Once the roof was installed, the bunkie was more or less complete as a structure. If I wanted it to be a livable cabin, it still needed quite a few more additions.

“And I can put a small wood stove in… here,” I mused, my pencil scratching over the floorplan as I designed it. After doing some research, I found some pretty inexpensive and easy to install wood stoves that were specially built for mobile homes or tiny cabins. “That’s still going to eat up a lot of space, just because of tolerances for fire safety. And I’ll need to put down some tile or stone first, as well as something between the stove and the wall. That leaves… huh. Goofy, I’m not sure how I’m going to fit a full size bed in here.”

My hound mix looked at me, harrumphing before settling his head back down.

“I know, dude. I’m not going to get a single sleeper, not with how much you like to stretch out. But… well, not sure what the other options are.”

Many bunkie kits came with a loft option, and lofts were common in tiny homes and small cabins to add sleeping space without taking away from the reduced livable area, but I had opted for a design without a loft, as I had not been confident about getting it built by myself.

“Now that I’ve built this, I feel like I probably should have got the loft,” I muttered. “Oh well.”

Brainstorming my options, I came up with a few possible options. Installing a Murphy bed was possible, but when I looked into it I found them shockingly expensive, and they still ate up some floor space when stored upright without offering much in return. The Japanese style of setting out a futon on the floor at night and then putting it away during the day could work, but I found futons ridiculously uncomfortable, which was also how I felt about sleeping on the floor, as a westerner.

The best option was probably a couch with a pull-out mattress. The sofa beds I remembered from my youth had felt cheap and uncomfortable, but mattress technology had come a long way since then. The new foam stuff was probably a lot more comfortable. It would be a hassle pulling it out before bed and folding it away in the morning, but at least during the day I would still have a couch in the space that it occupied, and if I got really lazy I could just sleep on the couch, even if Goofy grumbled about it.

After some quick online research, I pulled up the website for the big Swedish box store, and ordered the model I had decided on in a nice dark gray.

“If the wood stove is over here, I could probably put the couch here, and the bed should have clearance to fold out without coming too close to the stove. That leaves this space here…”

My floor plan continued to come together, and I considered my other lifestyle necessities. I was really roughing it, but in the winter, I would need better options. I jotted down “composting toilet?” next to my floorplan. I was running the generator to pump water from the well when I needed it, and I could keep doing that through winter despite the discomfort, but my current cleaning options involved a bracingly cold hose or the black, five gallon camp shower that used the sun to heat up and only just barely allowed me to clean myself off. In the winter, it would freeze outside instead of heating up in the sun, so after some deliberation, I wrote “hot tub?” under the previous note. I knew there were wood-fired ones and other off-grid options, and the company I had bought the bunkie kit from had sauna kits as well, which was also enticing.

“I may be living off-grid in the northern wilds, but I can still do it in comfort,” I muttered to myself with a small chuckle. The extra income I made from the condo sale would start to get eaten up quickly if I started buying hot tubs and saunas, but if I considered it as part of a larger bathhouse that I needed to stay clean, it felt like a worthwhile expense. “Actually, if I design this like a full bathhouse, the composting toilet could go in there, rather than the cabin…”

My sketches became more elaborate as I started thinking slightly larger in scale, with a second structure near my cabin that had the lavatory and cleaning facilities. Cooking was something to consider as well. I was mostly eating shelf-stable stuff and had a small camp stove to warm up canned food or do some light cooking, which was fine since it was just me. If I was considering a second structure, an attached indoor/outdoor kitchen might make life quite a lot more comfortable.

By the time I was finished, my initial plans had truly spiraled out of control. The cost would be absurd, but more importantly, it wouldn’t be doable before winter arrived.

Sighing, I pulled out a fresh page and started over. “Back to the basics, Jack.”

I did need to cook and wash, but I needed something more simple to start. After doing some quick online research on my phone, I found something called a “coil kit” that would allow me to turn any tub into a warm bath thanks to thermosyphon circulation. By building a small fire in the middle of the coil, which was attached in two places to the tub, it would draw cold water into the coil from the bottom, heating up and spiraling through the coil to ultimately end up releasing back into the tub at the top.

The manufacturing company also had pictures of placing a grill over the coil to use the fire for cooking, which I could do in the couple of hours it took to heat up a small tub, which would probably take longer in the winter. I probably wouldn’t need to bathe every single day through the winter, especially if I was just hanging out in my cabin reading by the fire, but if I set this up somewhere partially covered I could do some grilling a couple of times each week, eat a nice dinner, and take a warm bath after. The rest of the week I could eat my usual fare, which was more often than not just protein bars or granola bars, fresh fruit, and sandwiches, or fire up the propane camp stove and heat up some soup or other canned or instant food.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Building a proper cedar tub would be too expensive for the moment, but if I was just bathing myself, a simple stock tank from the nearest feed store would work for now. “Redneck as fuck,” I laughed as I checked out the galvanized watering options for livestock. “But if it works, it works.”

Since I wasn’t treating the water for repeat use and would have to drain and refill the tub so it didn’t freeze each time I used it, smaller was actually better. I made sure to get a tank with a drain that I could connect a hose to and let the water drain outside of the cooking and bathing area so that ice didn’t build up around it all winter.

I hopped in the truck to head to the feed store, making sure I had a worthwhile tub before I ordered the coil kit. The feed store was interesting, and had a lot of other things in stock that I hadn’t thought about which wasn’t as well stocked in the big orange box store. When I was ready to do some fencing, there was a lot more here, and at a better price, than I could get elsewhere.

As I was looking through their outside yard where the fencing supplies were stored, something caught my eye.

“Hey, would it be possible for me to buy some of these pallets off you?”

“You can have ‘em,” the feed store employee said. “We get deliveries on ‘em every week, and just give ‘em away. Take whatever you want.”

With my truck loaded down with pallets and a stock tank, which I secured with some ratchet straps to make sure the towering mess didn’t go flying, I slowly drove back to my property, unloading the treasure. I made the order for the coil kit, and began rewatching some videos I had seen over the spring about using pallets to build a shed.

It had taken another trip into town to pick up more pressure treated lumber, post caps, and other hardware, but when it was all said and done, I stood before a surprisingly sturdy and surprisingly large open-front shed.

“Baby’s first bathhouse,” I said with a grin. I doubted this would stand up to time, and it would only barely keep the elements off me while I bathed, but it was a neat project and a clear sign of the growth of my construction skills, using what I learned building the bunkie. Plus, I could go back and get basically as many pallets as I wanted, so I had lots of materials for iteration. “Maybe I’ll try to build some more structures before winter. I suppose I’ll need a woodshed, too...”

As I pondered what else I could accomplish before winter, Goofy started flipping out again, yanking against his tie-off.

“Aw, shit!” I ran over to the cabin, grabbing my shotgun and pumping it once, looking out at the bushes. It was a still day, so when something moved, my eyes honed right in on whatever creature had been stalking my clearing. I pointed my firearm towards the bushes, and gently placed my finger on the trigger, waiting and watching.

My dog was baying like mad, straining as hard as he could against the tie. Then, with a snap, his collar flew off and the hound mix was off like a rocket into the bush.

“Goofy! Fuck!”

I ran after my idiot dog, and I could see the small trees and bushes up ahead shake as something ran deeper into the forest, Goofy hot in pursuit. Small branches and thorns tore at me as I raced after my dog to try and save him from his own stupidity before he got lured into the middle of a pack of coyotes or a bobcat ambush.

Breaking through some trees, I found myself before the rocky outcropping we had stumbled on before, the familiar stench bombarding my nose as I came around it to the cave mouth. I could hear the dog’s echoing bark from inside.

“Oh, fucking fuck.”

I took a deep breath, and stepped inside.

* * *

The wafting, sour stench in the cave continuously made me gag and threatened to make me vomit, and as I stepped further in I noticed that the cave quickly turned into a tunnel that descended steeply into the ground. I could hear my dog barking from deeper down the dark tunnel, and cursed silently, trying not to breath too much as I pushed myself forward.

Darkness quickly overtook my vision, and keeping the shotgun wedged against my shoulder, I carefully pulled out my phone and flipped on the flashlight so I could navigate and maintain my footing as I cautiously advanced further and further into this cave’s weird tunnel system.

What the fuck was this? I knew basically nothing about natural caves or tunnel systems, but this was a straight shot down into the earth from a small cave above ground, which seemed decidedly unnatural. It seemed to me like it was more like a mine shaft, but I was too focused on finding my dog to investigate more closely.

After what felt like an eternity of inching forward, I noticed a faint light up ahead which was growing brighter. I flicked my phone’s flashlight off and tucked it back into my pocket, using both my hands to hold the shotgun as the tunnel brightened and I stepped forward into a second, larger cavern underground.

Goofy was just inside the entrance, growling with his hackles raised, but otherwise fine. I breathed a sigh of relief, then gagged when I inhaled, then froze as my vision raised to see what was lighting up the cavern.

A glowing ring stood in the middle of the cavern, like something out of a fantasy movie. The smell continued to waft out from it, though I couldn’t see through whatever it was due to the light. Is that a… portal?

Surrounding the portal, snarling and grunting back at my dog, were small, nasty creatures that my brain couldn’t even process. Yellow eyes glared back at me, and I immediately ruled out coyotes or bobcats, because as I looked closer in the dim light of the portal, I saw small hands with sharp, jagged nails on their forelimbs. The creatures were hunched over defensively, but bipedal.

They were about half my height, which was still a potentially dangerous size for an animal, and as I watched I realized they were communicating with each other, pointing at the dog and then me.

“Goofy. Goofy, come here,” I whispered, and my voice caused the heads of the creatures to snap up at me.

My speaking must have enraged them, because one of them shrieked some guttural nonsense and ran towards me.

“Shit!” I yelled, taking a step back, but my response caused me to pull down on the trigger of the firearm which I had pointed at the oncoming creature. A massive bang rang out, the cavern causing the sound to be deafening, and dark stains blossomed on the creature’s chest as it was flung back. It fell to the ground, unmoving, and as I looked up at the rest of the creatures, I saw them clutching their ears and panicking.

One turned and leapt back through the portal, and the others quickly followed. I waited, watching, finger on the trigger, to see if anything else would come in or out. I was on high alert, and lost track of time. Then, a flicker. The glowing edges of the portal started to pulse, then strobe, and in a flash of blinding light, the portal disappeared.