Fifty miles from civilization, past the road’s end, there’s a cozy cabin nestled in a gulch of pine trees beside a river. The smoke coming from her chimney suggests she’s a living breathing element of the remote wilderness as much as the fox sitting at her doorstep or the moose drinking from the river out front.

She has been the setting for thirty-eight summer tales but never a winter tale, until now.

From the moment my boots hit the maple floorboards in September I knew these walls held stories, stories I’d spend this winter sharing. She would also be the setting for new winter adventures, but I wouldn’t want to be rude…She’s a character of her own who deserves a special introduction.

Readers, meet the Pepper Shack!

Pepper is a 200 sq ft one room cabin with a small covered porch. There is no running water or indoor plumbing. She does have a sink basin, which is used to rinse out coffee mugs and brush teeth with water that is carried in.

If you need to use the “restroom” you have options! There’s the big jack pine behind the cabin, the rock bed to the north, or “Jaques Crappeur”, the affectionately named outhouse up the hill.

If you need to take a shower, there’s a sauna in camp, my dad would be happy to cut a hole in the ice for a polar dip, and you can always drive an hour into town to use the facilities at the YMCA.

Aside from those limitations, Pepper has all the luxuries of a modern house; cozy bed, mini fridge, toaster, electric kettle, microwave, television, a rockin’ sound system, twinkle lights, and a little black guard cat.

I don’t need to tell you that she’s the quintessential cozy cabin in the woods. She makes that statement all on her own.

But what I do need to explain is her history and who better to do that than the man who built her, Dan Bredemus, my dad. Here’s what he has to say:

“The story of the “Pepper Shack” cabin begins long before it was built in 1980.

In the early 1940s my father, Jim Bredemus, helped friend, author, and Camp Lincoln director, Calvin Rutstrom (pictured below), build a cabin on Seagull Lake at the end of a fifty mile dirt road called the Gunflint Trail, not far from the property Jim would later purchase in 1968 with the plans to open Gunflint Wilderness Camp.

The cabin Jim and Calvin built on Seagull had beautiful maple floors that remained for many years.

Fast forward to the summer of 1968, Gunflint Wilderness Camp is open for business. Jim’s youngest son was hired to build a large log building there, to be used for summer campers and possibly an early winter program. This cabin became known as “The Big House”. It was decided, during the construction of “The Big House”, that an additional insulated directors cabin would be needed for any cold weather operations. The idea for “The Pepper Shack”, named after the Beatles album, was born.

Most of the lumber for the Pepper Shack was cut from standing White Pine trees on the property of the sister camp, Camp Birchwood for Girls, 320 miles away from Gunflint Wilderness Camp. The logs were sawn into boards by Jim’s son and his father-in-law, Ashley’s Grand Father on her mothers’ side, Joe Allen Sr. 

During the summer of 1980 with the help of Ashley’s mother, Gail Bredemus, and grandmother, Nancy Bredemus, construction began.

The floor was constructed of rough 2X6 lumber with two inches of foam insulation sandwiched between to layers of half inch plywood. The truss rafters where laid out on the floor before the walls and glued, gusseted and nailed together. Next, the 2X6 walls were assembled and nailed and set in place.

The siding is somewhat unique in that it is sawn from the log on two sides, but only edged on one edge. This gives the ragged edge, the shape of the tree it was cut from.

The knotty pine paneling on the walls inside came from a mill in Duluth, MN. The cabin has 6” of glass insulation in the walls and 12” of glass above the ceiling. The white cedar tongue and groove paneling used for the ceiling came from a mill in Canada.

The flooring has a story of its own. 

Way of The Wilderness outfitters at the end of the Gunflint Trail was owned by a guy named Cliff Waters and his wife. In 1980 they were thinking about selling the business and moving into Grand Marais, the closest town.

During this process, they had a rummage sale, and that’s when we found some tongue and groove maple flooring for sale, stashed under Cliffs house.

When asked where the flooring came from, Cliff told of the story of removing it from a cabin on an island on Seagull lake, one board at a time, being very careful to not damage it.

It was several years later that the dots were connected to the cabin that Jim and Calvin had built in the 1940s!

The maple flooring had made a full circle from Jim’s hands, all those years ago, to the floor in a cabin for a camp that Jim and Nancy started and owned, to the floor that his granddaughter, Ashley Bredemus, now stands on.

Some of that maple flooring was used for countertops in “The Bighouse” and the infamous “War Table” in the senior camper cabin.

Most people probably don’t give much thought to where the lumber came from that was used to build their house, their furniture and all the other things made of wood. Although, I often wonder what the cedar trees looked like that made that ceiling.

Perhaps they grew along a pretty lake in Canada and were home to snowy owls or ruffed grouse. Most likely red squirrels and pine martens graced their branches.

And that maple floor, from trees in the lower peninsula of Michigan, standing majestically in great hardwood forests. Perhaps it came up the lakes on steamships or by steam trains.

The lodgepole pine that make the walls of the Big House, theses where fire killed in a great forest fire in the rocky mountains. Imagine the beautiful mountainside with the fire racing up, scorching the green foliage of the great pine, leaving behind the bare trunk of the tree, and now it protects the inhabitants from mosquitoes and -40F..

We quite literally live in our natural world. 

-Dan Bredemus, Jim’s youngest son”

So there you have it, Pepper’s history dating back to the 1940s. Since her construction in 1980, many families, couples, and friends have spent their summers under Pepper’s roof.

My friends, Tim and Karla, spent every summer there with their two kiddos from 2001 through 2006.

My cousins, Dan and Melissa, spent summers living there as they raised their baby girl, Charli.

My cousins, Molly and Paddy, lived there when they were pregnant with their son, Jack.

Just this summer, half of the staff packed themselves like sardines inside the Pepper Shack on the last night, sharing ghost stories.

But perhaps my favorite tenants of the Pepper Shack were my parents. My mom would’ve been in her early twenties when she helped my dad with the construction. She would’ve looked out the same windows I look out when I wake up and she would’ve sat on the same porch steps.

Some places are just places, just a bunch of boards nailed together…you don’t care where they came from. But then there are places with a spirit of their own that make you feel right at home. That’s the Pepper Shack for me!