While most of us wouldn't practically be able to fit into a home with a footprint about the size of your average living room, the fully-outfitted shed sure is nice to look at. It carries with it a primal fantasy, one that we all perhaps nurture somewhere, of giving up all our worldly excesses and venturing into the woods to subsist on the bare minimum. It's the secret hippie in us, the part that's tired of all the junk we have to lug around every time we move, the part that loves nature but isn't quite dedicated enough to truly live within it. While we may not be able to act on that desire, we can at least stimulate it with the gorgeous selection of architectural photos curated by the editors of Cabin Porn.

This endlessly scrolling Tumblr features all sorts of tiny houses, some with uses you may not even have imagined before. For example, I just found out that there's such a thing as an ice fishing shack in Canada. It's a tiny house on a giant sleigh. You can pull it around on its runners so you have immediate shelter while ice fishing. Most of them are brightly colored and look like tiny Lego dwellings against the solid blank of snow and gray winter sky. They seem like one of those Canadian myths that are just good to be true in the real world, like socialized medicine or reasonable crime rates. I can't imagine living in one for any period of time but they are houses on sleds and that is just awesome. 

Also in the mix are tiny lookouts, quaint Dutch beach houses, and secluded ski cabins. Some seem more livable than others--small and rustic, but with indoor plumbing and electric lights. Some seem hardly more than a lean-to in the woods. Either way, the shapes of some of these buildings are incredible. Among the collection you'll find sauna houses built into rock walls and masked by exterior mirrors, well-furnished safari tents, and precariously perched tree houses. From the most polished to the most cobbled-together, these dwellings make up marvelous conjunctions of form and functionality. 

I'm probably not going to be retreating into the woods anytime soon, no matter how nicely my potential shelter might be designed. I'd miss the internet and hot showers and I don't like to be damp. But at least I've got collections of lovely images documenting all the various ways we humans nestle ourselves into the wild.