Someday, Ray and Mary Lou Good figure they will no longer be up to making the long trip from Intercourse to their beloved mountain cabin in Tioga County.

When that day comes, all they will have to do to continue their mountain living is walk downstairs.

After seven years of learning by doing, the couple has erected and furnished a complete log cabin in their basement.

The final touches were completed just last month. An open house was held Dec. 9 for the couple's neighbors in the Watson Run housing development. That finally satisfied all the questions about all the up-to-16-foot logs that kept disappearing into the basement over the years.

Everyone who has seen it so far is awed. For the hunter or log cabin aficionado, the subterranean cabin takes the "man cave" concept to dizzying heights.

Ray built almost all the furniture inside, down to the birch tree bed, rocking chair, tree stump kitchen table and shadow box branch table in front of the stone fireplace.

What makes all this more amazing is that the 67-year-old Good, until undertaking this opus, was not even an amateur handyman.

"I'm not a fixer-upper," says Good, who retired from his job as a painter at High Steel in 2010. His wife ran the Amish Guest House and Cottage in Intercourse.

Before getting into how they did it, a little background on the couple's deep affinity for log cabins.

Ray, who grew up on a farm in the Intercourse area, has hunted in the mountains near Wellsboro since his father and friends bought a farm for a hunt camp in 1950.

In 1970, Ray and his buddies bought their own hunt camp, an old log cabin on 169 acres about eight miles away. They called it The Wild Country.

When Ray and Mary Lou were about to get hitched, more than 48 years ago, Ray was very upfront about something. "He said, 'When we get married I want you to understand, I hunt,'" Mary Lou, also 67, recalls with a smile.

"It was something I had to learn but I came away with enjoying it so much that I want to go away all the time to the mountains."

Quite a progression for the longtime Lancaster City resident who, at first, couldn't sleep in the country without the familiar white noise of honking cars in the background.

In 2002, the couple bought their own log cabin and 10 acres right next to the Tioga County hunt camp. They called it "The Good Country."

Then came a local Christmas house tour Mary Lou attended in 2004. One of the homes had a basement full of hunting trophies. She loved the ambiance and hurried home to urge her husband to do something similar.

Ray liked the idea but he balked at the reality of what would be involved. "My problem right from the start was, yes, it would be nice to do this, but I'm not a carpenter or a stone mason or an architect. I didn't know where to begin to start on this project."

They started by deciding to build a new home. They made sure the various models included an ample basement that could accommodate the footprint of a one-room log cabin with an "outside" porch.

They even agreed to the addition of a sun room on the main floor of the home, mainly so there would be space underneath for a tucked-away sleeping area in the future cabin.

They devoured how-to books and magazines. They heard about a newspaper story on a Reading-area man who had built a log cabin in his basement. That proved they weren't the only ones crazy.

 Also helping them make the leap was a good friend, Jay Martin, of Goodville, who had worked in new home construction all his life. He was there for guidance over the next seven years.

 In June 2008, Ray and Martin felled two dozen red pine trees, 6 to 9 inches in thickness, from behind the Tioga County hunting camp.

The next spring, the pine bark beetles had done their job and the bark fell off easily. They hauled the logs back to Intercourse and fed them into the basement with a makeshift chute.

Ray worried about dragging home termites.

There were some considerable obstacles, including duct work, three steel I-beams and metal posts that had to be masked. Ray camouflaged the beams by hollowing out tree trunks, them wrapping them around the columns.

Mary Lou, with her interior decorating skills, served as Ray's quality control manager. Once she had him take down an entire wall of planking and start over.

"We went to Plan B a couple times," Ray says.

The work went on, with Ray spending an average of six hours a day downstairs.

They kept the project secret from friends just in case they realized they had overreached and abandoned the whole venture.

Workers who made deliveries were puzzled. "They would say, 'How are you getting this out of the basement?'" recalls Mary Lou.

They used irregular-width planks from a maple tree brought back from the mountains for the floor. For the rustic railings on the front porch, they walked near and far in the mountains for a certain shrub.

"When we go up to our cabin, we don't go hunting, we go up hunting trees," laughs Mary Lou.

Slide back the wooden peg latch and the cabin door creaks open.

"It's nice and toasty and warm in here and it just doesn't get any better than this," Ray says to a visitor as Mary Lou giggles in agreement.

They sought out flea markets and auctions for outdoorsy and antique furnishings and knick-knacks. They aimed for a 19th-century ambiance. Thus, there is a ladies' spittoon beside the bed and a massive wood cook stove in the kitchen.

On the log mantle over the flagstone fireplace, under the old muzzleloading rifle, there is a moose call made out of rolled-up birch bark, a bear skull and a duck decoy with the old lead weight still attached.

On the walls you'll find the shoulder mount of Ray's biggest buck, a nine-pointer, and the largest buck taken by his father.

So many memories. In a frame are prints of many of the memorable hunts of the various hunt camps through the generations. Everyone's first buck is shown. 

There's a photo of son Curtis holding the remains of a doe he shot. A bear beat the boy to the deer and had to be shooed away. Unknown to the hunting party, the bear followed them home and when the deer was hung outside, the bear reclaimed its prize during the night.

Family heirlooms are placed lovingly about: Mary Lou's mother's clothespin bucket and her grandmother's bonnet, the hunting cap of Ray's dad, Ray's first piggy bank.

Many of the accouterments you would expect in an old cabin are inside or on the outside walls: a bear rug, fox and coyote skins, old snowshoes and skis, leghold traps, mounted trout, vintage calendars, covers of old sporting magazines.

If you didn't know better, you'd swear you were tucked somewhere in a draw in Tioga County.

Though the cabin takes up most of the basement, it's not the first thing you encounter coming down the stairs.

On the walls, from floor to ceiling, are hand-painted murals showing, among other things, all the past and present hunt camps and cabins, the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania and one of its eagle nests, as well as the 10-point buck Curtis shot in 2004 — at the time the 10th-largest buck ever shot in Tioga County.

The detailed murals were painted from photos by two Lancaster artists, Mary Beth Shenk and Steven R. Wilson, who operate Masterpiece Murals.

On the floor are painted turkey tracks, deer hooves and bear footprints. The turkey tracks lead to three turkeys, one a full-size mount and two drawn on the mural. It's hard to tell the difference.

The bear prints lead to a bear den under the stairway containing the 285-pound black bear Good shot in 1984. The lair includes the chewed-up log that Good removed from a real bear den.

Ejected shotgun and rifle shells may be found strewn about the room, nestled in leaves or pine needles. A small sapling containing a buck rub rises from the floor in one corner.

The Goods have their playful side also in an outhouse Ray built. The door creaks open to reveal an old mountaineer...well, let's just say the john is occupied.

Now, after some 1,200 hours of labor by Ray, it's finally all done.

The couple intends to use the cabin for entertaining and socializing. The hunters will certainly plan there.

"I feel we have the best of both worlds," says Mary Lou, referring to their indoor and outdoor cabins.

"It was a blessing to do it and we want to thank the Lord how everything came together. It took longer than we thought but it was a labor of love because we love our mountains."

Adds Ray, "I feel very rewarded. It was a fruitful thing and a fun thing and if I had to do it over again, I would. But I'm glad it's over. Now I can enjoy the fruits of my labor."
acrable@lnpnews.com
For a listing of outdoors events throughout Lancaster County this week and beyond, go to lancasteronline.com. Click on Sports, then Outdoors.