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Book Cover for: Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman, Patrick Hutchison

Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman

Patrick Hutchison

Reader Score

83%

83% of readers

recommend this book

THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER

A memoir of the author's journey from an office job to restoring a cabin in the Pacific Northwest, based on his wildly popular Outside Magazine piece.

Wit's End isn't just a state of mind. It's the name of a gravel road, the address of a run-down off-the-grid cabin, 120 shabby square feet of fixer-upper Patrick Hutchison purchased on a whim in the mossy woods of the Cascade Mountains in Washington state.

To say Hutchison didn't know what he was getting into is no more an exaggeration than to say he's a man with nearly zero carpentry skills. Well, used to be. You can learn a lot over six years of renovations.

CABIN is the story of those renovations, but it's also a love story; of a place, of possibilities, and of the process of construction, of seeing what could be instead of what is. It is a book for those who know what it's like to bite off more than you can chew, or who desperately wish to.

Book Details

  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press
  • Publish Date: Dec 3rd, 2024
  • Pages: 304
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.61in - 5.88in - 1.05in - 0.89lb
  • EAN: 9781250285706
  • Categories: Adventurers & ExplorersEcosystems & Habitats - WildernessBuildings - Residential

About the Author

Hutchison, Patrick: - PATRICK HUTCHISON is a writer and builder from the Pacific Northwest. His work has appeared in Outside, Wired, Vice, Seattle magazine, and Seattle Weekly. He grew up in Washington State's rainy southwest corner, eventually moving to Seattle to attend the University of Washington. Working on the cabin described in his debut book inspired him to leave copywriting to pursue carpentry. He now finds himself most often in the woods, working on tiny homes, cabins, and treehouses. When he isn't building, you'll find him at his home in Tacoma, WA, where he lives with his wife, Kate, and their black lab, Marge. Cabin is his first book.

Praise for this book

Praise for Patrick Hutchison:

"Funny and thoughtful...Hutchison's dread at returning to Seattle after weekends at the cabin is the same Sunday blues many feel, amplified by the proximity of what he increasingly becomes convinced is a better way to live. You feel his desire to be back in the woods, working with his hands. Don't we all?" --New York Times

"Will have you wanting to quit your job and head to the woods in order to build your own cabin, even if you don't have a single lick of carpentry skills. Filled with belly-laugh-inducing stories alongside grounded sentiment in chapters both short and sweet, 'Cabin' is the perfect book to take with you the next time you set out on a great adventure." --The Today Show

"Cabin is Hutchison's charming, funny account of his journey rehabilitating the dilapidated hovel on Wit's End Place...In this equally motivating and relatable book, that earnest commitment to learning and the thrill that accompanies even the tiniest achievement shows on nearly every page." --Washington Post

"Who could resist a house selling for less than $10,000 with the name "Wit's End"? Author Hutchison couldn't, and once he'd purchased the tiny cabin in Washington State's Cascade Mountains, he decided to learn how to make it habitable. Embarking on remote-home improvement took him and his buddies six years, and changed his life: Once a copywriter, he's now a full-time carpenter. He never turns down a beer, or a chance to laugh at himself." --Los Angeles Times

"Henry David Thoreau meets Home Improvement in Hutchison's charming debut...With endearing directness and an infectious can-do spirit, this makes for a sturdy ode to self-discovery." --Publishers Weekly

"This memoir debut brims with situational humor, quirky characters, a natural disaster, lessons learned, and one guy's search for purpose." --Booklist

"A small cabin, purchased of Craigslist and tucked in Washington State's Cascade Mountains, becomes a life-changer for Patrick Hutchinson, who amusingly details a rather impulsive, woodland adventure in his first memoir...What ensues is a comedy of errors where headstrong, learn-things-the-hard-way-Hutchinson is drawn down a winding path that ultimately leads to personal enlightenment." --Shelf Awareness

"A hammer and nail mini-saga, told not by a master carpenter, but by a dynamic prose stylist who possesses the best of all skills: the ability to laugh at himself.

This is a charming sample of the cabin dream afoot in America today and Hutchison is the perfect neophyte builder who is made better by the building he makes better." --Joseph Monninger, author of A Barn in New England: Making a Home on Three Acres

"At some point in his life, every man has the thought of going off into the woods to build a cabin. Patrick Hutchison didn't stop at just thinking about building a cabin, he went and built one. A Walden for the modern age, CABIN humorously chronicles the misadventures, mishaps, and unexpected joys of escaping the digital world for a slice of rustic reality. It's a book that celebrates and inspires the reader to be more agentic and take action to bring one's daydreams to life. It's a book about doing what Thoreau himself advised: putting foundations under your castles in the air." --Brett McKay, bestselling author of The Art of Manliness

"Imagine if Bill Bryson had decided to put down stakes during his walk in the woods and asked Charles Bukowski to help him refurbish a derelict shack deep in the forest of the Cascade Mountains. And there you have Patrick Hutchinson's hilarious and poignant CABIN. Hutchison braves truck-swallowing mudslides, spiders vying for outhouse ownership, hermit meth tweakers, and glowing-eyed mountain lions (both real and imagined) to chronicle not only his dilapidated cabin's transformation, but his own." --Bob Drury, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Hill and Throne of Grace

"Without any carpentry or fix-er-up skills, Patrick Hutchison risked his modest savings on a dilapidated cabin deep in the Northwest's Cascades. His life, and now this book, became a love affair with shelter, home, and self-education. I particularly appreciated his gifts for introspection and self-deprecating humor, which mirror the same insecurities we all experience. Henry David Thoreau would have loved (or: is loving) this book." --Rinker Buck, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Oregon Trail and Life on the Mississippi

"Patrick Hutchison's CABIN is about the most damned American book you'll ever read. It's as warm, welcoming and as full of rejuvenating spirit as a crackling potbellied stove in a little cabin in the woods. Hutchison's cabin in the woods. Fan's of Thoreau's Walden, Tracy Kidder's House and Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild will all relish in Hutchison's indefatigable spirit as this Seattle copywriter sets his sights on fixing up a hut-shaped pile of wood about to turn back to the earth. CABIN will make you ask to borrow your mom's little pickup and some power tools, buy a case of Rainier and head for the hills to see if you, too, can't fix a little something up yourself. You're going to freaking love this book." --Matthew Batt, author of Sugarhouse and The Last Supper Club