My wife and I were typical in so many ways. Two kids, two cars, too many phones. A house in the cul-de-sac, a busy social life and a juggling act with debt and equity to rival that of Enron (except on a nano-mini scale). It may have been commonplace but it was no fun and, it was destroying my ‘will to live’. Turns out I did not like normal life.
I don’t mean to sound overly dramatic but it became evident to me sometime after my fiftieth birthday that I was living to work and no longer working to live. My choices didn’t seem to be my own. I no longer felt that I had possession of my own life. My house, my job, my circumstance (all my own choice, I admit) now seemed to own me.
And it seemed so pointless. Not depressing, so much, as just kind of…..pointless.
In a rash moment I decided to leave the city, build a cabin and lead a more healthy life than the one I had been living. ‘Hippy Redux’ I called it (in my head). I wanted out and I could finally see the forest AND the trees (in my head). Mind you, a husband’s rash moment is his wife’s prerogative to overrule. I was told to ‘Get over it, dear. Play a bit more golf, why don’t you? I am sure this Dan’l Boone phase will pass. Why don’t you get a red sports car and sneak around with a cute secretary like everyone else?”
By the time my handicap was down to 14 and the kids were in college, the same ennui had spread to my wife. Dissatisfaction, it seems, is contagious and I confess I did little to keep my dreams of exodus in quarantine. About two years after being told to ‘Get over it’, my wife announced that she, too, was fed up racing with the rats and, with a flourish, she handed me my cabin file. “Let’s do it!”
And so we did. In the late Spring of 2004 we sold the house, moved to our property up the coast and began to build. ‘Course, we didn’t know HOW to build but that was part of the fun. Or, better put, was supposed to be part of the fun. It was also supposed to be a challenge and a venue for personal growth.
I used to think in phrases made popular by magazine articles.
Thinking this way was also a rationalization for the fact that we didn’t have the money to hire others. Didn’t matter, anyway. When you are this far out, they’re aren’t any others to hire. Rich or poor, when there are no others nearby, you build on your own.
We consciously chose and planned to build a 950 square foot, 1.5 story fairly simple cabin. We ended up building a more complicated 1200 square foot expanded version of the original concept because, well, the original design had some shortcomings easily solved by more floorspace. And, of course, more money. Needless to say, we stretched the budget.
OK, so there is now no more of even a semblance of budget, let alone a stretched one. But the house is nice.
2004 and 2005 was an experience-filled learning curve into the wonderful world of dangerous tools, local characters, Home Depot and the vague, jargon-filled, inexact world of construction. We ‘logged’ trees, poured concrete, carried several tons back and forth across the rocky, moss-covered slope and generally got fitter than we had been in twenty years. Mind you, we ached so much that fitness was a distant and unappreciated byproduct at the time.
Why something so basic to human habitation has to be so difficult, mystifying and expensive is beyond me but we did it and both my wife and I can now ‘talk building’ with the rest of those weird monosyllabic worker guys. Actually, she can talk the talk and walk the walk and look pretty attractive while doing it. I just mumble, grunt and limp.
Naturally, they consult her more than me. I think it’s the saucy but confident way she wears her cute little half-scale tool belt. Think ‘garter belt’ with tools attached.
One day, when I was carrying sheets of drywall from our utility trailer along the wharf, down the ramp and onto our boat, two big fellows stopped to lend a hand. They picked up a package and followed me. When we got to the boat, I told them to pass the sheets to Sally who would put them in place. I passed mine first. And so they did. Sally weighs 125 pounds. She handled all those sheets with relative ease. On the way back up the ramp, one of the guys said to the other, “Did you see the pipes on that chick (she was 54 at the time)?!”
You know you have come a long way, baby, when the wharf rats are checking out your pipes (‘pipes’ are, for the uninitiated, arms and are usually noted only when the arms in question ripple with muscle.)
The way I remember it, they looked at me and decided I needed help. Then, a few seconds later, they looked at her and commented admiringly on her pipes. I think that says it all.
Well, it doesn’t say it all, really. The story is still being told. Every day is better than the last. The weather raged around us this winter and, instead of it delaying my schedule or holding up traffic, it was simply something to experience, live with and enjoy. I sat in my chair in front of the fire and hours would go by. Happily.
We chose not to bring a TV. Haven’t had one now for five or so years. Don’t miss it at all. If I miss anything, it is the time I spent watching it. Here we are in the middle of the forest, miles from anywhere and I have not yet experienced a boring moment. The cul-de-sac was the battlefield on which I waged war against boredom and was consistently defeated. Nowadays, a good fire, a strong wind and a beautiful partner make me the luckiest person on the planet.
Who knew?
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