Outward bound

Drive north of Wenatchee through apple orchards and across the border to Kelowna, B.C., a minor-league hockey town of modest size, and continue east through the smaller city of Vernon, then still further east through a bump-in-the-road logging town called Lumby, and finally, long after the now-gravel road winds past cows and sheep in sparse winter fields, there is a group of sturdy wood cabins tucked into a deep, snowy canyon. Appropriately, the little resort is called Cozy Cabins.

Tucked between the Okanagan and Kootenay valleys, the Cozy Cabins were exactly the place I wanted to be over the New Year: a snowed-in cabin; tossing a birch log on the fire and watching its bark slowly curl off in long strips; hearing it crackle and pop far away from the world back west, except for my girlfriend and my dog.

People in the Northwest pride themselves on being active—getting outside and doing active things, no matter what the season. I fall squarely into that get-outside-at-all-costs group. Maybe that's why a vacation inside sounded so nice for the end of 2001. Not that I made any resolution to be less active in the year ahead, it just sounded, well, nice and quaint.

Ensconced in a cabin with only a wood stove for heat and a snowy quarter-mile hike to fetch mountain-fresh water, and cloaked by the deafening silence of snow-laden tree branches, one couldn't help but imagine growing accustomed to . . . sitting still, inside.

I asked the owner, Harald Hatterscheidt, as he paused his snowmobile from running errands around the 41-acre place, what he did with his family for vacations.

"The kids, they want to go to the city," Harald said, with a father's understanding for teenagers. "We're going to Edmonton for a week, where they have that supermall. If it was me—well, I feel like I'm already on vacation 300 days a year."

But we had packed the backcountry skis and snowshoes and Gore-Tex jackets. Glinting, stacked by the door, the tools of the outdoors activist couldn't stand idle forever. So off we went through dry powder, weaving tracks on the deep blue ice of frozen Echo Lake, scrambling up to the cliff face looming high above our cabin, then pausing to soak up some sharp winter sun.

But not for long. The warm cabin beckoned.

While fetching a last log for the fire at 2 a.m., I paused for a moment to admire the cliff face high above, shining brilliantly in the moonlight. Shivering, leaning toward the warmth of the door, I thought, this is why we rent cozy cabins.

For more information: www.cozycabins.ca.

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