Matt walked back up the driveway while sipping his Sprite. After lifting the enormous metal latch on the shack door, he leaned against it, listening to it creak. One time he’d asked his father why the door was so damn big. His father had explained to him the shack was never meant to be a place of residence. Instead, it was designed as storage for tools and other equipment.

Inside the shack, mustiness greeted him like a friendly wet Lab. The big door took up half the southern wall, the other half consisting of a window and a tall, narrow table with wheels. A black cast iron stove took up the corner, its exhaust pipe snaking up the logs. The wheeled table under the front window held a portable camp stove—the kind you attached green propane tanks to. A drawer held corroded and misshapen silverware, cast-offs from kitchens back in the suburbs. Below the drawer sat two plastic bins used for washing dishes.

Matt strode over to the east side of the shack and sat down on the couch, if he could still call it that. “The couch” was a plaid grungy thing from who-knows-when. An east-facing window above the couch revealed the mega-aspen. Beyond the aspen listed a gray-planked outhouse. His father used to say the outhouse was one good wind from being firewood.

A shelf above the window sagged with all kinds of trinkets: knives, knife sharpeners, strike tip matches, a compass, an old bear trap, dozens of fading copies of National Geographic, lantern mantles, lamp oil, boxes of tea, two first aid kits and a bunch of lighters hawked from the local taverns.

A bulging slate fireplace at least eight feet wide hogged most of the north wall. The multihued rocks embedded in the fireplace had been taken from the Black. Bulbous hunks of rock all along the face made for impromptu shelving. Those who liked to smoke used the shelves for packs of smokes and lighters. One protruding rock could even hold a bottle of whiskey. A full grown man could sit inside the firebox, Indian-style.

A field identification poster of SALMON AND TROUT OF THE GREAT LAKES was taped to the rock above the firebox. An outdated calendar featuring various busty women holding chainsaws was taped next to the fish poster. Matt had always found this calendar tacky, but after a few days in the woods by himself, the poster changed from tacky to awesome. Sure, all the fresh air triggered his hunger, but it affected other things, too. Fumes and pesticides from heavy development and agriculture played a larger role in dulling senses than people realized. Coming up north was like removing a heavy coat.

Against the western wall loomed a triple bunk bed, made possible by the sloping, atticless ceiling. The shack was deceptively diminutive from outside, but the open design was inviting and semi-spacious once you entered.