How to walk a site before you draw.
Where the cabin sits is the first decision and the hardest to reverse.
title: How to walk a site before you draw. category: siting readTime: 6 date: 2026-04-12 excerpt: Where the cabin sits is the first decision and the hardest to reverse. hero: walk-a-site/hero.jpg draft: true
A good site has a feel before it has a name. Stand on it long enough and it will tell you where the cabin wants to go. We have learned to walk a site at least four times before drawing anything. The walks are slow. We do not write much. We listen.
This is what we have learned.
Walk 1 · outline
The first walk is for noticing what is already there. Where do you stop without thinking. Where does the path want to go. Where would you sit if you had to. Where would you not.
We do this walk in the middle of the day, in clear weather. The point is to be plain about what is on the land — the trees, the slope, the water, the rocks. Not yet to think about what you would build there.
Take a paper map and mark only what surprised you. Three things, four. No more.
Walk 2 · sun
The sun walk is at sunrise and sunset, on the same day. We bring a thermos.
What you are looking for is the line of long shadows. The cabin will sit somewhere in that line. You want to know: where does the morning light arrive first, and where does the evening light leave last. Between those two answers is the shape of a good day.
If the site is wooded, mark which trees throw shadows that matter. Some you will keep. Some, eventually, will go.
Walk 3 · wind
This walk needs weather. Pick a day that is forecast windy.
Stand in different parts of the site for a few minutes each. Note where it feels exposed. Note where it feels still. The cabin will sit somewhere between those two — sheltered enough that the door doesn't fight you in winter, exposed enough that the air keeps moving in summer.
Most sites have a small pocket where neither happens. That pocket is what we are looking for.
Walk 4 · night
The last walk is at night, ideally without a flashlight. It will feel ridiculous and it is not.
What you are looking for is the quality of the dark. Where can you see the sky. Where is there a glow from somewhere you didn't know about. Where would you actually want to wake up.
We have learned more from this walk than from the other three combined.
What comes next
After the four walks, we have a small notebook of marks on a paper map. The site has spoken — quietly, partially, but it has spoken.
The first sketch follows the marks. It does not invent.
There is more to siting than this — drainage, building codes, neighbours, the budget you actually have, the building method you can actually afford. The full method is in our field manual Siting a cabin. But the four walks come first. They are free, and they are the part you cannot skip.