Expressway: Cabin, sweet log cabin

Reader Susan Scalone lives in Shoreham.

It has always been my dream to one day live in a log cabin. My three children, well aware of this, knew mom was ready in a flash to move the family from our ranch home in Ronkonkoma to wooded solitude, a place that existed in my imagination. As a single mother struggling to support my family, I dared to envision a life where my inner Paul Bunyan would emerge, where I could retreat when reality became just a little too real.

This year my dream came true.

I chanced upon a log cabin in Shoreham and bought it. To afford it, I knew I would have to live frugally, but I didn't want another season of my life to pass without risking the dream.

So here I was in suburban Long Island in a home constructed entirely of white pine, and it was breathtaking. What I didn't anticipate was that a 25-year-old log home would possess a personality, including Tiffany-style lights and American eagle hooks. As my son, now an adult, moved in my furniture, we noticed that its rustic qualities fit right in, as if my tables and couches also had been waiting years for the right location.

In Ronkonkoma, I had tried, as most folks do, to fill our home with love, laughter and learning. Often clumsily, I juggled the messiness of family life with my need for creative space. While I agreed with Virginia Woolf on the necessity of having a room of one's own, I knew that, for me, responsibility for family was paramount. My "room" was wherever I could grab a pencil and paper and write.

Although happiness comes from within, I believe there are environments that do raise the spirit. And, though the wonderment we seek starts in our minds, there are places in the heart that are entryways to reinvention.

It works delightfully differently for each person: One finds serenity on a golf course, while another is elated in a noisy football stadium. We find it in music, the runner's high, or the care of another human being. The physical environment can enhance or detract from the mindset, but does not own it. It is what we do with what is around us and within us that makes the world beautiful and us free to be ourselves.

My delight is balancing my love for family and friends with love of writing and literature. Could the cabin be the pathway to this balance? It certainly provides a quiet freedom to read and write. The second part of the equation also emerged quickly.

The first week I moved into the cabin, I found a deer in my front yard eating flowers. Birdsong in the early morning has replaced the alarm clock, and the neighborhood is often so quiet that one might think this is the wilderness and not suburbia.

Then one day during my first month in the cabin, my three adult children and three grandchildren arrived soaking wet at my front door after they were caught in the rain at my grandson's baseball game. The cabin was suddenly filled with a cacophony of chatter and very wet people, with hair dryers and clothes dryers running simultaneously, and with the sound of riotous laughter and children's giggles. I was suddenly filled with such joy.

And knew I was home.