Cabin Fever: Seven Chic Cabins to Rent (or Merely Ogle) This Winter
All products featured on Vogue are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
This summer, the designer and woodworker Tom Bonamici led a rustic timber-framing workshop at the Beaver Brook forest preserve in Sullivan County, New York. On 55 acres of white pine and hemlock, Bonamici taught five students how to craft njallas—tiny cabins on top of tree trunks, traditionally used as food caches in northern Scandinavia. Over nine days, the group learned about Japanese joinery and hewed timber planks to build a gable-roofed sleeping loft; each paid $1,800 for the privilege.
The Beaver Brook School was dreamed up by Vimeo cocreator Zach Klein, whose Twitter bio once famously read, “Working on the Internet now so I can live in the woods later.” (He purchased the land in 2010, six years after Vimeo’s founding.) Last year, the school invited applicants to pay $1,500 each to come construct a bathhouse on Klein’s land, a venture that was criticized for obvious reasons. But Klein’s ethos—his desire to escape to the wild after years of Internet saturation—seems, at this point, near universal, as relevant now as it was for Thoreau when he published Walden in 1854.
True, we do fetishize it. Since 2009, Klein has edited Cabin Porn, a Tumblr stream of latticed yurts and deerskin tepees scattered from Norway to New Zealand. Naturally, the site will soon be a coffee table book, adding to two others recently published on the subject. Next month’s release of Wild—Reese Witherspoon as a soul-searching Cheryl Strayed—will no doubt send people in droves to the mountains, as Eat, Pray, Love boosted trips to Bali in the mid-aughts. Studies have shown that even photographs of clean, natural settings, of the kind that appear on Cabin Porn, do provide mental and emotional relief—and who are we to defy science? Here, seven stunning, minimalist cabins to rent (or merely ogle) this winter.
Photo: Courtesy of Erik Widman / @widde761/7Fabriken Furillen
Where: Gotland, Sweden
On a wild limestone island covered with ash and elm trees, a freestanding weighmaster’s cabin overlooks the Baltic. Sit by the cast-iron stove wrapped in a sheepskin throw, or ride a white-painted Skeppshult bicycle 20 minutes south toward two hermit cabins on the peninsula’s tip, surrounded by lavender fields—add roaming cows and sheep, subtract electricity and running water. The adjacent white pine outhouse has Wallpaper* and W in a brown paper basket, for your reading pleasure.
Photo: Courtesy of Dunton Hot Springs / @duntonhotsprings2/7Dunton Hot Springs
Where: Dunton, Colorado
An old ghost town in the Rockies with thirteen hand-hewn log cabins, like the Aspen-wood, gable-roof Geysir, in a circular encampment. Stay in the restored Dunton General Store, where miners once traded gold dust for tallow, and soak in the hot pool out back. Iron-, manganese-, and lithium-enriched springs are scattered across the grounds: Visit the nineteenth-century bathhouse, decorated with standing tree trunks and leaves, then dine on chanterelle-fed lamb in the saloon with a cold rye whisky.
Photo: Courtesy of Ellis O’Connor / @ellisoconnor3/7Sweeney’s Bothy
Where: The Isle of Eigg, Scotland
Named for a mythical Gaelic king who spent ten years living on sorrel and acorns while writing poetry in a glen; now, frequent home to off-the-grid art residencies. A single glass wall faces Laig bay and the isle of Rùm. Sit by the wood-burning stove in the aubergine armchair, or climb into the loft bed, whose support beam mimics the thorn tree Sweeney slept in. Walk under the Cleadale cliffs across the moors to see abandoned crofters cabins, or hole up in the bothy’s reading nook, beneath the accordion sconce.
Photo: Courtesy of KriskE / @irecirec4/7The Meadow House
Where: Candlewood Cabins, Wisconsin
A glass-wall pavilion perched on a platform in a grassy clearing in the Ocooch Mountains. Reclaimed barnwood floors are heated by a Scandinavian wood stove kept stocked with logs. Drink Honeycrisp apple wine from Weggy Winery by lamplight on the patio or inside the glass cabin with 360-degree views of the meadow (the creekside Glass House, pictured here, is shrouded by maple and pine trees, instead). In spring, climb to Ocooch’s summit and picnic in vibrant wildflower fields.
Photo: Courtesy of @bkatja5/7The Nebesa Cabins
Where: Julian Alps, Slovenia
Four wood-and-stone cabins on the hills of Soca Valley, with glass walls and terraces facing the Julian Alps. Fifteen minutes from the nearest town, Hiša Franko still delivers marble trout in green celery and pink pepper soup to the back patio. Hole up by the fire with local cheeses, cured meats, and wines from the pantry and cellar, or splash water on the hot basalt stones in the Finnish sauna with slatted, sliding glass doors for comfort. Forty-three miles by bike, the Adriatic awaits.