A sandy path leads away from the car park into spruce forest somewhere north of Montréal, and the trees close around you before you've taken ten steps. This is the Laurentians, near Notre-Dame-de-la-Merci, and Kabania begins the moment you leave the vehicle. There is no lobby, no glass doors, no check-in agent with a lanyard. Instead, you receive a small pouch holding a tree-bark keychain and a hand-drawn map, and you walk.

The walk takes roughly seven minutes. The ground is springy with moss, and a river announces itself somewhere to your right before you've spotted it. By the time a treehouse appears through the branches, the city has already started to feel theoretical. The cabins reflect the forest they inhabit: natural materials, structures that work around the trunks rather than displacing them, big windows that frame the trees at every hour of the day. Inside, a double bed occupies the main level; two single bunks tuck into a mezzanine above. You wake to green light and pine-cool air and, on clear nights, a sky dense enough with stars to make the phrase "five-star" feel like someone missed the point.

Kabania operates without running water, electricity or private toilets in the treehouses. That is not an oversight — it is the premise. Communal kitchens and bathhouses sit a short walk away, kept clean and genuinely practical. Rubber-wheeled carts wait at the trailhead for hauling supplies in, and a headlamp converts evening into something cinematic. Guests who arrive expecting resort amenities will be surprised; guests who arrive ready to simplify will feel the tension leave their shoulders within an hour.

Days here fill themselves without effort. The river pulls people in for long floats that start as a quick tube ride and consume the entire afternoon. Hiking trails thread through the forest. There is a beach volleyball net for the competitive and a scatter of hammocks for everyone else. A collection of books sits available on the understanding that you may not finish a chapter because the light through the trees keeps interrupting. Summer draws visitors for swimming and warm campfire evenings, while autumn turns the forest copper and gold and the cool air makes the treehouses feel even cosier. Both seasons reward a stay.

Evenings settle into something slower. A ground-level fire pit crackles while dinner cooks in cast iron. Voices drop. The sky does its thing. Kabania describes itself as running on renewable energy in the background, and the property carries that ethic in its details — the build, the materials, the deliberate smallness of the footprint. It feels less like a guest and more like a neighbour to the forest around it.

Nightly rates run approximately €40–€60, varying by season and availability, which puts this firmly in the budget-friendly category for the quality of experience on offer. Kabania suits couples and small groups who want a genuine disconnection — from screens, from schedules, from surfaces that aren't wood or river stone. Bring warm layers regardless of season, and someone who finds a river reassuring. The forest handles the rest.