From the oldest cabin on Ten Mile Lake near Hackensack to the celebrated Nellie Bly houseboat on the Mississippi River at Red Wing, stunning photos and eclectic prose highlight some of Minnesota's most unique and treasured cabins while illuminating the rewards of cabin life.

Ruins and eagle feathers: a first word with the reader -- How to take a walk -- Paint: a moral question -- Music of light in old windows -- And God said: "Let there be red" -- Ghost under the necessary house -- Virgin on the farmall: the Venus in the Chevy -- Last insult of the glacier -- Petrified chin music -- Cutting slices out of the wind -- Towers rising from the floor of the sky -- Visible dead.

Norwegians, who first arrived in territorial days, created lasting farming settlements, especially in the Red River Valley. Their Lutheran churches continue to dot the landscape. But their experience was also urban, as they entered the trades and industries of the Twin Cities. Today, Norwegian influence helps define Minnesota's unique social, political, and business environment.