7.29.2025

The first whites who get credit for settling this area were a couple, call them George and Martha Dutchvolken, and they built a log cabin about the size of the studio apartment I lived in during Covid. They didn't have great insulation but they did have a pretty nifty Franklin stove. They also didn't have an app for getting groceries delivered and from what one sees in the replica cabin by the lighthouse the only food they had on hand was a ceramic pie. Martha did so much looming and warping and wefting by hand I hope she was able to convince herself that she enjoyed it. All I can think when I look through their window like a peeping tom at their situation was that they must have been miserable and suffered each in their own way from a considerable dose of snow madness for at least half the year. They had a single book and George read one page from it each night by the light of a candle, reading slowly even though they both knew the whole thing by heart, and his trips out into the woods to trade with the locals or rustle up some game got longer over time until one time in spring she realized he'd probably been gone for over a week and also that she didn't care.