Someone once said, “If you can survive in Montana, you can make it anywhere!”

My Little Cabin in the Woods - The Vision

Twenty eight years ago I left Seattle in a sporty red Nissan 240sx and followed the U Haul truck packed with my belongings to my new home in Hungry Horse, Montana. Three years earlier I had been a passenger in a car that was T-boned by a flatbed truck on my side. I hit my head twice on the side panel, suffered a severe concussion and back injury. Two days later I lost the ability to walk. It took nine months for me to walk again without aids and to be able to put on socks and clothing without help. I had been the corporate paralegal at an international software business and fortunately had long-term disability, a 401K and stocks to rely upon, since the driver of the car I was riding in was not only at fault, but had no insurance. With all the medical bills and loss of work, it didn’t take long to run through most of my backup funds and I had to learn to live on half my income on disability. I was thankful to have it because sitting all day in front of a computer writing legalese was no longer an option – at least not for a long time.

When the powerful pain meds were reduced and I was able to prop up enough in bed to write, I kept a journal, using crayons to illustrate. I have never re-read the journal, but I do remember one page where I colored a picture of a little cabin in the woods with the caption, “I want to live in a little cabin in the woods.”

A year later I was on the road to recovery when friends showed up at my door to “kidnap” me for a two-week stay at their home on Flathead Lake near Kalispell, Montana. I spent most of the two weeks on a lawn chair overlooking the lake. When they brought me back to Seattle, I had made up my mind to move to Montana and started looking for a home to buy. Three years after the accident, I found that little one bedroom cabin in the woods in Hungry Horse, about thirty miles from Kalispell. It was well made, had a wraparound covered deck with a peek-a-boo view of Glacier National Park, tucked away on a corner lot beside a country road that led down the hill to a Bible camp. It was quiet, serene and would be a great place to start a new chapter in my life. I was in heaven and had no idea what was in store.

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