves are very effective in terms of really heating space. Do they have to have fire? No, I mean a cain can We did a We've done cabins without any fire in them, and it helps with the insurance.
Rates if you don't.
And what do you think about you know, in the last few years the tiny house movements and tinier spaces. Where do you feel like cabins fit in with that or is it a completely different thing?
Well, there's an overlap between tiny houses and cabins. I think the tiny house movement is a fleeting movement and it'll disappear as fast as it arrived because I think resale on it is challenging so much like dome homes and other fads that we jump into every once in a while. I think this one will leave, but I think cabins will remain in having a tiny structure via
cabin will still be out there. So I and I think tiny homes as far as as actually being one's home and a living in at thirty six, three hundred and sixty five days a year, you know, it'll be questionable whether people do that in the long haul, or whether it'll just be for two years of their life or a segment of their life and then they'll move on.
To whatever I will say. In researching tiny home living, a little abode tends to cost between twenty to thirty thousand dollars on average to build, and in looking this up, oh my god, I stumbled upon an article about a woman who built a one hundred and ninety six square foot tiny house out of an old five hundred dollars RV, some upcycled wood palettes. Very resourceful. But then she adopted a great Dane, a one hundred and fifty pound great Dane,
to live in it with her. Oh, then she got married and then they had a kid, And I had to stop reading in the middle of this article and just pace the floor and do like a meditation, because woman, what So sometimes life throws your curveballs in the form of quadruple the number of people living in a space the size of a kitchen. Also, I asked Dale about this Danish concept that's all about cozy living all year round. But I had to ask my Swedish friend Simon Yetch
aka the Gismology episode Gismologist aka the host of shitty robots. Also, she just turned her Tesla Model three into a truck and named it Truckla. It's glorious. I had to ask her how to pronounce this word that looks like higgey. She helped me.
Out, so it's pronounced hi get hey get.
I know that you have talked about Cavin's and huga, and I would love to know a little bit about that concept and how you think it relates to the feeling of a cabin, not just the architecture, but the emotions of being in that kind of retreat.
Well, I think huga comes from comes from Scandinavia, and it's been common in Scandinavia to live in small space. They don't really need luxurious houses in Scandinavia haven't felt they've needed it, so they have defined ways of using space that are effective. And therefore the notion of huga overlaps with the notion of cabins as we understand them. So how you use that space and how you not say over decorated, over you fill it with too many things?
I think there is some common overlap. I must confess that I'm rather new to the term who got and so I've been been playing with it, if you will, and doing a little writing about it, but I'm probably not as well aversed in it as others may be in this country.
Yeah, I came across it pretty recently myself. I have a friend who I'm who married a Norwegian woman and so their instagram is just rife with who got in the winter, and so I'm like learning about what it is, but just shout out here to the Lapidopterology episodes, Butterfly expert Phil Taurus and his charming and kind new bride Cilia Danielson just get all up in their instagrams for some breezy summer living, some really high quality cozy winterness.
They got it on lock. Okay, speaking of how do you feel that social media culture or instagram culture has maybe changed the way we appreciate these remote buildings or structures or retreats.
Well, one big difference is that we now can rent structures everywhere, and part of that is made accessible through social media. So we can now not just have say, our own cabin, but we can rent anybody on everybody else's cabin almost anywhere in the world. And I think that's really changed. And then we can immediately share that experience with an innumerable number of people. So, you know, those are probably the big things that have changed through the media as we understand it today.
Are you okay? Are you okay with that, with that with cabin sharing? And are you sure?
Sure? Absolutely?
In fact, I think one of the phenomena about cabins is that we feel much more comfortable with sharing our cabin with others than we say to our home, so we're less likely to offer up our home as a place for strangers to stay in, whereas cabins traditionally were places where maybe we weren't a lot, we weren't accommodating strangers, but we were accommodating Uncle Harry and cousin Beth and the colleague we work with, you know, so we've often shared our cabin with diverse people.
Do you have any memories of being in a cabin that are some of your favorites?
Well, I think no falling and sitting quietly reading a book with a fire crackling and my wife's good cooking smells in the background is probably one of my best experiences. Or looking out the window and seeing the five or six deer that are reading the corn just set out there.
You know those are some of the best. And I think then I've had an opportunity to gather larger family groups together, not necessarily in my cabin because my cabin is a bit too small for that, but through the borrowing of friends cabins or renting a friend's cabin, I've been able to gather say, sixteen of my wife's family members together. That made for a special occasion.
Okay, quick aside, I made you a list of things you can do in a cabin. You can play dominoes. You can read a book. You can gossip. You can ask older people important questions about their lives. You can carve spoons. You can learn to needle point. You can roast marshmallows. You can write of all the things you want to do in your life. You can make your friends all tell stories about how they met each other. You can enjoy a poem. You can make a pie. You can sip coffee out of one of those metal
enamel mugs that they sell in camping stores. You could write a short story. You could learn to fry a fish. You could nap. You can throw your phone into the lake. You can quit your job. You can disappear from the internet. You can live off the land like that Walden throw guy. Hope you don't get arrested. You could wish on a shooting star. I also like playing Rummy Cube. Okay, now, let's say you want a taste of that cabin life,
but maybe a little closer. You could fashion a garbin, which sounds like a portmanteau for garbage and bin, but it's actually a cabin you fashion in the rafters above a garage. A garbin. Now, what about a straight up cabin in your backyard?
Is that?
Okay?
I've certainly recorded cabins that occur in the backyard of somebody's home. Now, they might think of that cabin as a man cave to game to or her writing, you know, place that she can retreat to for writing. We call that a scriptorium.
Oh, I've heard it, called it she shed.
Yeah, she said so.
I think that's not uncommon, and I've recorded a few of those in books I've done and in articles I've written.
Yeah, I guess a cabin is kind of like our childhood version of a fort, but realized and with.
Plumbing, yes, well, you know, and some not with plumbing or the outhouse or whatever nearby. But yeah, it might have some modicum of plumbing in it, some some way to heat it up, which may be our little fort when we were kidneying either of those.
Did you have a treehouse or a fort when you were growing up.
I grew up in a farm, and a fort might be a few bales of hay thrown together with a tarp over it, or something quite temporal. And there were lots of places to go build and in the forest nearby, and so yes, I had all kinds of inventions of space that were getaways to hide out so I wouldn't have to do the chores.
I wonder if that's something about the mindset of a cabin or a shed or anything that we get out of our normal space to go to a new space. Do you think that makes people more creative? Do you think it freezes us up emotionally?
Well?
I think when these environments are small enough, we imagine that maybe we can have a hand in making them,
because it's not a super task to do that. I'm always amazed as I drive to my cabin and I pull up behind a pickup truck loaded with things that are going to in someone's cabin, whether it's a door they just pulled out of the church remodeling, or and I'm often tailgating and my wife is complaining that I'm too close to the back of the pickup truck because I'm trying to figure out how the heck are they
going to put that thing in their cabin. So I think cabin's to have some freedom of personal expression attached to them. That makes them special places. So you're inclined in a cabin to say, cut the notches of the height of your children as they're growing, you know, to score that in the in the doorframe.
And you wouldn't do that in your house.
You know, that would be that would be defacing your house in a way you wouldn't accept.
And a cabin you're willing to do that.
See, cabins are casual. They are the taking off your pants as soon as you walk in the door vibe of the architecture world. They allow us to dream of a life with fewer restrictions. Perhaps this is because there were fewer judging neighbors in the middle of the woods. Maybe I don't know. Do you ever dream about cabins?
No, I don't.
I don't dream very much about cabins. No, it's not not a pervasive dream.
Yeah, I was just wondering, I wonder if I have this dream. Okay, tell me if you've ever had this where you're in your house or you're in some house that you live in or whatever, and then you realize that there's a door or a cabinet that you've never noticed before, and then there's another room or another area that you've never realized that you've had. Have you ever had that dream?
No?
But I think we should talk about your dream for a while because it's gonna tell a lot about you. You know, there's this place you're trying to escape to, but you're just trying to escape to one of my cabins.
I know.
I just I just really want a cabin Okay, I look this up. Virtually every decoding dream website seems to just plagiarize directly off each other verbatim. But apparently this is really really common dream. It means that we're discovering new abilities and strengths within ourselves. Okay, so let's say this is not flimplam and has some kind of psychological merit. I just decided to stare out the window for a minute and think, Okay, what part of me am I
neglecting truly, Like, let's get honest with myself. And the main thing that came to mind was just general grooming. But I think I also had these dreams more when I was working from home. It's just living in a studio apartment, which isn't quite like Great Dane's spouse and baby level cramped, but it's a little tight.
Also, twenty twenty four, Alley from the Future to say, since this episode came out, two things have happened. One, I have built a shed in my yard. Well, I didn't build it myself, if I'm being honest, I paid someone to assemble it for me, and I hang out in it and I write in it. I love it. It smells like the woods, it has spiders in it.
It's my dream come true. Oh, speaking of dreams, we have a two part episode now that has come out since this aired on dreams from one of the world's most foremost expert onneerrologist, doctor g William Domhoff, and we will link that in the show notes. Also a treat any.
Usal dreams, Windows to your gross soul. Now, speaking of windows, when you are designing a cabin, do you decide to face the windows a certain way or is it different for every oh where do the windows go e?
It bends on the view, depends on the sunlight. So if you told me, boy, I really like waking up in the morning with sun coming in where I'm going to have my morning coffee, Well that's the east and or you know, or there are trees over here that are going to block you know, this kind of sun or whatever. So, yes, windows, window locations are extremely important.
And here in the Midwest, we are putting our cabins quite often at lake on lakes, and I have to remind my clients that lakes are a horizontal view on a vertical view. So we see a lot of people building cabins with very tall windows, climbing up under the roof for what to see more and more and more sky, not more and more and more lakes. So horizontally banding windows here is great.
You don't know.
If I'm in the Rocky Mountains, their views are often very vertical, looking up trying to catch the mountain peak, and then then a different kind of architecture evolves out of it.
Huh, that's so brilliant. That's so interesting to know anything culture, any cabins that you've loved in movies or TV, or maybe like a cabin in the woods is always a scene for a horror setting.
Oh it's a cabin in the woods.
We need to go hot over there.
Oh man, I'm not going in there. Reminds me of a horror movie. I want saw what a horrible the one with the cabin in the woods.
How do you feel about how we see cabins.
Well, oftentimes I think cabins are connected to some of the horror films. You know that they're out in that dark wilderness of heavy forest and or they're next to a lake and some somebody drowns or whatever. So they are often attached to that genre of movie in a way. There's certainly exceptions to that, where the cabin is seen as a tranquil place of escape.
I don't think I.
Have any singular cabin or the singular movie that jumps out at me. And you know, on Golden Pond, yas going to be what I mentioned.
Okay, So on Golden Pond is a classic nineteen eighty one Academy Award darling starring Peter Fonda, Katherine Hepburn and Jane Fonda, and involves a lot of sun shimmer on a lake, a lot of soft focus filters, some difficult family relationships or some emotional reflection, some struggle. There's some trout, some growth. Also Katherine Hepburn wailing in ecstasy multiple times about loonsd the Lund and welcoming us back. I get a cat. Wombs are tits, which, yes, is an egregious
ornithology pun. What about myths about cabins? What about something people misunderstand about cabins that.
You'd well, I think they they think they're not going to be high maintenance.
I do.
They do require levels of maintenance depending on what you want to be there when you show up. They're not inexpensive to make, even though you might think Welsh and something primitive andhouldn't I be able to find labors in remote places that are going to work for dirt cheap.
No, you know, almost.
Anywhere today you're going to pay pretty much the same price for a decent window, and you're probably going to pay as much per hour for a craftsman in the woods as you would for a craftsman in the metropolitan area. So yeah, those are probably a few of the myths.
And is there an easiest type of cabin to make? Is it a log cabin? Is it a shed type of cabin. If someone is like, I'm desperate for a cabin, maybe don't have all the resources, what would you say, is like an entry level setup.
Creating a cabin that only has four corners rather than twenty is a good start. Log construction is a possibility, and certainly homeowners have educated themselves on how to do log construction and done it for themselves. It is a lot lot of unique attributes that people don't think about.
It looks more attainable than it is, and there's a lot to learn about the nature of what happens to a tree after you cut it down, and how it shrinks, shrinks in diameter, not in length, And so you set log upon log upon log, they're all shrinking in diameter, which means your wall is starting to drop and it will crush the top of the door, the top of the window if you haven't designed it to take it. So there's a lot of nuance to log that people
don't fully understand. You know, a little kid might have a Lincoln log set and think, well, that's a really easy way to build, but it's probably much more complicated than just a standard frame wall made at a two.
By four US.
Did you ever see that PBS? Well, it was on PBS, But did you ever see a Dale were Nicky's cabin in the woods?
It was good to be back in the wilderness again, where everything seems at peace.
I was alone, just me and the animals.
Oh man, Oh side note, Oops, I meant Dick Pernicky, not Dale were Niki? Who's Dale or Nikki? I don't even know where what the hell ward? Also, thanks to Jared Sleepers very on brand gift of this DVD set a few years ago, I own this in its entirety and it's been a dream of mine to host like a screening party with a mandatory flannel dress code. Friends all just hanging out, maybe silently whittling as we watch.
But if you need some Dick Pernicky asap, a quick Google will bring you to a YouTube clip of Alone in the Wilderness, which, by the way, has eleven million views. So apparently we are just united in our lust for solitude. He's just filming himself on like an eight millimeters or six just hand hewing and just oh my god, how is he doing.
Yeah, it's to actually do logs and do them well so they're gonna last. Is a skill that you don't get overnight. And I certainly know plenty of people who have done their own log cabin. But I've also known that a lot of people who might have done their own log cabin that had a lot of problems with it later because they didn't really understand some of the nuances.
And on the other hand, in many of the areas of cabin world, there are log vendors who will do these things for you, and they will build the log cabin at their what they call their yard, which is where they work in their place, and they dismantled the cabin and number the logs as they're dismantling them, and then they reassemble it on your.
Site like a puzzle exactly.
So it may take them five months to make the cabin in their yard, but then only three days to reassemble it on your site. Oh wow, And they'll bring it all there in a big truck.
And is there a cabin that you have on like a lifelong goal list that you really want to see some cabin on a cliff and Iceland or.
Now not a singular cabin. I mean I love the cabin experience. One of the fun things about being a cabinologist or someone who designs cabins is I haven't get to stay in the cabins that I've created for others.
So it's pretty easy to ask.
A cabin owner for whom we've done a cabin to say, can I use this some weekend when you're not there? And I prefer the weekends when they're not there because I love bringing my wife along and she's one of my toughest critics. Of course, the spouses will be and you know, but I like waking up in the morning and saying, how does this thing really work? Is the sun coming in where I thought it was going to come in? And you know, how does it feel with
a wind outside? So that's been a nice opportunity in this line of work.
Oh man lesson design things you want to use for yourself. It's sneaky and I like it. And can I ask you some a couple of Patroon questions?
Sure?
Okay, great, great, okay, But before we get to your Patreon submitted questions, we'll take a break and chat about some spots I really like. But for that the sponsors make it possible to donate a portion of the ad proceeds to a charity of theologists choosing. And this week Dale would like the episode to support the Clarence Wiginton Fund at the American Institute of Architects of Minnesota.
According to their donation website, quote, the Clarence Wigginton Minority Architectural Scholarship recognizes the extraordinary professional and civic accomplishments of the first African American municipal architect in the United States.
He was also the first licensed African American architect in Minnesota. Quote. Now, this program provides an ongoing partial twition scholarship to students who identify as Black, Indigenous, or a person of color, who seek to pursue a professional education architecture, and who hold promise for succeeding in such a career pursuit, they say.
And Dale adds that it's really well administered and it assigns mentors to each recipient. So thank you Dale for that. And there's a link to find out more about that organization. In the show notes that's the Clarence Wigginton Fund at the AIA of Minnesota. Okay, so some ads from sponsors apologies when.
It comes to a great deal. Virgin Mobile doesn't play around introducing our new symplan price locked at fifteen euro month for life with unlimited data, calls and texts and ninety nine percent coverage. Switch today at Virgin Media dot Ie Virgin Media it's playtime.
Tcenz supply fifteen euro per month locked in while a Virgin Mobile customer twelve month contract include the limited data, standard calls and texts. All Irish Networks offer ends February eighteenth, twenty twenty six. See Virgin Media dote.
Okay, so back to your questions.
Okay, so for this first question, think about thick socks looking out the window. It's snow shuffling down from the gray morning sky, but your coffee is still warm and it has an absolutely shameful amount of creamer in it. A fresh log is on the fire. Maybe you smell pancakes being cooked by someone who's not.
You, but you're under one of those heavy quilts that your aunt made in the late eighties out of old denim when she was going through divorce. Okay, ginger Nut wants to know why do wood cabins seem like the coziest thing. Ever, what is it about wood that makes us feel cozy?
Well, I think wood. It has variety built into it. It also feels like it's connecting us to the forest that might be right around it, around us, so it might be a local wood. And it has a nice auditory characteristic, So it's a softening. It softens the sounds, whether the sound is crackling fire or the chatter, the quiet chatter of the friend dere with. And it's something pretty to look at, so it creates a nice background to a warm, welcoming environment.
Let's repeat that because it's like peak huga cabinology vibes.
So it's a softening. It softens the sounds, whether the sound is crackling fire or the chatter, the quiet chatter of the friend dere with.
Cydney bound wants to know to maker still utilize techniques at homesteaders used back in the day.
Somewhat Yes, obviously, the log building was common to homesteaders. I have a log cabin on my property that I use as a guest cabin, and I'm quite certain that its original life was that of a settler's cabin. I don't think it actually was originally on my property.
I think it was put on you know.
Was one of the things about logs is you can dismantle a log cabin and reassemble in another location, and I think that happened with a lot of settler, early settler cabins. So in this area where there was a preponderance of wood available within arms reach practically of where settlers were coming in, they often built log structures. And some of our earliest cabins that we associate with getting away to kind of places were the recreation or actually the reuse of those early settler cabins.
Oh, I didn't realize that, Okay aside here because for all of the history of North American settlers, there's also the history of indigenous displacement and resource exhaustion and architecture borrowed from Native customs. So that narrative is a huge part of American history and can't be ignored. I was doing a little more research. I just found a book through the University of the Tennessee Press called Native American Log Cabins in the Southeast, which was published no joke
last week. I looked at the publication date and I was like June twenty nineteen one, so good timing there, and it tracks the origins of Native American cabins and building traditions. They look at the Cherokee Creek, Choctaw, and Katamwa People's.
Twenty twenty four Ali here to say, we also have some great episodes that delve more into that history, like the Bisonology episode and the Indigenous Queisanology episode about Native foods,
and a recent episode that we did on genocide. Also, this book, Native American log Cabins in the Southeast looks at elements of this architecture introduced by people of African heritage who are enslaved in America, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture has actually relocated plantation cabins that were used as quarters for enslaved people and put them on exhibit as a reminder of our
countries not too distant history. Speaking of horrors, where do cabins factor in the apocalypse?
Mike Wanakawski wants to know what's the biggest obstacle of going off the grid if one wanted to do that.
Water.
What's your access to water if you're off gridded you're going to be willing to have a say, a hand well or somehow treat water that you're getting out of a lake or stream. So that's probably one of the bigger challenge a toiletry. You know, what are you going to do about a bathroom or you're going to accept having an ounhouse and then bathing. A lot of people who are off grid in other words, they don't have
power to run a well. Therefore they're not going to have a bath through them in the same sense, and they will often use a sauna as a form of bathing.
Ps. If you're in Minnesota or around a finished person, don't you dare say sauna? Just say saana. Just say it with me, sauna. You're going to feel like a fraud, but you will avoid a lecture or correction. Also, many high fives to my sweet and gentle Innovation Nation producer Stephanie HAMANNGO for teaching me about how much fins dig saunas winter summer. You just go sweat it out in this wooden box. You beat yourself with a birch branch, jump in a lake. I'm so into it anyway.
So they all have.
A modicum of water available somehow they bring it with them and that may be enough to take a steam, you know, a steam sona. And that's so the sauna is really their form of bathing and cleanliness.
And are there a lot of those up here in this yes?
Yes, yeah, there are a fair number off grade. We did one just recently, an off grade Kevin and it has a sona and it has an out house and it has a hand pump.
Well, oh what a dream. And Jen Anathys wants to know what eco friendly, upcycled or non traditional materials other than one can cabins be made out of? And I guess we did actually kind of cover this because we talked about anything from containers.
Right, it could be made out of many many different things, from straw bales to and again, these are probably best if they're materials that are readily available to that region or area. So containers aren't the best product if you're building say high in a mountain cliff in Montana, because they're heavy and you have to have a big crane to lift them into place. But you can buy them dirt cheap, you know, for a thousand dollars, you have a twenty by four, twenty by eight foot by eight
foot container. Well, to get it on your property might cost you another fifty thousand hour so and then you need a welding torch to open up a window in it.
Right, good point, Hey, hi, I look this up for you, and you can buy a used forty foot shipping container for less than the value of my two thousand and seven prius, which, if you must now, according to Kelly Bluebook, is less than five thousand dollars. So soup up that container house maybe twenty thousand dollars later you can live in it. Just don't adopt a Great Dane, or if you do, just don't tell me about it, because I can't handle that stress right now. And Carolyn Butler wants
to know. Do you believe that cabins should a be a minimalist escape from the modern world, or be that they can include most, if not all, of the features of a modern home in a more compact form, so minimalist.
Or I think they can be either, and really has to do with your proclivity for what you want there, what you need there, what you feel comfortable with. They certainly can be primitive if, particularly if you enjoy the out of doors and all you're really looking for is shelter, you know that will warm me up a little bit and provide you a place to store a few articles and maybe some food. Then you really don't need much. But I and a lot of early cabins really are just that.
That is to say, they are just shelter.
And it was kind of common to imagine you're going to be outdoors to snip the beans, you're going to be outdoors to chop the wood, so you're gonna be outdoors a lot, and you're really just sleeping and maybe putting together a little bit of the food indoors, but you might actually be doing in front of the cooking outdoors. So that was common with settlers houses. Where settler's houses were primitive shelter, but a lot of their food prep and even some of the eating all occurred out of doors.
So if you're going to be indoors a lot, if you're gonna use it in the winter a lot, then you probably need a few more facilities, maybe a bathroom and a proper kitchen.
Your pod mother, Jared and I have a word for these type of liminal lifestyles that we envy, and that is ideod indoor outdoor places that are ideody for example, are an outdoor kitchen in a gazebo, being in a screened porch. Camping is ideot or oddly. The most ideoty place I feel like I've ever been to is the Honolulu Airport, which is just like an inside building, normal with a roof and terminals and gates and a food court. But then you look around and there's just no walls.
There's no walls anywhere, perfect temperature, year round, no need for ac. Go ideot all the way. Now, speaking of energy bills, the next question is about offsetting the energy you use by way of generating renewable energy. J.
CW wants to know is it financially worth it to build net zero energy cabins, which I don't really know what that is.
Well, that depends on how you what kind of dollars you have upfront. It's going to cost you more to build net zero, but think of it as money that you're putting in upfront that you will save down line. But you have to have that money upfront available to you. So, as I say, it depends on how you get your money as to whether or not you can afford to build the extra, do the extra finances up front versus
putting them into mortgage of paying them off over time. Right, and yeah, if you have the money, you can you can build net zero and save those dollars down line.
Mm hmm, I guess yeah, Just what do you have in your pockets?
And I think it might have to do with your lifestyle. A lot of a lot of saving energy has to do with making sure that you have a hands on approach to being a participant in how you use energy
in your dwelling. You may think of it as passive energy, but it's maybe active in terms of your the need for you to participate in that, whether it's for you to chop the wood or for you to manage the thermostat through your iPhone or whatever, in order for you to keep tabs on just how energy is performing in that structure.
So you can't just build it and then let it do the work you have to be Actually, it.
Can do some of that work, like the extra insulation you put on. It's like putting on a warm coat. You know you can leave it on and you know all you.
Have to do is but up some of the needs you have for.
Energy performance, such as for solar panels that have battery storage something like that do require maintenance.
Okay, just a little heads up. Your grandpa Dad sent me an article a few days ago about an Irish team of researchers who are using carbon nanotubes in batteries to increase energy storage capacity by two point five times. Everyone is just as hell about this. This is like a huge major leap. Hell yeah, nanotechnologists Filaria Nicolosi and chemical physicist Jonathan Coleman working on that. We all want better batteries. I owe you a margarita and a mug
or a perfectly toasted marshmallow for that work. I think we covered a lot of these things already, so I'll ask the last two questions. I always ask, what is the most annoying thing about your job? Is there anything.
About Well, I have to do a lot of driving. Oh, I mean, I enjoyed driving, but it is a lot of driving. So I put a fair amount of miles in my car. And I certainly know the Midwest extremely well because of all that driving. So you know, sometimes having to drive four hours five hours to a cabin site. And I never want to design anything where I don't see the land. You know, people will bring you pictures and they say, oh, we don't want to pay for you to go all that distance.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, Land talks to me, and more than you, the owner. The land tells me a lot about what it is I need to do here, so I always want to go see land.
Do you listen to audiobooks?
No.
I listened to local radio stations a lot and a lot of public radio in various locales. And even though I'm I would consider myself a liberal politically, I sometimes the one and only time I'll listen to conservative talk radio is when I'm driving and I'd like to hear what the other side is talking about and how they say it. So I'm whereas I'm not likely to listen to that at work or in my home.
When you get your cabin, then I guess you can decomprisse if it's been upsetting to you, right, Yes, that's right. What is your favorite thing about cabins or about what you do?
Well?
I really enjoy the act of creating something out of nothing standing in a piece of land, whether it's in the Rocky Mountains or in New England or here in the Midwest, and using only one's imagination while you're standing there trying to figure out, well, how should I create this thing? Standing there just daydreaming about or doodling or pacing off, saying, well, it could be in this direction, about this big and you know, I need to borrow a ladder and climb up this tree so I can
see what the views like on the second floor. And that's to me the most fun part is that very initial, as I say, going from nothing to something in one's imagination and then trying to record it on a sketch work or something so that you can start to manipulate that idea when you get back to your office, or sometimes sitting at the local coffee shop not far from the cabin and doing all ones doodles, you know, recording what you were thinking about when you were on in
the land. I'm more likely to do that, to record it quickly before I even get back to my home or office.
Do you give the cabin owners those sketches?
Sometimes?
I usually have nothing against giving it to them. I sometimes forget about giving it to them, but most of them certainly appreciate when you do it. And then fairly early on I make little cardboard models and that's Many of my cabin owners now have those models sitting in their cabin somewhere.
Yah. I think it would be great to have that too at your desk at work, just so you have that to think of.
I yeah, we make a lot of models in our office, and it's usually the designer themselves who makes the models, and not like wait, we're not hiring, say, student interns to make models. Where you models are are like our doodles. They're a form of our own artistic expression.
This has been such a dream. Thank you so so much to work.
So I was wondering if you like one of my books.
Oh, I would start crying. I would love it.
Well, oh my god, it's all yours. And if you want me to sign it, I'll do that.
Too, duh.
Yes, Oh this is so exciting. Thank you, so so so much. What a dream. So get yourself in the presence of an expert and then ask smart people, giddy questions all you want, and then maybe go in with some pals, save up for a night or two away if you can, or you can crash a friend's family reunion. If there are enough relatives, they may not even notice. That would happen at mine. So to learn more about Dale Mulfinger, go find his wonderful books. Just google Cabinology.
It's going to lead you down a little sunny leafy path right to him. So his architecture firm is Sala and they're on Instagram Sala Architects and I'll link that in the show notes along with all the sponsor and donation links, and there are more links up at aliward dot com slash ologies slash Cabinology. We are at Ologies on Instagram and Twitter, and I'm at ali Ward with one L on both. You can do follow say hi.
Thank you to Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch of the podcast You Are That for managing ologiesmerch dot com, where you can get bathing suits with the Ologies logo on you butt and T shirts and stuff. Thank you to Aaron Talbert for adminting the Facebook Ologies group. Thank you Jared Sleeper for supporting my love of cabins and for doing assistant editing on this. And to editor The Hearthstone Stephen Ray Morris for stitching together all these sound clips.
Since the initial recording of this. We also have Noel Dilworth to thank for being our scheduling producer Susan Hale is our managing director of the whole show. Jake Chafey is a wonderful editor, and our new lead editor is Mercedes Maitland, who did touch ups on this odcore. Thank you Mercedes and involved. And also since this episode aired, Dale and I have kept in touch. I love him.
We email back and forth when he sees an ology that might be fun, or if I find a picture of a cool cabin, or when I built the shed. And he wrote me last week that he was just working on an off grid cabin near the Boundary Waters Wilderness area and it used material recycled from another cabin. It has an open floor plan, he says, so everyone can smell the coffee brewing in the morning. And another client came to him recently for a well insulated cabin
thick walls and triple paned windows. He wrote me right off the Lake Superior hiking trail. He said one could probably heat this cabin in cold Minnesota with a hair dryer and said you'll be able to step outside, strap on your cross country skis and go for miles. Happy holidays, Dale, Ugh Dude's the coolest, the loveliest cabinologist on Earth. I'm so glad you got a chance to meet him through this episode, and since you have stuck with us for the whole episode, what I do is I tell you
a secret at the end this week. It's that I still have not made the acorn cookies. The acorns are still chilling in a jar in my refrigerator, which is currently two thousand miles away from me. But another secret is in the last couple of months, I have felt so disorganized and for some reason, around my house and office, I have, if I'm thinking in my head, I have probably six different canvas tote bags that are like half
filled with stuff that doesn't belong in them. Like I took a tote bag for an outing and then came home and instead of taking everything out like melted lip bomb and maybe there's a pamphlet in there about a garden and a toothpaste sample from the dentist, instead of putting those away, I just didn't know where to put those things. So next time I left the house, I
just got an empty tote bag. I took my wallet and keys, used the new tote bag, collected some extra ephemera and detritus like hotel pens or sewing kid or a magazine I read and maybe we'll use for I don't know, like a vision board in the new year. And so now I'm daisy chaining them, and like there's like half dozen totes and little corners that I need to just dump into a pile and figure out what
to do with the stuff inside them. I don't know if this is something that happens to other people or just me, but it's a maybe it's a type of procrastination that's like I don't know where to put these things, and I don't have the mental space right now to strategize. Now, there are bigger problems in the world, trust me. That's probably one of the reasons why I can't manage to unpack a tote bag. But this is just one of mine. Okay. Enjoy a fireplace. Enjoy a campfire or a landscape of
some kind of serenity. Maybe you do a game of rumming cube with the people you love, all right, enjoy you deserve it.
Bye bye.
Friday thirteen.
No One with the Cabin in the Woods, Texas Chance Massacre. No One with the Cabin in the Woods ry uh, the One with the Cabin in.
The Woods Play a waste project, No.
Man, the one with the cabin in the woods, the monsters that wasn't in the woods, that wasn't even a damn movie.
Look man, we ain't got time for this ship right now.
We need to get to that cabin in the woods.
When it comes to a great deal, Virgin Mobile doesn't play around, introducing our new Symplan price locked at fifteen euro month for life with unlimited data, calls and texts and ninety nine percent coverage. Switch today at Virgin Media dot Ie Virgin Media It's playtime.
Tecenz' supply fifteen europer month locked in while a Virgin Mobile customer twelve month contract include unlimited data, standard calls and text to all Irish networks. Offer ends February eighteenth, twenty twenty six. See Virgin Media dot Ie