RIVERSIDE RETREAT
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Living Room: In the living area, the rug was the first piece Kit bought for the house. On a trip to Kazakhstan, she found the rug alongside a dirt road. “We rolled it up, carried it over our shoulders back to the hotel and then checked it onto the airplane,” Kit recalls. “The entire décor was worked around the rug. Two identical denim couches were chosen for their durability. Kit’s daughter created the design for the fireplace screen that portrays moose browsing along the river. |
Photography by Alpine Log Homes/J. K. Lawrence photos
NORTHWEST WYOMING HAS A WAY OF DROPPING PEOPLE INTO THEIR DREAMS, AND ONE CALIFORNIA COUPLE WAS NO EXCEPTION.
One couple from California landed more than dinner while fishing
in Wyoming. Their “catch” was a vision of what would become their
dream home.
“We are just not big house people,” says Kit, describing her family’s 2,100-
square-foot home that sits along the shores of the Snake River near
Jackson, Wyo.
“The building site also suggested a smaller-scaled home in
proportion with the lot. But it’s ours!” says Kit. “I love to run my hands over
the soft, smooth logs. Oh, the pleasure and pride that these logs are ours.
The sense of belonging is huge.”
A dirt road winds through the cottonwoods to the house beside the gently flowing
river.
Each time Kit and her husband arrive from California to this home they call
the “Fishing Shack,” they pause, roll down the car windows and listen to the bubbling
of water over rocks, to birds’ songs, and to the rustle of leaves moved by
mountain breezes. Kit and her family have been visiting Wyoming since their son was 8
and attended summer camp in the Teton Valley. He is an adult now and has returned
to Jackson to pursue his dream career. It was he who found this property.
On one particular trip, Kit and her husband were fishing and came upon a cabin
along the riverbanks that fit their vision for their own family retreat.
With some
inquiries, they learned that the home was the work of Alpine Log Homes and
Dembergh Construction, and so they collaborated with that same team to design
and build their home.
A very large deck surrounds the house
and extends the living space outdoors. The adjacent
stone patio has a natural, irregular edge thanks to
Mike Invie of Teton Masonry, who installed the slabs. |
“We met face-to-face only once with the designers at Alpine. The little house we’d
seen on the river was what we started with,” says Kit. “After that first meeting, we
continued refining the design over the telephone—each of us with a set of plans in
front of us. I learned the vocabulary of log homeshomes—purlins, joists, rafters—as we
pored over the drawings.”
The day after the logs were assembled on the foundation, Don Frank of Dembergh
Construction recalls a conversation he had with Kit’s husband. “He took me aside
and asked me if I knew what my job was. I began describing my general contractor’s
duties. But before I got more than one sentence uttered, he interrupted me. He
pointed to Kit and said, ‘See that smile on my wife’s face? Your job is to keep it there.’
My answer was, ‘Yes, sir! With pleasure!’”
During the time that the plumbers, painters, and electricians were plying their
crafts, Kit and her daughter were combing through antique and secondhand shops.
They chose cupboards, doorknobs, fabrics, milk cans, crocks, and other bits and
pieces that would give the home a sense of history.
Compact and efficient, the kitchen is snuggled under the loft in the open living space. Log posts and beams define the space |
“I believe we have forgotten the beauty of everyday things,” Kit explains.
Displayed throughout the house are Kit’s textile collections—on beds and window
seats, hanging on walls and railings, scattered over the hickory wood floors, and on
tabletops. The success of Kit’s interior design comes from its simplicity and its mixand-
match quality.
The “Fishing Shack” is where Kit and her family come together for vacations and
holidays. They come to enjoy the peace and quiet, to live simply, and to just watch—
to watch the ever-changing river, the moose feeding on the willows, the stars in the
black nights, to look on as family members and friends hone their fly-fishing skills,
and to gaze with joy as grandchildren grow and learn and laugh.
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