The Kayla Series is a year-long, weekly narrative following the imagined first tenant of Oak Hollow Cabins’ Threshold Cabin. Each episode explores what happens when life is intentionally simplified and lived more slowly.

If this is your first visit, you may want to begin with the Introduction or Episode 1.

Kayla hadn’t expected the space to feel so different after the sun went down. The cabin was the same one-room shelter it had been that afternoon, with the same cedar smell rising from the freshly cut boards, the same pale light slipping across the floor. But after dark, everything sharpened. The air cooled. The silence deepened. Even her own breath sounded louder than it should have.

She placed her last box on the built-in table and stepped outside onto the small porch, looking into the thickening blue of evening. The forest around her felt like a single breathing thing, inhaling and exhaling in slow, deep rhythms that didn’t include her yet. Far away, one dog barked again — maybe the same one she’d heard earlier. Then it went quiet. A kind of quiet she hadn’t known in years.

She stood there for a moment, hands tucked into the pockets of her jacket, listening for something familiar. A car somewhere. A TV from a neighbor’s apartment. Even the dull hum of the refrigerator back home. But here there was none of that, not after she switched off the generator. The owners had explained how it worked, how she’d have to run it when she needed power and let it rest otherwise. It wasn’t hard — just different.

The part she hadn’t expected was the silence that followed.

It wasn’t empty. It wasn’t hollow. It was… complete. Like the world had stopped insisting on anything at all.

She went back inside. The lantern she’d bought for this year-long experiment waited on the small shelf near the door — a simple metal one with a warm LED glow meant to imitate a flame. She lifted it, clicked it on, and the cabin filled with a soft, amber light that reached the corners but didn’t erase the shadows. It made the space feel intentional, not improvised.

She sat on the edge of her bed and pulled the blanket around her shoulders. The mattress was a cheap one she’d ordered online, still puffed from expanding earlier that afternoon. It wasn’t luxury, but it felt solid and clean, like a beginning.

Her phone buzzed on the table — a notification, probably from a group chat she hadn’t had the courage to leave. For a moment she reached toward it, then stopped. The whole point of coming here was to break the reflexes she had leaned on for too long. The constant checking, the scrolling, the way she filled every spare second with noise. She clicked the phone to silent and placed it face down. It felt like a small victory, though she wasn’t sure who she was winning against.

She lay back and stared at the ceiling, the lantern casting low patterns across the boards. Something about the silence made her more aware of herself. Not in a self-conscious way, but in a way that felt strangely honest… and vulnerable. Without sound to cover her thoughts, they came in clearer, cleaner, like water after a storm settles.

Was she running away? She had asked herself that question more than once during the drive here. Maybe she was. But she was also running toward something she couldn’t yet name, something she hoped lived somewhere beyond the noise, beyond the expectations, beyond the internal pressure she’d carried so long she’d forgotten it was pressure at all.

She turned onto her side. Through the window she could see the outline of the Hearth in the moonlight, just a faint shape against the darker tree line. She imagined making that walk early in the morning — lantern in hand, breath rising in small clouds, the world not awake yet. A ritual built not from convenience, but presence.

Her stomach tightened with a mix of nerves and anticipation. She liked that the Hearth wasn’t attached to the cabin. That it required movement, required intention. Back in town everything had been too easy, too close. Ten steps from bed to bathroom. Two taps from distraction to distraction. A life engineered to avoid friction, and somehow that had only made her more tired.

A moth bumped against the window screen, wings brushing with a tiny whisper. She sat up and opened her journal, the one she’d packed last because she still wasn’t sure she’d have the courage to use it. She wrote a single line at the top of the page:

I didn’t realize how loud my life was until it stopped.

She capped the pen and closed the book. The lantern glowed softly beside her. Outside, the wind moved through the tall grasses like a quiet river. She pulled the blanket tighter and lay back down, letting the stillness settle into her chest.

Eventually she clicked off the lantern.

The darkness was immediate. Total. Not the softedges darkness she knew from years of living near streetlights, but an older kind, the kind that existed long before electricity softened the world. She could not see her hand when she held it up. She could only feel her own breath — slow, warm, steady.

For the first time in a long time, she wasn’t afraid of the dark. She wasn’t even uncomfortable. She felt held by it, like it expected nothing and demanded nothing. The quiet wasn’t empty anymore. It was full — of what, she wasn’t sure, but it felt like something true.

She closed her eyes.

Morning would come, and with it the first walk to the Hearth, the first real cold on her skin, the first instance of choosing intention over habit. But for now, in the absolute stillness, she allowed herself to rest.

The silence wasn’t absence.

It was invitation.

And she was finally ready to listen.

Kayla missed the turn the first time. The gravel entrance appeared just after a bend in the county road, half-hidden behind a cedar tree and a crooked mailbox that didn’t seem eager to announce anything. She drove past, slowed, and stopped on the shoulder, watching dust drift in the mirror before easing into reverse and turning in.

The gravel sounded different under her tires than any street back in town—deeper and more hollow, as if it wasn’t just lying on the ground but resting on something alive. Golden-hour light flickered through the trees, catching the small wooden sign that came into view after a gentle rise: OAK HOLLOW CABINS. Beneath it, a smaller hand-painted plank read: Simplify on Purpose.

She paused longer than necessary before continuing along the winding drive. Her chest felt tight, but not from anxiety exactly—more like anticipation pressed up against uncertainty. The path split ahead, one way toward West Hollow, the other marked for long-term guests of East Hollow. She followed the arrow that didn’t try very hard to persuade her one way or another.

The Threshold cabin revealed itself slowly through the trees—first the metal roof, then the charcoal siding, and finally the small deck with its simple pine door and black strap hinges. Just beyond it stood the Hearth, freshly built, the pine siding still glowing with its first coat of oil. It looked both brand new and strangely seasoned, like something that had always belonged here.

Kayla parked beside a cleared patch of ground and turned off the engine. Silence pressed gently into the space where road noise had been. It wasn’t total silence—she could hear birds somewhere high above, the soft movement of wind in branches, and far off, a single dog bark—but compared to the constant hum of town life, this felt like the world had switched to a slower frequency.

She stayed in the driver’s seat for a moment with her hands still resting on the wheel. She’d told people different versions of the truth about why she came here, each tailored to the listener: “a year to reset,” “a chance to simplify,” “a private faith retreat,” “a break from noise.” All true, but none complete.

She finally opened her door and stepped out, the gravel shifting under her flats. At the back of the SUV were the three boxes she’d packed last, labeled in black permanent marker: KITCHEN, CLOTHES, BOOKS + JOURNAL. She chose the heaviest first. It felt appropriate.

The walk to the cabin door was short but uneven enough to require careful steps. She tried the key, and the latch turned smoothly, the hinges creaking softly—not old, just honest. She stepped inside and set the box down near the wall.

Light filtered in through the windows differently than the filtered, conditioned daylight of her rented duplex. The air smelled of wood, possibility, and something like honesty. Bare studs framed the interior, a reminder that this life would not be handed to her finished.

The box at her feet seemed to stare up at her. She touched the lid with one hand, then walked back out onto the small deck and looked toward the Hearth. The sunlight caught the grain of the north wall, warming it until it almost glowed. She imagined walking to it in early dawn with breath fogging the cold air, lantern in hand, because here even the most basic routines would require presence.

Back home, ten steps and a switch had separated her bed from running water. Here, each necessity would demand intention. Something about that felt like relief.

A pickup arrived minutes later, tires rumbling over the gravel. She turned to see one of the Oak Hollow owners climb out, the man whose name she recalled from an email, moving with the unhurried ease of someone not performing hospitality, just practicing it.

“Kayla?” he said.

“Yes,” she answered, suddenly aware of how long it had been since she’d felt new somewhere.

“You found it alright?”

“I missed the turn once.” She smiled a little. “Your sign is subtle.”

He glanced toward it and shrugged lightly. “We figured the right ones would find it.”

He helped her carry in her things, making easy conversation—generator basics, where the Watering Place was located, how the Hearth worked, what improvements were coming. Nothing oversold. Nothing sermonized. Just useful orientation offered with the tone of someone handing over a key rather than a pitch.

When everything was inside, he paused at the doorway. “Take your time settling in. Most people don’t figure out how to live here their first day.”

Kayla nodded, unsure of a response but grateful for one that didn’t expect anything. When the truck drove away, the quiet returned, but now it felt like something was listening rather than waiting.

She stood just inside the cabin doorway, arms crossed, breathing slower than she remembered breathing in weeks. Her eyes drifted again to the Hearth—the small building that would require her to walk across the concrete pad morning and night, no matter the weather, no matter her state of mind.

The thought of inconvenience did not bother her. It calmed her.

Maybe that was why she came—to shed the illusion that comfort and meaning were the same thing.

She stepped back outside and leaned against the doorway, letting the light fall across her face. The trees behind the Hearth swayed like they were saying something she wasn’t quite tuned to yet.

For the first time in months, she didn’t hurry to interpret the moment.

Maybe the point was not to understand it.

Maybe the point was to be in it.

She looked at the Hearth again and imagined the path she would take in the early mornings—the cool air, the lantern light, the quiet. A different kind of ritual, not made of convenience but attention.

She didn’t smile, but her shoulders loosened and her eyes softened as if something unclenched inside her, not completely, but enough to breathe without effort.

She wasn’t sure if this place would heal her or undo her, but for the first time in a long time, both options seemed honest.

And honesty felt like the right beginning.

If Kayla’s journey speaks to something stirring in you, I hope you’ll walk with her from week to week. You can follow each installment here on Simplify on Purpose — and if you’d like these stories delivered automatically, you’re invited to subscribe and come along for the full year.