Your home is a log cabin high in the mountains. Lush alpine meadows stretch down to meet forests of dark pine and cedar. The jagged tiers of mountains surround you on all sides. Inside the cabin, your nest of a bed is constructed into the wall facing the fireplace. It is a layer cake of quilts and overstuffed pillows. It has deep red velvet curtains that you can draw closed, enveloping you in snug warmth on even the coldest winter nights. There is a tiny picture window inside your bed-nest from which you can watch the morning sunlight shine on the white mountain tops.
Your daily meals are made from what you can forage and raise: mushroom stew in the autumn, young greens and sautéed fiddle head ferns in the spring, milk and cheese from the goats you keep. Every spring and summer you collect an ample supply of young fir tips and harvest from your hardy patch of peppermint and catnip for the sweet tea you drink all year. Multiple layers of wool stockings and hand knit sweaters keep you warm.
Your hair is perpetually tied back with a floral scarf from your large collection. You have a trusty waterproofed leather satchel that you take whenever you hike into the mountains. Your only protection and companion is a gnarled blackwood cane you once found under the cabin’s foundation.
When winter comes, and the drifts of snow reach almost above your cabin’s roof, and your goats sleep peacefully under piles of straw in the little barn, you head deep into the forest. It is so cold and so silent, you can sometimes hear the tinkle of snowflakes landing all around you. You look for the subtle glimmer of light at the base of trees that means that you’ve had luck. When you find that glimmer, you quickly unlace your snowshoes. You wade through the snowdrifts and duck under the tree’s frosted boughs, and there, if it is a very good day, will be the glimmering Fairy’s Lace mushroom growing along the side of the tree. You take only enough to sell for the next year’s supplies, carefully wrapping the crystalline, lacy white fungi in paper, and return home to enjoy a celebratory mug of hot tea by your warm fire.
Background photo credits, clockwise from top left: Alex, Michael Hacker , Brooke Davis , Andrea Ferrario
Text: Three Wishes Co. Thank you for reading! This is a fun project I’ve started. I hope that you enjoy my little flights of fancy. Please let me know if you have suggestions for more. It would be so cool to see other’s ideas, too!
