JERRY'S DIRT

When it came to selecting his final resting place, my father-in-law knew to scout the land he loved, with help from his entire family

- Jacob Baynham

The Cabin

JERRY McGAHAN WAS not well when he stepped out of his cabin in the US state of Montana on a gusty mid-September afternoon in 2016. His hair was wiry and white. Steroids had swollen his face. He opened the front door and slowly crossed the porch.

The cabin was older than he was, but solid. In 1973, he found it for sale at the foot of the Mission Mountains just north of here. He paid $300 for it and gathered some friends to help take it apart. Jerry numbered the logs, loaded them on to a truck and reassembled them along the Jocko River with his first wife, Libby. Using skills he learnt from carpentry books and in school, he framed the windows, wired the outlets, plumbed the pipes and built the cabinets. By the end of the summer, it became a home in this sylvan oasis.

The cabin and the surrounding gardens have a way of arresting people. Those who come down the driveway, whether the mail carrier or-once the poet Allen Ginsberg, know they are seeing something rare and beautiful, the fruits of an autonomous life. When a hospice doctor visited, he stepped out of his car, swept his gaze over the house, the mossy rock gardens, and the corkscrew hazel trees out front and said, "It looks like a hobbit lives here."

This is where I first met Jerry in 2007, shortly after I had fallen in love with his daughter. Hilly first described her father to me as a writer and beekeeper who didn't own a cell phone, bought almost nothing and knew a lot about a birds. In person, I found him to be self-possessed and encyclopaedic but simultaneously humble. He listened more than he taught.

BEFORE THE END, JERRY HAD ONE FINAL DECISION TO MAKE