Spend Lovenest (8.22.26)

While Dave's parents still owned the cabin in the Pine Mountain development which we ultimately bought and inherited from them, they posted a sign above the gate to the cabin which read, "Spend Lovenest."  I used to think that sign was tacky in the extreme.  Now I think the sign aptly reflects our love affair with that funky, beloved little place.   On August 22, 2026, Dave and I spent an evening and morning at the cabin.  Dave now visits the cabin by himself almost every week, to enjoy the beauty of the drive up the canyon and the peace of reading and preparing Church lessons inside.
 

After fifty-five years of wear, the back porch of the cabin is rotting and fraying.  Dave inspected the damage and checked into replacing the porch.

The railing on the front porch was peeling, and Dave  spent an hour or two repainting it.

As Dave worked around the outside of the cabin, I took photos of touching momentos inside.  Dave's brother, Michael, died as a 16-year-old in a motorbike accident.  His life is memorialized on a plaque in the cabin.  Just months before Michael died, Dave spent a summer at the cabin with Michael and Dave's dad, building a wood fence around the property.  Dave remembers telling Michael he loved him, and Michael quickly shrugging off the intimacy, as any self-respecting teenage male would.

Dave and I have added some rustic touches to the cabin, such as this poster of John Wayne, with a saying we believe in: "Courage is being scared to death--but saddling up anyway."  The two of us have had many experiences, both at work and in family relationships, where we doubted our abilities, but "saddled up" and plowed through, anyway.  I think of myself as a new lawyer, just out of law school, suddenly handling hundreds of low value credit card collection cases for my firm's major banking client.  I felt sick to my stomach as I trudged to court hearings, terrified of being exposed as incompetent, but I went anyway.  I think of myself as a new mother, peeking at Lisa staring back at me solemnly from  her crib, and wondering how I could possibly take care of her for a full twenty years, before she left home. (And I have since learned that mothers take care of their children, in some ways, for as long as the mother lives. I have been mothering Lisa now for 54 years!)

Dave and I took a walk together, in the crisp mountain air.  As I gasped for breath, walking uphill in the mountains, I vowed to start an aggressive exercise program as soon as I got home to Salt Lake.  And I did.

I love flowers, whether I grow them myself, buy them from Costco or Smiths, or find them growing wild.  As Dave and I walked, I distracted myself from my aching lungs by looking for wildflowers.

Soon enough, it was time to return from our "lovenest" to the real world in Salt Lake City.  We eased our way through that transition by a stop at the bakery in the basement of the Oakley diner.  We wished we owned one of the fancy UTVs parked by the bakery, to tool around Pine Mountain trails in.

We bought pastries to eat on the way home, such as this bit of peach crisp, covered with almonds.