Some years ago I lived away out in the woods in a fantastic cabin in Dublin, New Hampshire. There was a rather fascinating story associated with the cabin, which may have lent itself to the compelling spiritual experience of living there.
The cabin had originally belonged to George Deforest Brush an accomplished American painter, or I should say it was on his property. His descendants, who charged me $100 rent for the snowless half of the year, told me an interesting story about it. They asked me first if I knew who Alan Seeger was, which, to their surprise, I happened to. Alan Seeger was an American poet who wrote a single famous poem, called: “Rendezvous”, more well-known as: “I have a Rendezvous with Death”, which was something of a prophetic work. For indeed just as the poem predicted Seeger died on the field of battle at the age of 28 or so. It seems, that in about 1912 Alan Seeger, (who was the uncle of Pete Seeger the folk singer), came to Dublin, which was a renowned summertime artist colony that counted Mark Twain amongst its illustrious residents, to stay with his friend at the Brush farm. For some reason Seeger, a bohemian Harvard-grad city-boy, took a mind to build a cabin out beyond the back pasture as a project. He completed the work during that summer. But no one ever lived in the cabin, ever. A couple of years later Seeger moved to France where he was killed fighting for the French Foreign Legion in WWI and thereby kept faithful to his “Rendezvous with Death”.
At some point later, it is not known how, the cabin was destroyed either by lightening/fire or maybe the hurricane of 1938. But what survived, and stood a sentinel’s watch, was the stunning fieldstone fireplace-chimney, maybe 8 feet wide, and 15 high, which Seeger had painstakingly crafted….and over the years the woods closed in around it.
The family, a couple generations later, had a new cabin built around that fieldstone fireplace. It was an incredible and beautifully hand-built log cabin, I suppose about 40 x 20 feet, mosquito-proof and inhabited, though never by a person before me, but by a legion of mice. There was no running water of course, or electricity, but a stream ran not far away and I fashioned a pool in it, and frequently bathed there in the early morning. I had kerosene lamps and cooked by a Coleman camp stove. Visitors were very rare.
The way to the cabin was difficult, and difficult to find. A remote dirt road, Cherry Hill Road, passed by a barely discernable ancient logging road, which you could actually drive down, and about 1/2mile into the deep woods, you crossed a log/stone culvert, over the stream, and into the 1-acre clearing in which sat the cabin. It was the proverbial “middle-of-nowhere”.
It was on this drive in, that I first met the owls. Our paths literally crossed one night (3AM?). As I was approaching the cabin down the logging-road I was startled by a moving shadow that crossed the front of my car and saw to my surprise a huge bird, which of course I knew instantly was an owl, glide across the hood of my car, swooping down before my headlights and toward the ground in front of me then disappearing into the darkness.
I thought its wingspan to be five feet at least, measured against the width my car, but thought I must be mistaken due to the nighttime conditions, shadows etc. I was later to ascertain its size and it was an enormous female Great Horned Owl, named I’d guess for the black tufts of feathers that rise from its head which appear as horns.
That night, after a couple of weeks or so in the cabin, I was to have my first lesson in owl-life. She and a smaller male, her partner I presume, began hooting outside the cabin door. I was shocked at their absolutely overwhelming volume, so loud that the dishes rattled in the dish-drainer. Being an unusually loud singer, I’ve got to say I was impressed. If there’s a more haunting sound in nature I’m not sure what it would be. What impressed me too, that first night, was the large variety of hoots and sounds they made. I have no clue if they were acknowledging my presence in any way and I was curious why I had not seen them before. I was to learn a lot about them in the next few months. And I took quite an interest in them.
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For one thing, I noticed of course when after two or three days they didn’t appear and I thought surely I had driven them off. But I could, in the stillness of night, in this deathly quiet deep woods, hear them hooting off down the hollow; a mile or more away I estimated. But what I noticed next was that this position also lasted a few days and I then heard them even further off and noticed they changed positions every few days like this, moving it seemed in a wide circle. And always they remained within my hearing. I supposed, by their fantastic volume which I knew well, that they were probably a couple miles from me at most distant. Within two weeks or so they began to move closer, and lo-and-behold one night they had returned.
In the meantime, since day one in fact, I had been dealing with an incredible infestation of field-mice, which lived in the fiberglass insulation that had been stuffed in every nook and cranny of the log walls and ceiling. They nearly drove me from the place and surely would have a less hardy soul. In fact one night I woke suddenly from a strange dream, to find my hand pressed against my face with a squirming mouse trapped beneath. I closed my hand over him and threw him off the wall across the room. As I said….a less hardy soul…..
I determined to wipe them out, but never succeeded. I am not much for killing things and I’ve got to say it was the closest I ever came to cold-blooded murder in all my life. I had seven baited mousetraps and in one memorable night filled them three times. This is no lie. Over twenty in one night. Numerous were the mornings I woke to find all seven traps full. But the supply of the little bastards never diminished.
The more I thought about it the clearer it became to me. The owls traveled in a pattern from one hunting ground to the next, no doubt staying a few days until the hunting thinned out. They were attracted to the cabin because it stood in a clearing, a good supply of mice lived within and each night the pickings out on the open ground were easy and plentiful from perches in the tall trees surrounding. I supposed that in a couple of weeks a new generation of mice had arisen and matured ready for harvest so to speak. I have never confirmed any of these observations as scientific facts.
Anyway here they were again. And the next time the large owl “buzzed” my car, which she did often, I got out my high-beam flashlight and sat in the darkness on the front stoop waiting for them to start hooting which they always did.
Within moments I caught the large owl in my beam perched on a tree limb about 12 feet from the ground at the very edge of the yard. Surely this was a hunting stand. I was able, by noting surrounding features to ascertain her height with a tape measure the next day. She appeared to be 30+”in height, making her a huge specimen. Her wingspan may have exceeded five feet. I never saw any owlets.
I am a musician and consequently was very interested in their voices, sounds and language. As I said, I have an unusually loud voice myself, and after a while I took to mimicking them, and hooting back and forth with them. I did this many nights thereafter. They never spooked once and appeared to answer me though I cannot imagine that they rationalized that I was human or thought I was an owl. They’re pretty stupid creatures I’m sure.
But there was more to them than I ever thought before, and I would guess it was fairly unique experience I had with them. I have never talked to anyone, before or since, who knew much about them. In fact now that Corrine mentioned owls I am going to check ‘em out on the net and see if my experience jibes with anyone else’s.
Some years ago I lived away out in the woods in a fantastic cabin in Dublin, New Hampshire. There was a rather fascinating story associated with the cabin, which may have lent itself to the compelling spiritual experience of living there.