By the time you read this, I’ll be at the cabin. 

The cabin was once a routine destination for me. But life happens and now it’s been a year since I graced its cozy innards. 

Wait. Did I just say that? Cozy? 

Huh. 

Maybe absence really does make the heart grow fonder.  

Oddly enough, I just saw the James McAvoy flick Speak No Evil. I, to quote Ed Grimley, really must say that movie has some commonality with the cabin. 

Speak No Evil is a great thriller. I’ll give away no spoilers here, but we need to talk about the similarities between Speak No Evil and the cabin. 

One of the movie’s early scenes finds a couple setting their tween daughter off for a Moped ride. 

With a stranger. 

In a foreign country. 

Without a helmet. 

“Who does that?” my friend whispered to me. 

Yes. We’re movie talkers. Don’t sit near us and you’ll be fine. 

Also, me. I do that. 

On one of our first family trips to the cabin, our sole neighbor rode up to our cabin on his Gator. 

I didn’t know this neighbor. Not then. And what I did know should not have reassured me.  

He lives in the woods. He frequently travels outside the country.  

And he dresses like Don Johnson circa Miami Vice on Friday nights, to pick up ladies at the Wal-Mart. 

The moment my children — little then, both in elementary school — saw that Gator, they clamored for a ride. 

The neighbor acquiesced, my husband consented, my daughter hopped into the Gator, and they were off. 

Down the mountain.  

Into the forest. 

Out of sight. 

“I don’t even know his last name,” I whispered to my husband, who, of course, has known this neighbor forever. 

This neighbor, by the way, loves the movie Frozen. It’s one of his favorites. 

It was all I could think of during Speak No Evil when The Bangles’ “Eternal Flame” became a peripheral, cringey plot point. 

Perhaps the best use of that song, ever. 

And, like Frozen, not where you’d expect to find it. 

The protagonist couple of Speak No Evil travels to the rural English countryside home of the Moped rider they ultimately befriended in that foreign country. 

The Moped rider’s home is deep in the forest, off an unpaved road. The lone direction once in the woods is to turn left at the war memorial. 

Once you turn off Teaberry Lane on the way to our cabin, directions go something like this: 

Follow the dirt road around the curve, over the stream, and past the house. 

Yeah. The house. There’s just one. 

Past the house is a pile of — how to be charitable here — gear? Stuff? Paraphernalia? Well, whatever. You’ll know it when you see it. 

Quick! Turn right! Yes — between those trees.  

Mount the hill. I know, I know. The road is rocky and the trees press in on you like some childhood nightmare. It’s OK. I promise. 

Just over the crest, you’ll see a cabin with moose antlers hung just under the roof’s peak. 

Welcome. Want a beer? 

By this point in Speak No Evil, I was both longing for the cabin and snarking about the similarities to my friend. 

That was when the Moped rider served up roasted goose. Alive just that morning, the goose was now dinner, golden and crispy. 

I can’t say for sure if I’ve ever eaten anything at the cabin that was alive earlier that day. 

But I have had a pheasant butchering lesson from my father-in-law and let’s just say those pheasants were still warm. 

If you catch my drift. 

I requested that butchering lesson. I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea to learn. Lots of hunters and anglers at the cabin. 

And sometimes — sometimes — a slab of meat the size of a man is in your kitchen, and your husband is giving the kids and their friends lectures on blood flow in four-chambered hearts, and you’re texting your book club ride to just honk when she arrives. 

So if you can butcher, that all wraps up a lot more quickly. 

As Speak No Evil continued, so did its parallels with the cabin. Start a fire without matches? Done that. Hiked in the woods? So many times. Lost cell service? Well, have I ever called you from the cabin? 

And WiFi?  

Ha. You’re cute. 

We do have a TV, but I don’t feel good about the influence I’ve had there. It used to never get turned on. But one day I couldn’t take it anymore. 

Yeah. I turned it on.  

Now we have a show we watch there on Saturday nights. It’s become a tradition and is my lone contribution to the fabric of the cabin. 

I’m truly awful. 

But not as awful as the antagonists in Speak No Evil. 

So go. See it.  

You’re welcome at the cabin when you’re done.