Call of the Wild

It’s a quintessential summer vacation, and in some sense a trip back into time: head up to the lakeside mountain cabin, deep in the forest, to do as little as possible.

We’re not talking about the three-story chalets that line some of the shoreline of Big Bear Lake, or the condominiums at the base of the ski runs, or even the mom-and-pop commercial cabins along the road that play to weekend tourists.

Every summer, hundreds of families trek up to the lake to spend several days, weeks, even months, in cabins built between 1914 and 1920, most of them constructed of logs, situated on U.S. Forest Service property.

On federal land around Big Bear, there are 445 privately owned cabins, built when the U.S. Forest Service sought to encourage visits to the national forests.

Nationwide, there are more than 15,000 such cabins, including about 6,300 across California. For the right to use the land, cabin owners pay an annual special use fee, amounting to 5% of the land’s appraised value. Depending on the location, annual special use fees range from $650 to $2,300; because the cabin owners don’t pay property tax, they are also assessed a possessory interest tax by San Bernardino County.

Among the many conditions and restrictions placed on using federal forest land: no fences, because this is public property, and the cabins can be used only for part-time recreation purposes by owners who maintain primary residences elsewhere.

Because some of the cabins are so nice--and the fee to live on federal land is such a bargain--some people are sneakily living in them year-round. So the search is on to identify these scofflaws, and it’s not easy.

“That’s one of the toughest problems we face--particularly in Southern California, where people can live in these cabins and still commute to work,” said Mark Dymkoski, the U.S. Forest Service official who oversees special uses in California. “It’s cheaper for some people to live in these cabins, which are intended only for recreational use, than to live elsewhere.”

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So far, nobody at Big Bear has been nailed for violating the year-round occupancy prohibition. Betty Hartenstine, who administers the special use program at Big Bear, said several suspected violators have been identified, and efforts are underway to collect hard evidence--including whether their driver’s licenses, voter information, year-round utility bills and other data would prove that these cabins are their primary home.

“There have been no prosecutions so far,” she said, “but we’re building our documentation” of violators. If and when evidence is firmly established, she said, the U.S. attorney’s office will be asked to bring charges.

For most cabin owners, these forest hideaways are the perfect place to get away from it all, if just for a while. The age of the cabins only adds to the experience, they say.

Never mind the insects, and so what if water has to be pumped from a well or trucked in, and for those cabins still relying on an outhouse--well, there’s a word for all this: rustic.

This is the stuff that memories are made of, a harking back to the vacation of yesteryear, when a stroll through the woods to collect wildflowers, an afternoon of jumping off the raft into the cold water, an hour on the shady shore casting for bluegill, a quiet evening around the table playing hearts, brought families together.

“This is my childhood. I was raised here. This is my lake,” said Susan Rudy of Pacific Palisades, who this past week brought her own daughter, her husband and their four children back to the family cabin to keep those memories alive. These bed frames, she says, were built by my uncle; these curtains, sewn by my grandmother.

Indeed, the cabins at Big Bear speak volumes to the desires of many families to enjoy less complicated, less harried summer vacations.

“I come up here to do absolutely nothing,” said 84-year-old Basil Gordon of Glendora, whose father built one of the first cabins, in 1915, after arriving on horseback.

Gordon’s earliest memories of vacationing at Big Bear are of riding up the mountain in his parents’ 1923 Buick, water sloshing in crockery jugs and tin cans in the trunk because there would be no water at the cabin.

Over the years, the cabins have been improved--some, dramatically.

Originally, they were about 700 square feet, with large rock fireplaces typically consuming most of one wall. Today, some exceed 2,000 square feet, with add-ons to accommodate interior bathrooms and separate bedrooms, departing from the initial one-room configuration. Because the cabins are privately owned, they can be sold--and the special use permit is extended to the next owner. One particularly upgraded cabin--if it could still be called that--recently sold for a reported $285,000, including antique furnishings.

More typically, the cabin interiors reflect their history. In the one owned by Rudy’s family, old skis are stored atop the open beams; in Gordon’s cabin, ancient snowshoes are displayed on a bedroom wall, along with the original bill of sale--$1.05, plus tax and shipping.

But time-period authenticity isn’t always treasured. Most cabins today feature indoor bathrooms, and for those who still use an outhouse, at least they have been upgraded with the kinds of toilets and holding tanks found in motor homes.

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Water remains a precious commodity. While some cabins are now connected to sewers and water lines, other cabins still rely on water wells and, in some cases, cabins are served by tanker trucks that pour 1,000 gallons of water into on-site holding tanks.

Most of the cabins are not used in winter. Roads leading to them are too narrow and steep and would be treacherous in snow. And most of the cabins are still single-wall construction, with no heating save a fireplace or wood-burning stove.

But come summer, the Forest Service tracts peppered with the cabins spring alive with vacationers who, over the years, have bonded and formed their own tight-knit communities.

Jan and Carl Hinnewinkel were going to their own cabins at Big Bear when they met and eventually married. Today, they live in the 1916-era cabin that Jan Hinnewinkel’s parents purchased in 1952 for $2,300.

Their porch is surrounded by bird feeders. Each morning, they lay out feed for quail and ducks, and in the afternoon, Carl Hinnewinkel flings raw peanuts from a sling-shot for noisy blue jays to catch in flight.

To say the couple loves the outdoors is understatement; she collects and documents wildflowers in two perfectly bound photo albums. But that’s nothing. The couple sleep outdoors; their bed is on the porch, and they fall asleep each night beneath stars that twinkle through the towering pines.

Oh, there was that one time when they heard a black bear lumbering up the steps; they got out of bed quick enough to grab a camera and photograph the bear as it sat on that very bed, leaning one arm against the porch railing and eating from a dish of peanuts, like some good ol’ boy. The bear never returned.

“We could afford better than this,” Carl Hinnewinkel said. But then, what could be better? Besides, “this is home. We grew up here.”

This kind of vacation may not be for everyone, of course.

Dick Fisher’s grandfather built a cabin in 1915, and in 1935 the family built another nearby that it now uses. “This lifestyle isn’t for a lot of people,” said Fisher, a Los Angeles attorney. “About a quarter of the guests we bring up love it. They’re the kind of people who like to go camping.

“But it’s too rustic for a lot of people’s taste,” he said. “We have some very good friends who always decline any invitation to come back.”

But for cabin owners, there can be no finer vacation--and a chance to wax nostalgic.

Gordon recalls, as a youth, jumping off a rock pile into the water. Today, he’s content, sitting on his porch and gazing over that same water.

“I think,” he said, “people have lost sight of the simple vacation.”