Catalogs Can Feed a Designer-Cabin Fever

I’m in the market for a cabin in the woods. Something along the lines of a hunting lodge, but without the guns or the taxidermy. A rustic retreat from cable TV and carpools, but with a fully equipped kitchen and lots of copper pots. A modest log cabin, with a fireplace you can stand inside of and a Jacuzzi tub you can swim in.

I am sure you will conclude that my mate and my kids are driving me nuts--again--and that I am fantasizing about an escape. That is often true. But this time, the decoratin’ demons are driving my daydreams. I am yearning for a fresh canvas and some Navajo colors by Ralph Lauren with which to paint.

I am less in search of a retreat than I am on the cusp of a trend. Absolutely all my catalogs are offering furnishings, linens, artwork and knickknacks better suited to a lodge than a two-story colonial. There is a log-cabin look in women’s clothing, too. Lots of earth tones and turquoise jewelry. Big silver belt buckles and horse-blanket blazers. If you have a cabin in the woods, you have to look the part.

I am propelled by the accident of bulk mail to leave the asphalt jungle for the woods. I want to commune with nature and wear sheepskin slippers and colorful plaids.

I want my faithful dog to doze at my feet in a room decorated in a moose theme. I want to cook in my fireplace while sipping wine from the cutting-edge wineries in Australia. I am the New Survivor!

Of course, I will need pole-style bedroom furniture that looks like it was rough-hewn from trees cleared that day. And the bed must be outfitted with brushed flannel sheets in a pine-cone design and with a comforter thick enough to swallow me whole.

My cabin in the woods will be done in Nouveau Adirondack.

In the living room, braided rugs on stone floors. Pashmina throws and sepia lampshades. And leather, leather, leather. Everywhere you look, the moose and bear motif continues: in dresser knobs and wind chimes, on towel bars and an enormous fleece robe.

A split-oak creel fishing basket would look good holding magazines or fatwood sticks by the fire.

Artworks would include carved decoys, as well as botanical prints. There are oil lamps and ottomans. Weather glasses for predicting storms and crockery for baking apples. There are Dansko clogs and a canvas log carrier by the front door for retrieving firewood.

My cabin will sit deep in the woods, but near a lake inhabited by loons and with a little red canoe resting, bottom up, on the pebbly shore. There will be handmade bird feeders everywhere and a spyglass on a tripod for watching them feed.

The last roses of the season will cling to the trellises beside the front door; a chimenea fireplace on the deck in back awaits the hearty, along with a selection of designer beers in a stainless-steel tub.

A handyman who bears a strong resemblance to Harrison Ford drops by daily with mail and provisions and finds me splitting my own firewood ...

Oh, my. My decorating daydream has carried me far afield. This started as a musing on the current themes in catalog shopping, not as a remake of a movie starring Kristin Scott Thomas.

Home furnishing trends aside, I think cabins in the woods are appealing fodder for daydreams because that’s what we imagine we would do in our cabin in the woods: Daydream. Removed from the rude reach of technology and the cacophony of popular culture, our heads might become as free of clutter as those cabins appear to be.

I would be certain to include one nonessential touch, however. A pillow I found in one of the catalogs with the inscription “Cabin Rules: Don’t do today what you can put off ‘till tomorrow. Take naps. Laugh and play. Forget all rules.”

The perfect epigram for my daydream cabin in the woods.

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Susan Reimer writes for the Baltimore Sun, a Tribune company.