Original subtitles

I think in your 20s and your 30s

you're always chasing something and you're not sure what it is.

This was what made us happy, like really, truly happy.

We've never been people who meditate or can stick

to yoga or anything like that.

But we can come out here and sit down there,

and it feels like meditation.

It feels like our whole equilibrium has changed

since we bought this place.

We're originally from New Zealand, landed

in Portland via New York.

For most of our lives,

we were really into living in the city, in apartments.

And then we got to New York, which was the dream,

and lived in tiny apartments.

And we loved it.

And then we moved to Portland and it was a really big shock

The city is so much smaller and felt

like everything shut at 9 PM.

But pretty soon after that, we realized that also Portland

had this incredible playground of places that you could visit.

And so that's when the idea of, well, we

should make the most of this.

So that's when we started looking for cabins.

We had talked about, growing up,

was there a place that you went as a kid, like, all the time.

Is there a place that you keep going

back to that formed this super strong connection with?

And I never had that.

And I was always jealous of friends

that had like one camping spot they always went to.

The minute we rocked up to this place, it was like, oh my god,

like, we found it.

It was crazy.

It was literally tears running down our faces

because it was it, you know?

We wanted something that we could work on, obviously,

but that wasn't gross.

There's a million things we would like to do to it,

you know.

And it's just kind of like looking at the list

and figuring out what can we do ourselves.

What can we do first?

We just went for it.

When we first saw it, it was quite dark.

The bedroom, you could almost not see your hand

in front of your face.

We just wanted to, like, lighten it up, brighten it up.

I still think that the bright white space can be cozy.

The main thing that was here was this big beautiful deck,

and it oriented towards the river,

which was important to us.

When you walk into this space, this wall of windows

is just so beautiful.

And we love the way that the wood contrasts the whites,

so that your eye just, like, pulls all the way around,

through to the river.

Everything is about orienting towards the light,

so we get sunlight all year round

flooding through these windows.

And I love just kind of the view down the barrel of the house,

just looking through to that fireplace.

We got married in front of the fireplace.

It was pretty amazing.

The fireplace is the focal point.

You had to convince me that painting it white

was the right thing to do.

But as soon as we got the first coat on, obviously,

it was the right thing to do.

Having fires there as the center of our space

on these cold, rainy nights, and then just

having that as a space that we just actually hang out on.

We sit there.

We read books.

We play games.

I love changing art work

and getting to different artists in Portland

and bringing that stuff in here.

We like to bring things from New Zealand as well,

and put them here, things that are unexpected.

It's us everywhere,

and things that we love.

The cabin is about an hour and 15 minutes

from Portland, Oregon, and we are in a rainforest, basically.

People think it rains a lot in Portland.

I think it rains two and a half to three times as much

out here.

And we didn't really know that before we moved out here.

We sort of found out afterwards.

Being out here, we're just trying to figure

out a way to, like, live--

With the rain. - with that weather.

Yeah.

There's nothing we can do about it,

and it controls everything around us.

It changes our landscape every few months.

Now that we have the breezeway,

kind of outdoor living area, that's amazing, when you've

got kids, to be able to go outside and not get totally

saturated.

The drive from Portland out to the cabin

is pretty magical, over the ranges, through the forest.

And it sort of sets you up for sort of your arrival

when you get here.

You know, the focus is the river,

and you feel like you're in it when you're here.

You're in nature.

It's overwhelming yet super calming.

You just are transformed to this sort of other world.

Everything else sort of falls away.

And I think that is the magic of this place.

Oregon is as beautiful as everybody talks

about.

We're right next to the Oregon coast, which is pretty amazing.

And there are a lot of parallels with New

Zealand, like, the climate, the size, the population.

The beaches look really similar to where

I grew up in New Zealand, rugged, kind of wild beaches.

And you see, like, our daughter, you know, she gets there

and she kind of boosts up.

And she can just run as far as she can screaming,

and as fast as she can.

Home being so far away, I

think we started thinking about this place as a way

to sort of escape and almost transport

ourselves to this place that was a little bit like New Zealand.

Now that we haven't been able to see are families for so

long, it's really nice to know that we

have this little sort of center here that keeps us grounded.

It's made us, like, really bonded to Portland and Oregon.

To have a place where you can have the doors open,

where the kids can be in and out, I think we see a change.

We can't mention to our toddler too early in the day

that we're coming to the cabin-- Yes.

because every three minutes.

We want to go--

We want to go to the cabin.

Yeah.

Having our first daughter, Lolo, and we spent

so much time with her here.

Lee's parents came and stayed with us,

and we all were out here.

And it was super special.

And we've just had our second daughter,

and she's three months old.

So we're always trying to figure out ways that we can

be here as much as possible.

There's still so much that we wanted to do.

But now that we have kids, it definitely

feels like we need to start thinking about ways

that we can kind of expand and add areas where we

can all hang out as a family.

We love sharing this place.

So we want to have people visit.

We want to have our parents come and our friends

come and them bring their kids.

And so it has changed how we use the cabin.

I think the place has become this amazing place

for our family to sort of hunker down and sort of connect

and build these memories.

Bring family here,

we want to bring our kids here, we want to do all of our things

here.

It's like you have this, like, other member of the family

that's this physical space, which is, like, so

much more special to be here.

You're humbled by the river and by nature.

And this is just, no way around it,

you can't put into words how you feel when you're here.

And I just want our kids to keep benefiting from that.