Christmas card and cabin season nears

Our cabin, 8 by 10 photo

I found this copy of one of our family's Christmas cards recently. Dad always sent out Christmas cards, usually like this--a photo of our cabin in the Manzano Mountains southeast of Albuquerque, or one of his pieces of artwork, like the scratchboard snow scene of a Rock Island locomotive taking on water in Fort Worth.
 After a few early years when the kids were young, we didn't send out many.  But now that I've started painting, this photo explains why I was thinking about needing to get started. I realize where that primal urge to send out a few personal cards comes from. And my attraction to cabins, in my paintings and just generally in writing and dreams. 
 It's November, and I've already got the blank cards ready to paint, and the checklist of friends and family.
Now if I just had a cabin in the mountains to retreat to, put wood in the stove, look out that big north-facing picture window, a little adult beverage, and start painting.