THE MOUNTAIN CABIN

The Mountain Cabin is a house taken in Aspen for three weeks from mid February to early March. Twenty-five places, over three stays of eight or nine. Skiing arranged each morning, one long table each night.

Members come for one of the three weekly stays, and for the length of it.

The Form

A hotel gives you a room. A house gives you a kitchen at midnight, and those are not the same thing.

Every family with money and land worked this out a long time ago, which is why the shared house is the oldest social arrangement there is: the shooting lodge, the summer place, the villa taken between four families. People who have spent a week under one roof know each other differently from people who have had six dinners.

What a week produces is not conversation exactly. It is the accumulation of small things. Who is up first. Who cooks badly and cheerfully. Who is quiet after two drinks and who is not. None of it can be arranged, and all of it is the point.

The Court takes a house rather than rooms for that reason, and takes eight at a time rather than twenty because a house has a natural number and exceeding it turns it back into a hotel.

The Week

Skiing each morning, arranged in advance. Guides where the ground calls for them, and equipment fitted before anyone arrives, so that nobody spends the first day of a week in a rental shop.

Members ski at their own standard and in whatever company suits them. Nobody is grouped.

Afternoons are unprogrammed. The house is there, and so is the town.

One long table each night. The same eight or nine people, or as many of them as are in the house that day, and no seating plan.

Nothing else is scheduled. A week that is filled is a week nobody remembers.

What Is Asked

Smart casual at the table. What is worn on the mountain is a member’s own affair.

Members say in advance if they will miss a night at the table, so that the kitchen knows.

Telephones stay in pockets at dinner. A photographer attends for part of the week, and what is worth keeping is sent afterwards.

A member may bring a guest by arrangement, and answers for them. A guest in a house is a larger undertaking than a guest at a dinner, and the Court asks that the guest’s stay be the member’s own.

Nobody is pitched at the table.

The Places

Twenty-five, over three stays of eight or nine. Eight or nine is the number the house holds and the number a table holds well.

Members receive the invitation in the members’ area once the date is set, and say which stay they want. The sum is stated in the invitation, charged by the stay, and covers the house, the skiing and the table.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.

Questions

What is the Mountain Cabin?

The Mountain Cabin is a house the Court takes in Aspen, Colorado, for three weeks from mid February to early March: twenty-five places, over three stays of eight or nine, skiing arranged each morning, afternoons left free, and one long table each night. Members come for the length of their stay. The 2027 dates are to follow.

What does one wear to the Mountain Cabin?

Smart casual at the table each night. What is worn on the mountain is left to each member.

Who may attend the Mountain Cabin?

It is for members of the Court, by the Court’s invitation, sent in the members’ area; members reply with the stay they want. A member may bring a guest by arrangement and answers for them, and the Court asks that the guest’s stay be the member’s own. How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.