Journal 54: The Outhouse at the Gap (time-slip fiction)

The wind off the Spanish Peaks carried a strange chill that morning. It was the kind that doesn’t come from weather but from waiting. Eli Turner parked his dusty Subaru at the pullout near The Gap on Highway 12. Just past where the road wound through a break in the land, a narrow opening in uplifted Dakota sandstone. The road squeezed between walls of golden rock that seemed to breathe the heat of a thousand summers. He was a weekend hiker, a geologist by curiosity, and a collector of strange stories by nature. But nothing in all his wandering, not ghost towns, not cave petroglyphs, not even the old logging ruins on Raspberry Mountain prepared him for the outhouse.

It stood crooked and gray against the pines, half-swallowed by brush and time. The boards were warped, the hinges rusted green, and a faded moon cutout still marked its door. It should’ve been an eyesore. Instead, it felt like an invitation.

Eli thought it was probably an old Forest Service relic, maybe left behind from the days when men logged these hills with saws and sweat. But when he reached for the handle, the metal was warm, humming, and almost alive.

The moment the door creaked open, he wasn’t looking into a pit toilet. He was staring into a whirl of gold and black, a spiraling tunnel of light that smelled faintly of ozone and pine sap. The ground swayed beneath him. The wind reversed. Then, everything stopped.

Oligocene Period (27 Million Years Ago)

The first thing Eli noticed was the heat. It wrapped around him like an oven, thick and suffocating. The mountains were gone or rather, they hadn’t been born yet. In their place, the land swelled and fractured, a molten heat pressing upward through the bones of the earth. He stood on raw, trembling ground, the air vibrating with pressure and sound. Magna glowed beneath cracked strata, its fiery veins threading upward through layers of sandstone. Steem hissed through narrow vents where heat escaped the earth's skin. 

The ground beneath him quaked in short, violent pulses as if the heartbeat of a planet was giving birth to itself. He watched in awe as ribbons of molten rock solidified in the fractures, forming jagged spines. He realized there were the very dikes that, in his time, sliced through the Cuchara Valley like the spines of ancient beasts.

A single thought pulsed in his mind: I am standing where the world began.

The outhouse door, now somehow beside him, began to glow again. Eli didn’t hesitate. He leapt through as the sky cracked open in lightning.

Before the Settlers  (1600s)

When the light faded, he was greeted by silence, deep, living silence. The air was crisp and cold with the sweetness of pine and river water. Morning mist drifted through the valley, wrapping around tall spruce like smoke. Elk grazed where the road would one day run.

He crouched beside a trail, not a road, just a soft path worn by moccasins and hooves. A few yards away, he saw a small camp: a circle of cone-shaped tents made from buffalo hides stretched over wooden poles. The smell of woodsmoke and sagebrush prevailed as the quiet hum of life seemed untouched by fences or wires.

A group of Mouache Ute hunters emerged from the trees, moving with quiet confidence, bows slung across their backs. They didn’t see him, or perhaps they did and simply accepted him as part of the mountain’s spirit.

He felt the pull of time here  like a rhythm slow and deliberate or a heartbeat older than history. The forest seemed to breathe around him. He breathed with it, feeling the purity of a land unscarred by steel, saw, or the cough from polluted air. 

Then the mist thickened. The outhouse appeared again, its outline shimmering in the morning haze. He reached for the handle.

Homesteading & Logging Era (1880s–1890s)

The hiss of steam and the bite of sawdust hit him before his eyes adjusted. The pines were thinned now, replaced by stumps and the hard geometry of cabins. Smoke curled from chimneys. Horses snorted in the distance.

A man in suspenders and a sweat-stained hat shouted orders as a circular saw shrieked through pine logs. The scent of pitch and fresh-cut timber filled the air.

Wagons creaked along a dirt track that would someday become Highway 12. Eli recognized the rhythm of progress: the sound of men carving permanence out of wilderness.

He touched one of the logs, still warm from the blade, and felt the ambition in its rings. This was the beginning of Pinehaven’s story, the moment nature and human will met halfway.

In the distance, a child laughed as a dog chased chickens between cabins. The sound was small, but it echoed through time.

The outhouse door stood behind a fence post now, waiting like a patient friend. He stepped through as the saw’s shriek fell silent for the midday meal.

Resort & Railroad Era (1930s–1940s)

The sharp tang of gasoline and horse manure hit him at once. The road was narrower now but busy, like a gravel ribbon winding between rustic cabins. A black Model A sputtered past, its driver tipping a hat toward a buggy coming from the opposite direction.

Summer cabins lined the road, smoke drifting lazily from stone chimneys. Posters nailed to trees announced “Cuchara Camps,  Vacation in the Cool Pines!”

Eli could smell coffee and frying bacon from an open window. He heard a phonograph playing a scratchy tune. It was something soft and hopeful that made him think of the world trying to forget hard times.

A group of children in overalls splashed in the creek while a man in suspenders filled a water trough for his horse. Life here was humble but full, humming with the optimism of motion.

He felt the crunch of gravel beneath his boots, the cool mountain air tempered by wood smoke and the faint oil smell of engines.

For a moment, he wished he could stay before the outhouse reappeared, now tucked neatly between two cabins.

The Cabin Boom (1970s–1980s)

A single cicada buzzed in the warm afternoon air. The gravel road was smoother now, dustier, but tamed. Power lines ran along the edge of the valley, sagging between wooden poles.

A red Chevy pickup idled near a log cabin where two kids tossed a frisbee in the yard. Another family grilled burgers on a deck overlooking the gap in the stone. The smell of lighter fluid mingled with pine needles and distant rain.

Eli heard Fleetwood Mac faintly playing from a radio in the truck bed. The atmosphere was familiar. He welcomed the laughter, dogs barking, and children shrieking at cold creek water. It was the sound of summer and belonging.

He could see the beginnings of a real community with fences, driveways and mailboxes, but still with room for quiet. The valley was no longer wild, yet it was still alive.

For the first time, he wondered if time wasn’t a straight road but a circle, always winding back to the same mountain heart.

The outhouse appeared again  freshly painted brown this time, as if even it had been upgraded for the decade. With a grin, Eli opened the door.

The Present

The world hummed when he stepped back out. The air smelled faintly of asphalt and rain on warm pine needles. The road was paved now, double yellow lines guiding traffic between history and tomorrow.

Tourists in SUVs slowed to take pictures of The Gap in the cliffs. Cell towers peeked subtly from the treeline, disguised as pines. A cyclist pedaled past, unaware of how much earth had burned, grown, and changed beneath his wheels.

Eli turned back toward the outhouse, but it was already fading and its edges unraveled into dust and sunlight.

He stood in the exact same spot, his boots on the shoulder of Highway 12, the Spanish Peaks rising like old guardians beyond the forest.

He had seen this land born from fire, walked its youth in silence, watched it grow families and fences, and return to stillness.

He felt that time was not something to move through, but something that moved through him. Something ancient, patient, and endlessly returning.

For the first time, he understood that time wasn’t a line stretching forward. It was a landscape layered deep, every age still breathing beneath the next.

He smiled, shouldered his pack, and looked once more toward The Gap.

The wind sighed through the trees, the same wind that had whispered through molten rock, buffalo grass, sawmill smoke, and radio static.

Eli whispered back, “I’ve seen you before.”

And the mountains, eternal and unmoving, seemed to nod.

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* Authors Note: Time-slip fiction, as used in the Cabin in the Pines blog, is a form of historical storytelling in which a modern character, Eli Turner, travels between eras through an old mountain outhouse that serves as a portal in time. Each journey uncovers the people, geology, and folklore that have shaped the Cuchara Valley across the centuries.

These stories are distinct from the blog’s fact-based historical pieces by their titles, which begin with the words “The Outhouse at the …” Though fictional in form, each tale is rooted in authentic history blending real people, places, and events with creative imagination to bring the valley’s past vividly to life.

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