June and Farrar Burn

[Amanda_931]

They spent a lot of time in the San Juans and Puget Sound, built cabins on one--as of a couple of years ago there was a movement to restore them.   She wrote columns for the Bellingham Herald.  And at least one book.

Unless of course they were traveling around the country in a car with a house on the back.

http://www.stumpranchonline.com/skagitjournal/Washington/Library/Burn/Burn01-BookBios.html

     We are often asked why we say that June Burn's book, Living High, is one of the handful of books we would want if we were marooned on a remote island. So we are writing this introduction to the June Burn series as an explanation and we will quote a few excerpts from the 1941 book to back up our assertion. June Burn was not the most celebrated female writer in Washington state history but she is certainly the most unconventional. In our dream dinner reveries, we would certainly want to dine with June and Betty Bowen, her contemporary in the next generation. Among the many reasons why this book would be on our short list is its unflagging optimism in the face of adversity, proof that love at nearly first sight can prove to be sturdy for the rest of your life and the many details she provides of the non-stop adventure that she and her family lived. The book begins in that other Washington, back east, in 1919:

     Up the Potomac River in Maryland, not far north of the District line, there used to be a little log cabin on a knoll in the heart of a hundred-acre place. It had woods all about and clear cool brooks winding by on three sides. Down the trail fro the house was a large tulip poplar tree that spread its huge limbs over a stone-walled spring.
     In a Washington [D.C.] newspaper I had placed an advertisement: 'Wanted, a cabin mate. Every country inconvenience. Mile walk from Cabin John trolley, through a pine cathedral. Brooks, spring woods, wild strawberries soon. No bath, no telephone, no neighbors in sight.'

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"I guess we'll be amateurs at everything until we die, (but) you know a man can't have any more than this. The earth, this sea, a beach, food, companionship. This is all any man can get." — Farrar Burn.

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     Thirty girls and women answered my advertisement but I couldn't decide among them. I asked them all to come out to tea and draw straws for it. To that party I invited Ensign [Farrar] Burn. It didn't occur to me that he might not like being the only man among so many women. I had never seen him. One afternoon I had returned to the cabin to find a note on the door. Ensign Burn had discovered the place in his Sunday ramblings. He had taken a few pictures of the cabin and would like to send prints.
     He came to tea, ruddy face beaming, merry tongue wagging, his hair reddish in the early spring sunlight. He was the life of the party. He went to the spring for water, cut and brought in wood for the fireplace. He was when sugar was needed and had ideas about where people should sit. He was, in short, the perfect host and from that day to this has been host at all my parties. For, in a little over a month, we were married, and the Glen Echo postmistress said, "well you got your cabin mate, didn't you?'

[John Raabe]

Thanks for the thoughtful review and posting. What a great story it is!  

[Amanda_931]

Book is semi-available new, readily used.

(I should have put everything below the link in quotes--not from me!--thanks anyway   :-/ )

[jwv]

Sounds like a great book, Amanda.  Thanks for the tip!~Judy