Paradise: A one-room cabin, stove ... and a hot tub

BRECKENRIDGE — Living situations like these don’t often make it into the newspaper, but for the story’s sake, you can imagine the classified ad.

“Small log cabin on 18 acres at 11,000 feet, creek rushing through your front yard, enough power to run a black-and-white TV, wood stove included, pets welcome, National Forest land all around you … $100 a month.”

For eight years, from 1997-2005, Jeff Tarczon lived that dream in the forest on Bald Mountain, high above Breckenridge.

Tarczon, 32, a Waukegan, Ill., native, moved to Summit County in 1996 at age 20, arriving solo in a two-tone green 1972 Ford van popup that he bought for $1,600 — “every last cent that was in my pocket,” he says.

And so began a ski-bum tutorial on how to get by, authored by a member of that dying demographic for whom bliss and money never were all that compatible to begin with.

In his 12 years in Summit County, Tarczon has worked as a Keystone bus boy, a Wildernest housekeeper, a Dillon pizza dude, a server/bartender at three Breckenridge restaurants, a T-shirt salesman, a Breck ski tech and, now, a self-employed painter with High Definition Painting.

He gave up the cabin three years ago for an apartment he keeps in exchange for maintenance work downtown. He telemark skis in the winter and rides his 48-pound mountain bike in the summer, never worrying about much.

Here, in his words, is Tarczon’s story.

— A friend and I were squatting in the woods up on Buffalo Mountain in the fall of ’97, and it snowed on us one night. That’s when we decided it was time to get a cabin.

— We woke up one morning and went to breakfast in Dillon. We just had it in our minds that we were going to find a cabin. The first person we asked said: “Talk to Robin at the recycling center.” My buddy Casey, who was a crazy rainbow hippie kid, had actually done some community service with Robin. She was living in a cabin on Baldy that she happened to be moving out of. It was a Friday and she was like: “I’ll be out by Sunday.”

— The cabin was 12 by 15, max, with a little screened-in porch area about four feet wide. And we had a little loft area upstairs that was about the size of a twin mattress.

— We had an outhouse, and there was a creek that ran right through the yard, but no running water other than that. We had a ghetto sink in the yard from a hose we set upstream, so we could wash dishes at 33 degrees, or whatever the hell the water temperature was. But that was it for amenities.

— I’m not sure exactly what year the cabin was built, but we found a newspaper in the wall that had been stuffed in the cracks for insulation from 1890.

— A winter night usually meant drinking until bar-closing time, and if you didn’t go home with a girl, you’d have to go home to the cabin. By that time, it was a big ice cube. Everything in there was frozen. So you’d light the wood stove and sit around, maybe try to cook a grilled cheese on top of the stove. About an hour and a half later, you could finally take your coat off because it was warm enough. And then two hours later, it was really comfortable. And then two and a half hours later, it was just HOT. You’d have your head out the window, splashing snow on your face as you were sleeping.

— One time my mom hooked me up with this girl from Colorado Springs. The girl came up, we went out on the town and had a wild night, and she came back to the cabin. When she woke up in the morning, she was just starstruck, like, “You are the coolest guy I have ever met.” (Laughs) She was like: “How do you heat this place?” And I was like, “Well, we got to chop wood in the morning and more at night.” Everything about it, she was just so into. It was amazing — she actually thought I was cooler because I was too cheap to pay rent somewhere else. (Laughs hysterically)

— It was an old mining cabin, on old mine tailings, and there was old mining crap all over the yard. There was this big metal tank, and we cut the top off of it and put it in the yard, and gravity fed it with a hose to fill it up. Then we built a fire underneath it, and we actually had a working hot tub. I swear to God, a real hot tub that smoked on the side. It was awesome.

— You’ve got minimal storage inside, so most of your stuff was kept outside, like in a cooler or something like that. There was one summer when we got attacked by bears and raccoons. I remember chasing a bear one time. I sat on the roof with rocks, waiting for the bear to come. When it did, I threw rocks off the roof then jumped down with my BB gun and chased the bear into the woods like an idiot.

— Another time we set up a dog cage to trap raccoons. We actually caught three of them in a summer, and I’d take them and relocate them, just drive ’em down to Peak 7 and let ’em go. And after the third one, I was like, this has to be the last one; how many more can there be? So I actually did the stupidest thing of my life. I opened up the cage to the kennel while the raccoon was in there, and I had a leather glove on and I took a can of spray paint and I was going to mark him so I could tell if he came back. I put my hand in there and I don’t even know what happened; it was just like, rrrrrsskskskskrkrrrrgghhahrrrr!, just tearing at the glove. I pulled my hand out and was just like, damn, that was stupid.

— In the years that I lived there, I would find random kids who needed a place to stay for the night, and at times we’d have eight people sleep over — with their dogs — just crammed in every piece of floor space, somebody sleeping in the little chair, two people upstairs, two people on the bed downstairs, a person and a half under the bed, three others on the floor, and dogs piled everywhere.

— I think my mom thought the cabin was cool, but I know that when I moved out, it was probably one of the happier days of her life.

— True ski bums are the dying breed in this town. There are a lot more trust-funders who don’t want to have kids crashing on their couch. I just don’t think it’s affordable anymore to be a ski bum.

— I’m going to vote for Obama. Why? Because he’s black! (Laughs) No, I just think it’ll be a big change for the better, a 180 from what’s going on right now. Like, opinions on war and oil, those are the big issues. Plus he’s from Chicago. Awesome.