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 Homologies. Okay, great news, kiddos, I got some news for you. You ready, This episode is not about ticks? Yes? Are you stoked now that we have covered some basic health and safety ie me just reminding you check those crevices. Kind of like a flight attendant demonstrating an inflatable vest.
But now you know, let's get the summer show on the road. There are sprinklers to run through, there's some campfire smoke to dodge, some sandal tans to get, barbecues, reunions. 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 pie.
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 deals 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 so 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 an evening margarita out of a Chick 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 tounting himself as
a cabinologist. It's 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're about to listen to it. The stuff dreams are made of. So this spring I made my way to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where his headquarters of his architecture from art. It's Salah, 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 flodder? How does a summer cabin visit 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 this just a little bit more. 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 it?
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 and I've been using it since. And I wrote a book called Cabinology 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 C word 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 the 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 at least fifteen years, But how long have you been a cabinologist in practice, not just in title?
Well, probably about thirty years ago. As a part of my architectural practice, which we design 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 I'm 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 would 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 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 magi. 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.
For 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 signe 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 perfect lee 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 trooped about harvesting beavers and such, indigenous folks like the Yerik tribes and the Chinook people's had been building vertical plank houses out of cedar in 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 you know, 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, he's got a crazy idea, and they said, 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 now a particularly big issue in a cabin.
Tell me a little bit about square footage. Can you have a two thousand square foot cabin? Yes, okay, you get 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. 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
troupe 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 thought about that, the family lodge. I wonder if there's a logology out there.
There, You got it, somebody's gonna 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. Not to get too 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 etymology. 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 cabin competes with, and if you go into the Adora or in upper New England, you will come across the name camp, which is commonly used for what we we 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 Minnesota, it might be called a cabin in Minnesota, but head for the east and get to Michigan, it might be called a cottage, particularly if it's along Lake 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 style Cain, 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 and 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 and 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 undew 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 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 decade 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 grabb to work on smaller things. When I got to houses, I really enjoyed being invited to dinner after you were all done there.
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 neither the possibility of doing a second home for someone, which then led me to cabin 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 limp percentage. But I did some digging and one figure estimated that folks in the state of Minnesota are three times more likely to own in 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 the seasons in? Is there something maybe about the cold weather that you really appreciate the snow or really appreciate this spring or summer.
Well, I think people who appreciate being outdoors in the snow, whether you're cross country skiing, downhill 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 the location next to 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 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 give.
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 said, 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 that's one of the things that when you say can a 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 sweep piece.
And does a cabin have to have a fireplace?
No, it doesn't, And in fact, woodstoves can be an economical way of having fire without having the cost of a fireplace, and wood stoves are very effective in terms of really heating space. Do they have to have fire? No, I mean a cabin. We did. We've done cabins without any fire in them, and it helps with the insurance rates.
If you do that. 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 arrive 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, and 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 at 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 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 haiggey. She helped me out, so it's pronounced get he get.
I know that you have talked about cabins 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 who go overlaps with the notion of cabins as we understand them. So how you use that space and how you not say over decorated, over 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 might be in this country.
Yeah, I came across it pretty recently myself. I have a friend who who married a Norwegian woman and so their instagram is just rife 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 Filter 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 cabin sharing? And are you sure? No?
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 snowfalling 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 eating 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 mike cabin is a bit too small for that, but through the borrowing of friends cabins or renting the friends 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 this summer. 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 a list 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 bake a pie. You can sip coffee out of one of those metal enamel mugs that they sell in camping stores. You can write a short story. You could learn to fry a fish 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 escape to, or her writing in a place that she can retreat to for writing. We call that a scriptorium.
Ooh, 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 monicum of plumbing in it, some way to heat it up, which may be our little fort when we were kidneys either 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 in the forest nearby, and so yes, I had all kinds of inventions of space that 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 cabins 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. 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 it's gonna tell a lot about you. You know, there's this place you're trying to escape to. A You're just trying to escape to one of my cabins.
I know, 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 flim flam 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 just living in a studio apartment, which isn't quite like Great Dane's spouse and baby level cramped, but it was a little tight.
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?
That pends on the view, depends in the sunlight. So if you told me, well, 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. I 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 in pop 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 out over there.
Oh man, I'm not going in there. Reminds me of a horror movie. I wants 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.
Yeah, that's 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 loons.
The wound and welcoming us back.
I get a cat wounds 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, well, shouldn't something primitive and shouldn'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 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 fours.
Did you ever see that PBS? Well it was on PBS, But did you ever see is a Dale were Nicky's cabin in the woods?
It was good 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 Nicki? Who's Dale or Niki? 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 Pernicki 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. Oh my god, how is he doing?
Yeah, it's to actually do logs and do them well so they're going to last. Is a skill that you don't get overnight. And I've certainly known 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 dismantle 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 in 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 like bringing my wife along and she's one of my toughest critics, of course, as 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 the 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 page questions? Okay, great, great, okay, but before we get to your Patreon submitted questions. We'll take a break and chat about some sponsors I really like. But before 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 Wiganton Fund at the American Institute of Architects of Minnesota. So the Clarence Wiganton 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.
So the Clarence Wiganton Fund supports racial ethnic minority students who have a specific interest in pursuing professional architecture degrees. 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 Wiganton Fund at the AIA of Minnesota. Okay, so some ads from sponsors. Apologies, Mom,
why did they call it Scottish cheese. It's Cottage cheese. Honey, and I'm not sure. Did dogs in other countries speak different languages? Yeah?
I think so.
Well when we get there, well.
We've got to fix the car first, but there's someone coming to help us.
Is it the man from Geneva.
Not Geneva, he's from Aviva. Oh there's the van though.
For car insurance with breakdown rescue, it takes a Viva visit Aviva dotta eat to say fifteen percent acceptance criteria, terms and conditions apply. Minimum premium of three hundred and ten year old. Fifteen percent discant applies to new policies bott online. See Aviva dotta E for details. Car insurance is underwritten by Aviva Insurance Ireland DAK Aviva Direct Arland Limited is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Okay, so back to your questions. Now, this first one that think about falling asleep. It's summer. You're hearing crickets and water maybe lapping somewhere, maybe a windows open, a little breeze, but you're under one of those heavy quilts that your aunt made in the late eighties out of Old Denham when she is 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. Do cabin 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 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, Now a quick aside here, because for all 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. It 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 on, 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 peoples. It also really interestingly looks at elements introduced by Africans and African Americans, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture has relocated plantation cabins used as slave quarters for exhibit as a reminder of our countries not too distant history. Also, speaking of not so great things, where do cabins factor in the apocalypse? Mike Monakowski 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 toilet tree. You know, what are you going to do about a bathroom or you're going to accept having an outhouse 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 bathroom 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 sawana. 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 Jimngo for teaching me about how much fans dig saunas winter summer. You just go sweat it out in this wooden box. You beat yourself with a birch branch and jump in a lake. 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 for a number of off grade We did one just recently, an off grade cabin and it has a sna and it has an outhouse 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 wood 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 can 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 and 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 can 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 thousands, so and then you need a welding torch to open up a window in it.
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 prias, which, if you must know, 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 up. 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 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 going to 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, a proper kitchen.
What have we learned sauntering into the summer? Tiny pants, armpits out. Just check your crevices. Also, the next question is about offsetting the energy you use by way of generating renewable energy. Jay 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 uh, 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 upfront versus putting them into mortgage and paying them off over time.
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 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 You know you can leave it on and you know all you have to is button it up. Some of the needs you have for energy performance, such as for solar panels that have battery storage and 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, and I'm sorry. Yeah, land talks to me and I
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 audio books? 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 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 decomprise 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, be 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 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 out 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.
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 their office, and it's usually the designer themselves who makes the models, and not like we 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 stupid 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 them. So his architecture firm is Sala and they're on Instagram at 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. This week, especially, I get to reunite with toothologist Sarah macannulty from the Squid episode and coloniologist aka sirtle expert Cameron Allen for a science trip to Hawaii with Atlas Obscura. So you're gonna find some fun posts this week, including some nighttime bobtail squid doves on my Instagram and on the Ologies Instagram, so do go there if you please. I'm also naturally taking my recording equipment to hopefully get a few episodes in one and there.
Thank you to Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch of the podcast You Are That for managing ologiesmerch dot com, where you can get summer bathing suits with the Ologies logo on you butt and T shirts and steaf. Thank you to Aaron Talbert and Hannelipover, I had menting 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 Steven Ray Morris for stitching together
all these sound clips. Every week. Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music. And now if you listen through to the credits, you know I tell you a secret at the end, and this week's secret is number one. I didn't have a secret. I was like, I don't have a secret for this week. I'm trying to think, But now I have one. So I decided to record
this in a different closet because I moved. And so I'm in this little closet with some recording equipment and some foam up on the wall, like in not a permanent way, and I was like, this would be great, and I started recording this. I'm sweating so hardcore right now. This might not be a good idea. I don't know what I'm gonna do. It's very warm in here. Please cross your fingers. I find a better solution. Okay, that is all. Go out, have fun, toast a marshmallow, tell
some secrets, and have a good summer. All I. We'll be back next week with a new episode. Okay, we're right, pacadermytologyology, doo zoology, lithology is now, zerology, meteorology, pathology, tathology, ceriology, goology. Friday the thirteenth.
No, the one with the cabin in the woods Jaxas Chainsaw Massacre. No, the one with the cabin in the woods right uh, the one with the cabin in the.
Woods Blair Waits 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 you that cabin in the woods.