Cabin #2

"I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety." - Psalm 4:8

Ya know. Vacation is important. So is rest and finding peace, both within and without. We often forget this for some reason. We also forget how others need it to, and how vastly special the connections are between us, some that we don't even realize existed, until they're pointed out to us. Like the Cabin #2 Journal that I stumbled upon when we vacationed in Big Sur last weekend. As I flipped it open I looked into the lives of SO many people. It was really neat. There were some lovely children's drawings in it, a few heavy hitter writer's who expounded in earnest, and some real life, gritty moments, shared by others. Each visitor is expected to write in it before they leave, and I was stunned to see that the journal was completely full, save for the inside back cover. So? Since I haven't blogged in a while, I thought I would share our entry.

"As our family reads through this journal we are touched by so many stories. There are many moments recorded here, memories elastic and given eternal life because different people from all over the world have taken the time to share. Some were newlyweds in the bliss of their new matrimony; others have been children who have shared the simple pleasures of their days (and the number of crawdads they caught!), while others still have shared their discoveries (the purple sand at Pfeiffer, or sand dollars, or a tree species). In these pages are the words of someone very ill and working through their bucket list, someone else recovering from job loss and back surgery, and the defiant words of another person, a man floored by a broken heart, who came here to heal.  

If you read deeper, you will find some who witnessed to their faith, and others who were seeking the same. There are even the sweet scribbling’s of young love: a college boy who wrote secretly in this journal - while his girlfriend slept nearby - of how lucky he was to have her, and of how bright he hoped that their future together might be.

Amongst all who have preceded us we, The Faggioli’s, arrive for the last page, white and wide as a cliff face, calling to be climbed. My wife and I, now going on 19 years of marriage, came here to Big Sur for the first time 22 years ago. We tent camped because we were broke. We rode inner-tubes down the river to the restaurant and had beers with appetizers and listened to the band play and, very much in love ourselves, we told each other we’d come back someday with our kids. And we have been now, for the past thirteen years. Our son is now 13 and his little sister is now 7. 

Every year or so we all come back, because, as this journal is to this cabin, this place is to our hearts: memories. Recorded. Retained. Cherished. They cling in the branches of the redwoods overhead, call out to us in the birdsong all around and, if I listen real closely, in the running river, I can still hear both of my kids, when they were each toddlers, laughing at the joy of their first inner-tube rides.

But there’s something odd about being “the last page”. We’re the portal between “then” and “when”. All the people who have written in this journal before us will probably never read these words, and all the people who follow us probably won’t either, as they will be writing in a new, different journal for Cabin #2. Perhaps both journals will remain here, to keep the record going, and to keep this magical chain of moments strung together...lives of totally different people from totally different places, at totally different stages of life, forever intersected by the magic of words.