Cabins of Minnesota (Minnesota Byways)

The lake cabin. Early mornings on the sleeping porch, lunches on the dock, late-night cleanings in the fish house. But Minnesota’s seasonal getaways aren’t limited to its bountiful lakes: vacationers trek to hideaways in the woods, to ice shacks along the Mississippi River; even out to cottages beside the highways, relics from the days when farmers rented vacation places along cornfields and cow pastures. Popular photographer Doug Ohman and renowned writer and poet Bill Holm highlight the state’s unique and treasured cabins—a vintage Fredenberg Lake compound near Duluth; the celebrated mom-and-pop Fairyland Cabins of Detroit Lakes; a cabin situated on top of a pontoon in Rose Lake. Holm’s eclectic prose combines stories of the ancient and new and illuminates the rewards of the cabin life: “the pleasures of fishing, daydreaming, sunset watching and star counting, the leisure to take stock of one’s life without the surround-sound noise of the new wired century. In a cabin retreat,” he writes, “pleasure overcomes duty for a little while.” Doug Ohman is a photographer and acclaimed public speaker. His photographs are featured in the Minnesota Byways series, which includes Barns of Minnesota, Churches of Minnesota, Courthouses of Minnesota, and Schoolhouses of Minnesota (all MHS Press). Bill Holm is the author of several books of essays and poetry and teaches at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota.