I was listening to some program the other day where they were interviewing James Gulliver Hancock, an Australian artist living in New York who has a project called All the Buildings in New York (That I've drawn so far). Such a great title and as I've been wanting to draw more, an inspiring aspiration. It got me to thinking about all the houses I've lived in here on Haida Gwaii. I would love to draw them, but right now I can't even remember them all, so I am going to start working backwards and see if I can piece it together. This will be a work in progress, but gotta start somewhere.
In the last 3 and a half years I've been jumping from one house sit to another like a lucky little hermit crab at a cabin buffet. Unlike a hermit crab however my trajectory has not always taken me to bigger spaces, in fact, often the inverse. Doug and I were pretty seriously considering building a tiny house and as such gravitated towards the smaller and humbler variety of houses, at least until recently. Along the way I have befriended cats, dogs, plants, chickens and many houses. There have been occasional rentals too, but overall just an amazing myriad of houses and with them, ways of living.
I'm updating this now as I have moved into a new house here in Queen Charlotte which I am quite in love with. I have also been staying in more noteworthy cabins and as such must ad them to the list.
Two weeks ago I stayed with some friends at Richards little cabin on Limberlost. It's so magical and I have photos from way back that I never put up here. These two little cabins are built into the side of the dune and believe to or not, they are actually on Air B&B now so open for rentals! There is no running water but various little systems for getting around that.
Before coming here I was at Nate, Charley and Skonun's spectacular sand castle on North beach.
I was there since mid December after my separation from Doug. This house was 6 years in the making. Masa did a great blog as part of his Radx project where he interviewed them about the process. Here's the link to that video. Here are a couple of pics I took of the house. The first is a pic from the beach. They are as close to North Beach as you can get, which allows me to run out for the odd early morning polar bear swim and then run back to the house and be in a hot shower in under 2 minutes. Pretty fantastic. They also have this big round window, where I can hang out with their cats and do yoga as I make my leisurely way into the day.
Before this I was living with Doug at South Beach Dunes as caretaker there. It was the most apartment-like place I've lived since coming here, though it still had a fireplace, the main source of heat. The living space was probably the least impressive thing about the property which is otherwise pretty fantastic. There we were in charge of 3 greenhouses, 100 chickens, 2 turkeys, 1000 rainbow trout, and an elderly apple head siamese cat.
Before that I was living at Toby and Shauna's beautiful bird house beside the Chown River. This place is uniquely built with love on display in every corner. Toby's style is unique and his handiwork is evident in many beautiful cabins all over the islands. Though the footprint of this house is small, the use of space is genius with little nooks and shelves built in every corner. I lived there for a year and a half or so. The cat Minnow is a hulking cream puff who once killed 2 squirrels in the space of 3 hours to prove his love for me. Le sigh. I still have one of their tails thanks to my friend Stu who showed me how to get the bones out.
Prior to Toby and Shauna's we stayed at the Coho, another historied building on the Chown. This place was actually built on a different property that was owned by some off islanders. When relations between the cabin builders and the land owners turned sour a gang of Tow Hillbillies moved the cabin in the middle of the night to where it now sits, on the Trout House property gazing out over the Chown. It has since had some additions as well as a rotating cast of inhabitants. This whole property has some of the best water I've ever drunk. Though the wind whips through this place and there is no shower or hot water for that matter, it's substantial charm makes up it.
Before this we were at Neal and Elna's, the Eagle house where I lean red about glorious heat pumps.
Before that, Sheila Karrow's little studio on the water. I named it the Beach House, since I was listening to a lot of them at the time and the beach there was a big part of our day to day with morning swims most days. This place makes amazing use of passive solar, and has a composting toilet and water collection to boot. Many of these innovations are due to it's cliffside location and thus inability to hook up to sewer and water off the main grid, but still, nice things to learn about.
Before the beach house there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between the north and south ends of Haida Gwaii, between my all islands job and Doug's farmer friends needing help. I was living at a house my then roommate and I Jaime named "Retro Gran" because the woman who had lived there Winny had apparently been a lovely old grandmotherly lady who died in the house. It had a decidedly 70's feel with wooden walls made from fire killed cedar and an old lamp that remains there now as a centrepiece. Jaime and I managed to cook up furniture using bookshelves, pieces of plywood, old spools from electrical cable and a gymnastics foamie donated by Ben Davidson which we carved up with a bread knife to fashion this L couch spewing tiny bits of foam all over the show in the process.
Here are some of the places that Doug lived and house sat/lived at.
Kynan's cabin was one of the first few abodes we shared. I think I referred to this one as just "the beach" because it was often sunny and how in the little clearing where it stands and all around it was sand, except for a patch of green lawn which appeared to be the most resily available peeing spot. I put a lot of effort to make a silk purse out of this sow's ear to little avail, but still it was liveable. There was no running water, but it did have electricity, in the form of an extension cord running to the house which allowed us a couple of electric lights, a charge for the computer and a fridge. Luxurious. The toilet was still a hole in the woods. I think Doug had to pay rent for this baby.
This little cabin is at the end of the Sangan drive and right beside the river that is the drive's namesake. This cabin was built by Johnny Ebbs largely by hand and has dealt with bears, hippies, children and neglect. This is the first cabin that Doug lived in and later the place where I proposed to Doug and the two of us spent a lot of time here, meandering through the old growth and dipping into the river for a morning splash. Photo credit goes to Auntie Val, who did the tour of duty visiting and even staying in many of the shacks I had called home.
…more to come.
Chris and Elin's
Susan Musgrave's
Bonnie KC and Kaya's cabin
Dom's
The Trout House (house)
David and Sandra Begg's cycle palace
Tlell. When the time came for me to move away from Fantasy island I decided to move to Tlell. This was based on a chance hitch hike with a french Canadian Tlellian who took a liking to me and my friend and decided to take us home to his house, treat us to a deluxe lunch of imported cheeses and probably some wine and then orchestrated for me to move in a few doors down by corralling the owner of the house who was going to be leaving town. I recruited Jaime to the islands soon after and she moved in here with me in November.
The very first House I lived in when I came here in 2009. The Tai Chi Cabin on Fantasy island. Here is is awash with gorse flowers that smell like coconut.
