Do people here think it is likely that Jack ever discussed with Ennis the cabin they were supposed to build and live in together when helping to run OMT's ranch? Or is it maybe a "pretend place", to use Lureen's term, - a place where, imaginatively at least, Jack could keep alive his dream of living with Ennis?
The idea of living together only comes up twice and, in a sense, forms a bookend to their long affair. The first time it brought up is by Jack during their initial retreat:
What if you and me had a little ranch together somewhere, little cow-and-calf operation,
it'd be a sweet life.
The only other time it is mentioned is again by Jack, this time during the Final Confrontation:
Tell you what, we could of had a good life together, a f....in' real good life, had us a place of our own.
You wouldn't do it Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mountain.
However, in the years that elapse between these two scenes, we never get to hear the subject mentioned again. But was it brought up, I wonder? Did Jack ever mention to Ennis the possibility of living together on his father's ranch? Personally, I can't see Ennis ever agreeing to live with Jack under the watchful scrutiny of OMT. I would have thought, too, that Jack would have realized how unappealing that would have been for Ennis.
So maybe it was a "pretend" place which Jack used to fend of the insistent - and selfish - demands of his father that he abandon his Texas life and come back - along with Ennis - to help him out. One day, Jack seems to be saying to his father, one day, but not today. Nevertheless, even in talking about their cabin, he was keeping his hopes alive.
Even Jack's use of "cabin" rather than "house"or "apartment" when nominally sketching out his plans for his father, suggests that Jack may well have been thinking about the original "cow-and calf" operation rather than somewhere in public view on his father's ranch. For cabin, for me at least, suggests somewhere hidden in the woods, far, far away from those prying eyes Ennis so much fears, where the two of them, as on Brokeback, could once more be together again alone. However, in the world in which we - and they - have to live, such a vision, while possible in the real world, can also gather around itself some of the qualities of a mirage or a dream.
