Off Grid On The High Road

A couple scores big with a cabin beside a brook

- Fran Sigurdsson

 Finding your dream cabin can be a truly moving experience. Case in point: “High Road,” Doug and Becky Bridges’ off grid getaway in Vermont. They fell in love with the Northeast Kingdom after staying at a friend’s off-grid camp in Newark. For three years, the Massachusetts couple searched this bucolic corner of the state for a weekend retreat of their own.

A waterside lot topped the wish list. But lake sites were costly, so realtor Nikki Peters of StoneCrest Properties in Lyndonville found the next best thing. Built in 2009, the off-grid cabin stood in the middle of 10 acres in Sheffield. Though there was no running water inside, a 5-foot wide brook with cascading falls ranright behind. And a second, bigger brook formed the property line. “That’s what hooked us,” says Doug. “We thought it was perfect.”

Only, the cabin was perched on a boulder, hanging precariously above the water. “There was no foundation,” he recalls. “You could feel it move when you were inside.”