THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A memoir of the author's journey from an office job to restoring a cabin in the Pacific Northwest, based on his wildly popular Outside Magazine piece.
Wit’s End isn’t just a state of mind. It’s the name of a gravel road, the address of a run-down off-the-grid cabin, 120 shabby square feet of fixer-upper Patrick Hutchison purchased on a whim in the mossy woods of the Cascade Mountains in Washington state.
To say Hutchison didn’t know what he was getting into is no more an exaggeration than to say he’s a man with nearly zero carpentry skills. Well, used to be. You can learn a lot over six years of renovations.
CABIN is the story of those renovations, but it's also a love story; of a place, of possibilities, and of the process of construction, of seeing what could be instead of what is. It is a book for those who know what it’s like to bite off more than you can chew, or who desperately wish to.
Praise for CABIN
“Funny and thoughtful…Hutchison’s dread at returning to Seattle after weekends at the cabin is the same Sunday blues many feel, amplified by the proximity of what he increasingly becomes convinced is a better way to live. You feel his desire to be back in the woods, working with his hands. Don’t we all?” — New York Times
“Will have you wanting to quit your job and head to the woods in order to build your own cabin, even if you don’t have a single lick of carpentry skills. Filled with belly-laugh-inducing stories alongside grounded sentiment in chapters both short and sweet, 'Cabin' is the perfect book to take with you the next time you set out on a great adventure. — The Today Show
“Who could resist a house selling for less than $10,000 with the name “Wit’s End”? Author Hutchison couldn’t, and once he’d purchased the tiny cabin in Washington State’s Cascade Mountains, he decided to learn how to make it habitable. Embarking on remote-home improvement took him and his buddies six years, and changed his life: Once a copywriter, he’s now a full-time carpenter. He never turns down a beer, or a chance to laugh at himself.” — Los Angeles Times
“Cabin is Hutchison’s charming, funny account of his journey rehabilitating the dilapidated hovel on Wit’s End Place…In this equally motivating and relatable book, that earnest commitment to learning and the thrill that accompanies even the tiniest achievement shows on nearly every page.” — Washington Post
"Henry David Thoreau meets Home Improvement in Hutchison’s charming debut...With endearing directness and an infectious can-do spirit, this makes for a sturdy ode to self-discovery." — Publishers Weekly
"This memoir debut brims with situational humor, quirky characters, a natural disaster, lessons learned, and one guy’s search for purpose." — Booklist
"At the intersection between Bill Bryson and Drew Philp lies Patrick Hutchison’s beguiling memoir...His appealingly self-deprecating account of his misadventures renovating a ramshackle cabin in the woods, transforming his own life in the process, is as inspiring as it is richly humorous...a sneakily uplifting story that just might turn out to be life-changing for some of his readers as well." — Book Reporter
"A small cabin, purchased of Craigslist and tucked in Washington State's Cascade Mountains, becomes a life-changer for Patrick Hutchinson, who amusingly details a rather impulsive, woodland adventure in his first memoir…What ensues is a comedy of errors where headstrong, learn-things-the-hard-way-Hutchinson is drawn down a winding path that ultimately leads to personal enlightenment." — Shelf Awareness
"A hammer and nail mini-saga, told not by a master carpenter, but by a dynamic prose stylist who possesses the best of all skills: the ability to laugh at himself. This is a charming sample of the cabin dream afoot in America today and Hutchison is the perfect neophyte builder who is made better by the building he makes better." — Joseph Monninger, author of A Barn in New England: Making a Home on Three Acres
"At some point in his life, every man has the thought of going off into the woods to build a cabin. Patrick Hutchison didn’t stop at just thinking about building a cabin, he went and built one. A Walden for the modern age, CABIN humorously chronicles the misadventures, mishaps, and unexpected joys of escaping the digital world for a slice of rustic reality. It’s a book that celebrates and inspires the reader to be more agentic and take action to bring one’s daydreams to life. It’s a book about doing what Thoreau himself advised: putting foundations under your castles in the air." — Brett McKay, bestselling author of The Art of Manliness
"Imagine if Bill Bryson had decided to put down stakes during his walk in the woods and asked Charles Bukowski to help him refurbish a derelict shack deep in the forest of the Cascade Mountains. And there you have Patrick Hutchinson's hilarious and poignant CABIN. Hutchison braves truck-swallowing mudslides, spiders vying for outhouse ownership, hermit meth tweakers, and glowing-eyed mountain lions (both real and imagined) to chronicle not only his dilapidated cabin's transformation, but his own." — Bob Drury, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Hill and Throne of Grace
"Without any carpentry or fix-er-up skills, Patrick Hutchison risked his modest savings on a dilapidated cabin deep in the Northwest’s Cascades. His life, and now this book, became a love affair with shelter, home, and self-education. I particularly appreciated his gifts for introspection and self-deprecating humor, which mirror the same insecurities we all experience. Henry David Thoreau would have loved (or: is loving) this book." — Rinker Buck, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Oregon Trail and Life on the Mississippi
"Patrick Hutchison’s CABIN is about the most damned American book you’ll ever read. It’s as warm, welcoming and as full of rejuvenating spirit as a crackling potbellied stove in a little cabin in the woods. Hutchison's cabin in the woods. Fan’s of Thoreau’s Walden, Tracy Kidder’s House and Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild will all relish in Hutchison’s indefatigable spirit as this Seattle copywriter sets his sights on fixing up a hut-shaped pile of wood about to turn back to the earth. CABIN will make you ask to borrow your mom’s little pickup and some power tools, buy a case of Rainier and head for the hills to see if you, too, can’t fix a little something up yourself. You’re going to freaking love this book." — Matthew Batt, author of Sugarhouse and The Last Supper Club
About
PATRICK HUTCHISON is a writer and builder from the Pacific Northwest. His work has appeared in Outside, Wired, Vice, Seattle magazine, and Seattle Weekly.
He grew up in Washington State’s rainy southwest corner, eventually moving to Seattle to attend the University of Washington. Working on the cabin described in his debut book inspired him to leave copywriting to pursue carpentry. He now finds himself most often in the woods, working on tiny homes, cabins, and treehouses. When he isn’t building, you’ll find him at his home in Tacoma, WA, where he lives with his wife, Kate, and their black lab, Marge. Cabin is his first book.
Contact Patrick
UPCOMING EVENTS
Wasco County Library - Author Talks (September 16th and 17th)
Join us for two special visits with author Patrick Hutchison, as he shares stories and insights from his memoir, Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman.
Tuesday, September 16th, from 5 to 6 PM at the Southern Wasco Public Library in Maupin
Wednesday, September 17th, from 5:30 to 7 PM at The Dalles Public Library, Main Library
Southwest Washington Writers Conference
Join Patrick at Friday’s Author Talk dinner and for a keynote presentation on Saturday morning.
September 12th & 13th
Centralia College
The cabin as seen from the road, shortly after buying it. Rotten plywood serves as a bridge across the muck. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
The front of the cabin before any work has taken place. Open deck framing below. The electrical box leads to nothing inside. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
The inside of the cabin as I bought it. The left window looks out onto the deck. The right windows look toward the driveway. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
Indy pointing out how un-waterproof the rusty roof looks. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
The loft after an initial cleaning of the insulation, most of which had fallen out of the ceiling. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
Looking into the woods at a mesmerizing mix of ferns, hemlocks, Douglas firs, cedars, maples, and alders. (Credit: Maddy Porter)
Just above Sunset Falls, looking over the South Fork Skykomish River toward Mount Index on the right. (Credit: Maddy Porter)
Matt, the cheapest plywood available, and my mom’s little red Ranger on the morning of the initial work party. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
Indy hauling a bucket of rotten wood out of the cabin. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
The little woodstove and its nuclear-shaped vents glowing from a crackling fire. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
Bryan playing guitar out on the deck after a late-morning breakfast. (Credit: Kelly Wang)
An early kitchen setup with a Coleman stove, camp chairs, and kerosene lanterns. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
An unreal sunset seen from the hill above the mudslide. This was taken a few years after the slide. The roofs of destroyed cabins can be seen poking through the new growth. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
An early-morning target-practice session with the cabin’s fine selection of BB guns. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
A fresh harvest of salmonberries, which grew like weeds all around the cabin. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
Indy using the Dremel to hack away exposed screw ends during construction of the cabin’s kitchen. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
A close-up of the Boeing shipping crate material salvaged for the kitchen’s countertops. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
The finished kitchen with gas stove, shelf for beer and cooler storage, and patent-pending bucket plumbing system. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
The new bridge constructed to bypass the mudslide near Sunset Falls. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
Indy and I cleaning things up on the new deck at the end of the first work party. (Credit: Matt Badger)
Matt adding cedar decking with the world’s most powerful drill plugged into the generator. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
A view of Mount Persis from downtown Index in winter. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
Bryan demonstrating the best way to warm yourself and your coffee at the woodstove. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
Quite possibly the most awe-inspiring set of stairs ever created. Note the subtle expansion of tread width. Not pictured: the three or four thousand screws holding it together. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
The cabin illuminated on a very typical foggy gray evening in winter. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
BUTTS banner welcomes guests to the outhouse. World’s dullest saw also available for impromptu spider battles. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
Todd in full pretzel mode beneath the cabin to help replace the rotten rim joist. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
Preparing a classic cabin breakfast of leftover rib eye steak bits and dehydrated hash browns. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
Slicing up plywood for something or other. Captured just moments before the kickstand sank into the gravel and the bike toppled over. (Credit: Kate Palmer)
Kellen, Matt, and I amid the chaos of full roof replacement. (Credit: Kate Palmer)
The cabin with its fresh roof, glowing in the dim twilight. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
The finished exterior with fresh paint, stain, new shingles, lantern hook, boot scraper, and new roof. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
The patchwork ceiling of sistered joists and salvaged wood, crisscrossed with Christmas lights, pans, and lanterns. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
The shelf above the futon, where pancake mix, syrup, books, pu-erh tea, and incense were stored. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
Me on a snowy evening, all lights aglow, woodstove roaring nearby. A perfect night. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
A fresh dumping of snow after the trees came down and the new roof was added. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)
The road out of the Riversites on a beautiful autumn day. (Credit: Patrick Hutchison)