At the intersection between Bill Bryson’s A WALK IN THE WOODS and Drew Philp’s A $500 HOUSE IN DETROIT lies Patrick Hutchison’s beguiling memoir, CABIN: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman. His appealingly self-deprecating account of his misadventures renovating a ramshackle cabin in the woods, transforming his own life in the process, is as inspiring as it is richly humorous.

In the fall of 2013, in his mid-20s, Hutchison’s dream of “becoming a gonzo journalist travel writer-type person” instead had curdled into a job writing marketing copy in Seattle. Seeking something that would lift him out of his funk, he stumbled on a Craigslist ad for a 10 by 12 foot cabin --- “more like a big chicken coop than anything else” --- near the tiny town of Index, in Washington’s gorgeous, rainy (75 inches per year) Cascade Mountains about 40 miles east of Seattle.

After a quick visit, Hutchison plunks down $7,500 cash for the property, located on the aptly named Wit’s End Place in a development known as the Mount Index Riversites, and finds himself the “proud yet incapable owner” of a dwelling that “amounted to an oversize doghouse.” As he warily makes his way to the site on his first visit, he writes that “there now seemed to be two kinds of places in the Riversites: junk-strewn drug dens and everybody else.”

"[F]or all its undeniable humor and good feeling, in his first book Patrick Hutchison has delivered a sneakily uplifting story that just might turn out to be life-changing for some of his readers as well."

CABIN is the chronicle of Hutchison’s patient, loving efforts --- over a period of several years, and despite lacking virtually any skills in the construction trades --- to transform this humble, long-neglected shack into a real home. With the aid of an assortment of only slightly more talented friends, bit by bit he succeeds in that quest. (A generous section of color photographs nicely documents the metamorphosis.). Along the way, he must contend with hazards that include catastrophic mudslides that hamper access to the property for months and the risk that some majestic, but clearly diseased, trees looming over the cabin may come crashing through its leaky roof.

But Hutchison proceeds slowly, methodically, to address the cabin’s various needs, gradually turning a place that lacks electric or cell service and indoor plumbing (the problem of spiders in the outhouse is a recurring one) into a warm and welcoming home. At a minimum, his eager embrace of a trial-and-error process (often with more emphasis on the latter) should encourage any do-it-yourselfer to give some long-delayed home improvement project a try.

In addition to a keen eye for detail, like the “scent of cedar and sage incense” that served as “an olfactory invitation to come in, settle down, crack open a book, and stay awhile,” Hutchison possesses a considerable gift for the sometimes elusive skill of comic writing. One must exercise some discretion about reading his book in a public setting because there are passages guaranteed to provoke frequent audible laughter.

Recounting his efforts to secure a loan for the purchase price, for example, Hutchison characterizes the reaction of bank loan officers as “about what I would have expected if I’d asked to borrow money for a pizza-powered time machine.” In his early days of ownership, he notices how, on the inside, “wide cedar boards covered the wall with the alignment normally reserved for glued letters on a ransom note.” And when a local handyman arrives to help install a woodstove, the owner is slightly sheepish about his “arrangement of amenities normally reserved for the clammy hideouts of desperate fugitives.” Wry observations like these are characteristic of the book’s mostly lighthearted sensibility.

In its latter stages, the memoir’s energy flags a bit as Hutchison dwells on the minutiae of construction projects, like replacing a portion of the cabin’s foundation and constructing a staircase. But even then, both drama and more laughs are not far away, as he describes the harebrained plan involving his girlfriend, Kate, as they try to fix a persistent roof leak. The fact that her only injury in attempting to execute that task involves a cut that required a quick trip to a nearby hospital emergency room borders on the miraculous.

But for all its grounding in the undeniably tangible world of power saws and plywood, leaky chimneys and rotten floor joists, at its heart there’s an ineffable quality to CABIN’s subtle message about the beauty of following one’s dreams. “At times,” Hutchison observes, “it felt like the cabin and I were partners in a sort of joint self-improvement project. When the cabin was all fixed up, maybe I would be to.” As his confidence and proficiency grow, a path leading out of an unhappy life toiling away at an unsatisfying job, the years slipping by as one exchanges precious hours for a mere paycheck, begins to emerge. “What’s not rare is the quiet, persistent voice that nags us into wondering what else might be possible,” he writes, “what change might be a bit better for us in the long run. This story is about what happens when we give that voice room to grow.”

And so, for all its undeniable humor and good feeling, in his first book Patrick Hutchison has delivered a sneakily uplifting story that just might turn out to be life-changing for some of his readers as well.