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Fifteen years ago, the “rickety” cabins that the family had built over the years on their lakeside property were reassessed as lakeshore homes, and the family’s taxes soared. They decided to subdivide the lots—they sold two, and three of her brothers took lakeside lots, while Diane and another brother took back lots. The old boxcar has been preserved and encased in one of her brother’s lake homes. “I didn’t want to build a lake house,” she says. “I wanted to give my grandchildren the old boxcar experience of freedom and simplicity. I wanted them to be able to hear the wind, feel the rain, and be one step from nature.”

The tiny cabin currently sits on a friend’s property, but it’s designed to be mobile, should the couple need to move it. “It can be dragged away with nothing more than a tractor,” says Nathalie.

Nestled into a grassy hillside, the cabins overlook ponds and oak, birch, and linden trees that grow on the property.