My boyfriend brought it up one quiet evening, the way he sometimes floats wild ideas when the lights feel too bright and the notifications keep buzzing. “What if we just… disappeared for a year?” he said. “A real cabin. Middle of nowhere. No Wi-Fi. No neighbors. Just us and the trees.”
I laughed at first. Then I stopped.
Because the longer I sat with the thought, the more it stopped feeling like a fantasy and started feeling like an answer to questions I didn’t even know I was asking.
The best part? We would have each other — uninterrupted.
We are already a little obsessed with each other(in the healthiest, most affectionate way). We can spend entire weekends wrapped up in each other and still want more. A year in the woods would be quality time on steroids. Morning coffee on the porch, maybe even long hikes, and definitely nights by the fire reading aloud or playing cards. We could have the deep conversations we always say we will get to “when things slow down.”
But I am not naive. I worry about him.
My man loves his sports with a passion that rivals my own. He thrives on the instant gratification of modern life — one-click ordering whatever we need, same-day delivery, the dopamine hit of new gadgets or screens. Could he trade Sunday football for splitting logs and checking trap lines? Would the quiet eventually feel like peace… or punishment?
We would need to be honest with ourselves. He would have to become the hunter, the protector, the one who keeps our little haven safe and supplied. I would handle the hearth — cooking, preserving, nesting. Traditional roles. If we can align on that vision, I think we could thrive.
Imagine waking up and the only sound is wind moving through pine needles or the distant call of a bird you cannot name yet. No breaking news. No endless scroll of other people’s highlight reels. No pressure to know what everyone is mad about this week or who won last night’s game.
I have been a die-hard Boston sports fan for many years now. The kind who listens to sports radio before I even get out of bed. But that constant checking, that emotional investment in games I have zero control over, is just another form of distraction. A socially acceptable one, sure—but still a distraction from my actual life. I need to start walking. I need to learn how to take care of my man.
For one year, I would give it up. All of it. The news, the scores, the Instagram stories. I would let the world keep spinning without my commentary. And I have a feeling the world would be just fine.
The part that keeps pulling me back to this idea is what we would gain in exchange.
With nothing else competing for my attention, I could give my entire heart and soul to the person I love. Not the distracted, half-present version of me that exists between blog research and doom-scrolling. The real version.
I picture slow mornings making coffee on a wood stove. Long afternoons where “housewife duties” stop feeling like chores and start feeling like care—chopping vegetables we foraged or grew, mending clothes by hand (or learning how), keeping a fire going so the cabin stays warm when the snow comes. I want to learn how to do these things well. Not because I have to prove anything to anyone else, but because I want to become someone who can take care of our little world completely.
No grocery deliveries. No DoorDash. No running to the store because we forgot milk. We would have to plan, preserve, forage, hunt (or at least learn how). The learning curve would be steep. I know that. Right now I am not exactly the type to “prance through the woods” with confidence. I can barely stand. I get cold easily. I have never skinned anything in my life.
But here is what I keep coming back to: right now I have every possible distraction in the world, and I still feel scattered. What would happen if every single distraction was removed? What kind of person would I become with 365 days of focused, deliberate living?
A year is not just one long summer afternoon. It is four seasons of learning.
Spring would be about rebirth—planting whatever we could, watching things grow, dealing with mud and rain and the first ticks of the season. Summer would be abundance and bugs and long days of work that leave your muscles sore in the best way. Fall would be preservation—canning, drying, stacking wood like our lives depend on it (because they would). Winter would be the real test: short days, long nights, the kind of quiet that makes you confront yourself.
I do not romanticize it. I know there will be days I miss hot showers that last longer than five minutes. Days I crave takeout or a movie or just the simple comfort of walking into a store and buying whatever I want. There will be moments of real frustration—when the roof leaks or the generator will not start or we argue because we are the only two people for miles and there is nowhere to storm off to.
But those are exactly the moments I think we need.
The version of me that exists right now is shaped by modern life. She is good at a lot of things that do not actually matter in the woods. She is also anxious, overstimulated, and constantly measuring herself against invisible standards.
The version of me that could survive a year in a cabin would have to be different. (Like Cara Dutton in the Yellowstone spinoff 1923).
More patient. More resourceful. More present. She would know how to start a fire in the rain, how to read animal tracks, how to sit with silence instead of reaching for her phone. She would know how to love someone without the constant noise of the outside world telling her what love is supposed to look like.
I do not know if that person already lives inside me or if she is someone I would have to become. Either way, I am curious enough to find out.
I am still thinking about it. Really thinking about it. Not as a cute Instagram story or a temporary “digital detox,” but as a serious, year-long commitment to a completely different way of living.
The things I am most afraid of losing—news, sports, convenience, constant connection—are also the things keeping me from becoming the person I say I want to be.
And the things I might gain—deep focus, real self-reliance, an unshakable partnership, and the kind of peace that only comes when there is nothing left to hide behind—feel worth the risk.
So I am sitting with the question.
Would you live in a cabin in the middle of the woods for an entire year?
Not as a vacation. Not as content. As your actual life.
I am closer to saying yes than I ever thought I would be.
Kat’s Musings 