Cabin in the Woods With Friends

My parents are very social. They’ve made and kept friends from everywhere they’ve been, and consequentially I’ve always had an unlimited supply of people to meet, hug, thank, avoid, and smile with my entire life.

One of these groups of friends all miraculously had daughters first, and boys second (though my brother and I were two years behind each gendered set) and the group of new parents consequentially became even closer friends as they raised these two sets of children. My earliest memories are following these older girls around on camping trips and holiday parties, of trying to keep the younger brothers out of our forts or business. These girls were my guaranteed friends, ones I’d only see on happy occasions – a party, a holiday, a sports event, a vacation. We were never together long enough to fight, or get on each other’s nerves, and though we never kept in touch through phone calls or emails, when we were together it was always easy to bare our souls. As teens they told me what it was like to have a boyfriend, when they came from college they told me to beware of freshmen 15, when they turned 30 they told me they never expected to still feel so young.

These girls became my role models and trailblazers, going through and figuring out things two years before I had to. I’ve always been so grateful to have them in the back of my mind when my ‘real’ friends let me down or weren’t enough. But they’ve also never quite crossed over into the territory of real friends.

Now mostly over 30, these girls, (women!) and I only connect if we’re in town for the holidays. And even then it is usually only at parties planned by our parents. We catch up on each other’s lives, eat appetizers, and laugh about the crazy things we did when we were kids. It’s always nice, never exceptional, and 90% nostalgic. As we’ve aged we all been in town less and less, and we’ve never been proactive to keep in touch other ways. So when one of these women reached out to us last month I was pleasantly surprised that she wanted to actively plan a get together, to make new memories instead of just rehash old ones.

The email chain alone was a new concept for us- we all exchanged mailing addresses for holiday cards and gave sentimental I miss you messages, and the ones who wouldn’t be in town listed their plans for us in witty short sentences and the ones like me who were in town, did their best to choose a date that would work for a one night stay in a fairly remote forrest service cabin. I, never one to miss out, whole heartedly showed my interest in a winter adventure anytime that worked for everyone else, even though I knew I’d have major work deadlines due in the coming weeks. Most of the others halfheartedly considered their options, not sure whether the inconvenience was worth the event, and many ended up making their excused.

I seriously considered bailing too since my job became even more stressful after I’d committed, but I couldn’t bring myself to cancel on something I so badly wanted to support, not just for the effort it had taken for our friend to plan and reach out to us, but also for the 24 hour chance to be outside and removed from the everyday stress of city and work life. Four of us ended up packing our backpacks and cross country skis into her parent’s car, and driving two hours north to the trailhead on Tuesday morning last week. I answered work phone calls as we drove.

I turned off my phone and we skied 3 miles in to the isolated, snow covered cabin, dragging firewood on a sled behind us. The cabin had a gas stove and was fully stocked with pots and pans and dishes, and once we got the wood stove in the living room going it only took a few hours to have the whole place heated comfortably. We explored the nearby river and gathered water to filter, and I snuck off alone for a while, wandering another mile or so along the trail as the sun went down, taking in the beauty and quiet of the winter forrest.

Back in the cabin we had nothing to do but be together. The four of us gossiped about the friends that didn’t come and analyzed our lives like we used to when we saw each other more. They told me what it was like to be pre approved to buy a house, to be women in dental school (two are dentists, soon to be orthodontists), to have boyfriends that had different love languages than they did. We drank wine, made burritos, cozied up in sleeping bags and fell asleep to a roaring fire and fading questions about how we want our lives to be.

After breakfast and another wander in the mountains, we skied out, beating a storm to arrive home about 24 hours after we left. We unloaded our gear, said our goodbyes, wished each other well, and didn’t promise to call. The reunion was over, and our friendships will standby until the next time we can in person.

I’m so glad I went. The three of them will never be my closest friends, and I’ll still probably only talk to them once or twice a year. But I’m so grateful to have these role models that are only a few years ahead, even if it means feeling slightly sad that we never fully crossed over into full friends.

But who knows what will happen in the next ten years. Three weeks in and our email chain is still fairly active, one friend even just informed us that her current posting in Shanghi’s US embassy will be sending her to Rwanda in 2020. A few of the girls have said we should start saving for a safari, and you can bet if they’re going, so will I.