As a young adult, Katie Eberhart moved to Cabin 135, a house on a knoll
in remote Alaska. Over the next decade, growing up and growing into her
home, she found herself thinking through her ever-changing ideas about
aging and place, a lot of which were wrapped up closely in her
experience of living in the house itself. Cabin 135 provided shelter and
security, and it also offered lessons on economic disruptions and how
ideas of normalcy change. In these pages, we share Eberhart's experience
of digging into the past--figuratively and, in her garden, at an
archaeology site, and in a national park, literally. Every layer peeled
back, we find, reveals another story, another way of thinking about
nature and the past--our own and that of others. In greenhouse and
garden, yard, forest, and more distant places--a beach in southeast
Alaska, the Arctic coast, Swiss Alps, Iceland, and even Biosphere-2 in
Arizona--Eberhart engages with the world around her, and, through it,
reflects on her own experiences and journey through life. Offering a
journey of wonder and curiosity, through the author's mind, a house's
structure, and other places, Cabin 135 is a deft combination of memoir
and nature writing, rich with thought and full of appreciation for--and
profound concerns about--the world and our place in it.
