From the road, I caught a glimpse of an old chimney and roof line peeking out from behind a row of trees. Curious, I turned down a gravel driveway nearby, and sure enough, the chimney belonged to a primitive log cabin. Beside it was another log cabin. In hopes of finding the owner, I knocked on the door and was greeted by a pleasant elderly man that was as round as he was tall. When asked about the cabins behind his home, he was eager to share with me his family’s history and invited us in.
Mr. Digh was his name; he lived alone and said he didn’t have much family left living. As he talked, he picked up a hewing axe from the corner of his covered porch. He seemed to straighten up with pride a bit as he explained it was the very axe his great-great-grandfather used to hew the logs when building the cabin.This was common building practice prior to the 1800’s when early American settlers personally felled, de-limbed, transported, scored, and squared their own trees for construction. Given the labor-intensive nature of hewing, it was a task that required the expertise of skilled carpenters and craftsmen.
Visible chop marks in such old timber paints an intimate feel of how difficult frontier life was. Mr. Digh’s people were among the first to settle that county, and he had the original deed to prove it. It was dated 1812 and signed by King George, granting his family hundreds of acres.
The other log cabin (the one that looks more like a barn) was actually purchased and moved to his land from somewhere in the mountains of Western NC. He said his wife wanted it, so he bought it for her. She’d decorated and fixed up the inside of the log cabin just the way she wanted it, but soon became ill and was no longer able to enjoy it. He padlocked the doors after her passing, and the inside remains the way she left it.
He gave me full range to photograph the barns, horse stables, and two log structures on his property. The cabins had beautiful wood shingle roofs covered in green moss, hand hewn dovetail joints, and darling lantern light fixtures. The scenery reminded me of the Laura Ingall Wilder books I loved so much as a small girl. I read them over and over and over again because I loved the descriptions of their frontier living so much. And here I was as an adult peeking through windows of a cabin that felt just like the stories I adored as a kid. I didn’t go inside the cabin, as that would’ve required Mr. Digh to come unlock them for me. As feeble as he appeared, I wasn’t about to trouble him. Not long after I photographed the home, I learned Mr. Digh passed away. When I heard the news I felt thankful to have been one of the last people he shared his personal memories with and thankful I recorded them when I did.
