“Living like bears in the woods” is what a friend said we were doing when Tina and I moved out to rural Alabama to live in our unfinished glass cabin. That was over ten years ago and still we have much to do. The work here goes slow because everything we do is by hand, because we’ve never done this before. Three of the walls are made of discarded church glass, and each morning, the first waking feels as if the woods that surround us are inside our home. Whenever we can, we use what people don’t want or need—boards that aren’t straight enough, decommissioned utility poles, cedars cut away from powerlines, rusted tin. And for the full of the day, we strive for a creative existence found only in the tree branches of this place and under them, in conversations with our neighbors, the cutting and splitting of firewood, hauling water, raising hammers, and at the set, waiting for two brown bats that come up from Sally Branch to take the mosquitoes that bit us earlier. If this is your first visit to Glass Cabin Diary, or if you’re someone who’s been following these pages for a time, thank you. We’re excited to announce that our book of poems about living in the glass cabin has been published by Pulley Press, whose mission is to highlight rural writers. You can order the book here.
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photographs by Jennifer Alsabrook-Turner and Andrea Mabry