Conversation with Lindsey Bro of Cabin Love

You may follow the delightfully whimsical @cabinlove on Instagram (after all, 536k people do). It’s a feast of “cabin candy” – and as fellow cabineers, we love its gorgeous pictures of little homes in all shapes and sizes, all over the world.

But you may not know much about its creator. Allow us to introduce you to Lindsey Bro, writer and the one-woman team behind all that eye candy for cabin lovers.

Lindsey is based in California but has spent her whole life traveling, at first with her flight-attendant mother then on her own. She spent a number of years in Europe and Australia, exploring different spaces, cultures and ways of living. When she returned to the US a few years ago, she started posting pictures of cabins on Instagram – and something clicked. Hence the reams of followers.

We caught up after a visit to our very own Far Meadow in the High Sierras – and asked her all about, well… cabins.

WHY CABINS?

Lindsey Bro: “There’s a great romance around cabins, I think – this idea of escapism and a little place that you could have everything figured out in. I’ve always been really, really drawn to nature, in a lot of different ways. So whenever I’m working in the city, the way I find balance is in going to nature. I have a loose definition of what a cabin is. It’s something that’s not as big as a house, but it doesn’t have to be stacked timber logs. It’s a smaller space that’s set aside.”

SO HOW DID CABIN LOVE START?

LB: “Right at the time that Instagram was becoming what it is, I searched for cabins and there wasn’t anything. So I went through all my old photos of travels and places and things, and started posting them. Really quickly it started to grow, and I thought, ‘Of course, this is a common language that we all have.’ This little idea of somewhere far away – or somewhere close that’s possible and attainable. People want that escapism.

“I started posting things as this fun little outlet, and people started sending me more. It really started to snowball. People were craving seeing these places, and craving seeing the possibility of what could be.”

HOW DO YOU FIND CABINS?

LB: “It’s not that I seek out cabins – I just seek out really interesting, beautiful places that have that sense of magic to them. There’s something about living in flow with nature, and I feel like cabins ask you to do that. Because you’re not trying to take hold of the landscape; you’re trying to be part of it. And you’re not so big that you will ever be able to defeat the elements that you’ve placed your shelter in. You have to surrender to them.”

ANY STAND-OUTS?

LB: “One of my favorite things is the approach and reveal of the cabin. Because they’re always hidden – how do you find it among the trees, how do you get to that space? We built a cabin just outside of Seattle in Olympia, Washington. It’s in this fern gully kind of a place.

"The reason I love it so much is it feels like a fantasy idea of a cabin, where you have to walk over a creek and through the woods, and there are ferns everywhere. It’s hidden, and you have to find it. It’s hand built – even the structure of it. I wondered, what would it be like if we built an octagon cabin? What if it was shaped like Max’s crown from Where the Wild Things Are? So we built it.”

YOU STAYED AT THE A FRAME IN FAR MEADOW – WHAT DID YOU THINK OF IT?

LB: “Far Meadow is so cool. A-frames are so esthetically pleasing but rarely are they actually functional. I loved how functional these were. Pared down and simple – they have what you need, without the extras that you don’t. It’s so essential to have that simplicity.

"As we walked in to the A Frame, my mind exploded. I loved that there was also a small playfulness to it – so rather than it being just an A-frame that is pretty standard stock, let’s give it a little mid-century flair. I loved the little balcony off the loft. That was awesome, and such a good spot to have coffee. I loved the light, especially in the early morning and into the evening. There are so many beautiful lines in that cabin – how it played esthetically throughout the day was so cool. The fact that there’s that little creek outside was just heartbreaking… in the best way.

“And the meadow – talk about gorgeous and wonderful and simple. It was really amazing to wake up and look out at all of the mist on the meadow. The sun was lighting up across all the pines, making all the mist really glow. And you could hear the river. It was that thing where you think: ‘I don’t want to break this. I want it to stay just as it is.’ But you can’t hold it because the sun’s coming up and the mist is going to burn off. And that’s the beauty of it. You get to watch the day as it’s happening.”

YOU WANT TO HOLD ON TO THE MOMENT…

LB: “Exactly. That’s something very specific I try and do whenever I go places. It’s easy to want to be your own future historian – to capture and document. But one of the coolest things about cabins is they just ask you to be there. They are amazing teachers. Like, ‘Hey, what if you were to just be here and enjoy this?'”

SO IS THAT WHAT “LUXURY” MEANS TO YOU?

LB: “One of the hardest commodities that we have is time. So giving yourself the luxury of time and space to be is so special – and we absolutely deserve it. You’re no good to anyone if you’re tapped out. So go and fill the wells up. Fill them with whatever you need. Come back to ‘life’ better for it.”