by Rob Wood
“Hey! You can draw!”
“Sure, I know how to draw,” I answered. “I just don’t know what.”
“Why don’t you do us some decent drawings then?” he said. “We’ll tell you what to draw.”
Larry talked his clients into paying me to do design and drafting work, and they taught me about the kind of information he required on a practical working drawing. He liked my drawings more than some of the other professional drawings (or sometimes no drawings at all) he was used to working with. To my surprise the clients were prepared to pay my modest fee. In this way, I stumbled across a specialty niche that enabled me to make more money than I was used to. Plus I could do the drawing work at home.
As well as providing an irregular but nevertheless significant cash flow, this new-found interest and skill I had acquired, building, designing and drafting custom homes, made me all the more dissatisfied with our old cabin in the woods. Apart from being altogether too shabby, its roof was starting to leak quite badly and was going to have to be replaced. It had served us well for 12 years, which was not bad for an average cost of $100 per year, but when it came time to replace the leaky roof we decided to scrap it and build a proper house.
To this end, we made a cunning trading deal with two logger friends up in the Homathko Valley at the top of Bute Inlet. They had reclaimed some large old-growth fir logs which had been used by a previous generation of loggers as bridge timbers across one of the big side rivers in the valley. The timbers were now washed up on the riverbank, tangled together by rusty old cables and spikes, and because the company did not want to deal with all the rusty metal in the wood, one of the loggers had permission to take these logs for his own use. He offered a three-way trading deal with me and another fellow who had a sawmill and a tugboat. No money was exchanged and we had enough high-quality wood to build and finish all three of our new houses. I did some drawings for both their houses, in trade for which I received a full logging truck load of old-growth fir logs. I then prepared a milling list that I gave to the mill guy, who bundled the logs and towed the bundles down Bute Inlet with his tugboat, dropping my share off on our beach. When the tide went out, we loaded the wood onto our tractor-trailer and brought it up to our barn, where we stacked it under cover to dry out for a year.
I had a design worked out for our new house that was quite simple and easy to build, but Laurie was inspired by a Frank Lloyd Wright book I had made the mistake of showing her. So as the house went up the design evolved into something more complex and sometimes very challenging to build, especially with primitive tools and my limited skills and budget. As well as getting all the timbers and framing material from local Bute Inlet wood, we made the roof from cedar shakes hand split from nearby forest, and all the external siding, fascias and trim are also from locally grown and milled cedar.
I had seen Larry demonstrate the importance of patience and enjoyment in the hands-on process of building in the timeless way, in the moment, the Zen of building.
“You have to slow down and focus your attention!” he said.
Practising this skill, rather than rushing ahead to get the job finished, was a hard lesson for me to have to learn until it dawned on me that this was an opportunity to apply the attunement that I had learned from the natural environment to the man-made environment of daily life. If there was something about the design or the way I had built it that did not feel right the first time, I learned to patiently take it apart and adapt it so it did feel right. Parts of our house were built three times over. Though not feasible in a commercial context, this way of building is a much more organic process in which the character (life) of our house evolved through a step by step process of experiential feedback from the situation rather than from the pure conceptualization of planning.
We have also made good use of the bluff, with the ocean view facing south, by locating the house directly onto the bedrock and using a split-level floor arrangement that nestles down a series of steps in the rock. The porch and entry area are accessed directly from a short driveway leading out to the bluff from the garden, barn and orchard areas. Our main bedroom and bathroom are also at this level. Half a level up from the entry, the open plan living room, dining and kitchen areas have a fine view through magnificent big fir and cedar trees to the channel and nearby islands below. Because the ground below falls away so steeply the deck, out front, is perched precariously high up in the trees.
A prominent feature in the great room is a stunning central fireplace from local granite built by an old stonemason friend from England. Much to our amusement, he was easily disgruntled:
“This damned granite won’t do what I want it to, especially with these crappy tools.”
He was used to much more cultured stonework in the old country and could not understand that we and everyone else round here just love the rough character of the granite and his work.
A loft, which I use as my office, is very well lit by large prow-shaped clerestory windows that also receive a lot of passive solar heat, and opens down into the living room. A full story below the great room and a half-level down from the entry is a utility basement area with two small guest bedrooms, a laundry area, a root cellar, a wood stove and a central masonry stack that goes right up through the house alongside the stone fireplace in the living room. This works as a heat sink which helps to keep the house warm even after the wood fire has gone out at night. It also absorbs and stores the passive solar heat from the clerestory south-facing windows in the loft.
We have tried to make both the internal and external relationships of the house as strong and varied as possible. Just as the house itself is one part of the homestead that contributes to the life of the whole place, so at the smaller scale each of the parts of the house, while relating to and reflecting the larger whole, is itself a cohesive arrangement of smaller parts (illustrating relational holism). Generous, convenient and open traffic flows connect and unify these separate parts into a harmonious flow of space that adds life and synergy to the whole house. The result feels good and looks like it belongs and blends into the moss-covered bluffs in an opening into forest, with a fine view of the ocean at the front. A strategic driveway connects it to the garden and the barn at the back, to other parts of the property and eventually down to the dock.
All this had to be paid for as we went along because, since our income was irregular, we could not get loans or mortgages from any bank even if we had wanted to, which we didn’t. So it was all strictly a pay as you go, step by step process. This means it’s all paid for once instead of twice or more, as would have been the case with a mortgage, and the house continues to evolve as time goes by. It has a kind of honest integrity that comes from the use of local material and from having the blood, sweat and tears included and interwoven with the great satisfaction of building our own nest within our own means.
One big difference between the old cabin in the woods and our new organic house, and a significant indicator on the upward mobility scale, was the indoor bathroom where the loo gravity feeds out to a septic tank and drain field that’s buried out in the yard. I, of course, scorned the idea at first and swore I’d never use it but would be faithful to my meditation practice in the outhouse. Part of the argument in the bathroom’s favour, which eventually convinced me of its necessity, was for our clients we were trying to attract to our wilderness tours at the time. We had once heard one of them say, with typical English humour, “My idea of a wilderness experience is having the window open when I go to the bog.”
Needless to say, once the bathroom (the bog) was up and running I never used the outhouse again and just like everyone else have come to take the warm seat for granted. I must say, however, that – incurable romantic that I am – I do miss the old outhouse ritual, especially in a raging storm.
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HEAVY WEATHER
“What were the most challenging weather conditions you had to face?”
WE’VE HAD SOME TOUGH TIMES in the mountains, but b
y far the most scary adventures have been on the water.
In our early days, once a month or so, we had no choice but to boat the whole ten miles from our island into Heriot Bay for groceries, fuel and building supplies and take our chances with the mighty southeasters. Many of our boats were low-budget affairs and, if powered at all, often had cheap and old outboard motors that were notorious for breaking down. We all experienced some harrowing adventures, with many lessons being learned the hard way about riding the fine balance between sheer joy and sheer terror. Most of these ended happily with only minor damage to boats and egos, but unfortunately there have also been tragedies with loss of boats and lives.
One couple had a fine old sailboat and really enjoyed the thrill of sailing, or at least he did. They were sailing into a southeast blow one time, on their way into town, with the boat full of kids, and the husband was showing off how well the boat would sail and how brave and adventurous he was. Unfortunately, his wife did not always agree, especially when things got really rough as they did on this occasion. When a particularly vicious gust heeled the boat so far over that the rail was in the water, she went below and came out brandishing a carving knife and screaming hysterically, “If you don’t back off I’ll cut the damned jib sheets loose!”
In recent years, improvements of the road on the next island and the opening of our community dock, together with better boats and motors, have removed a lot of the adversity, but southeasters can still be a force to be reckoned with. They are the predominant bad weather wind on the BC coast in winter. Though the wind speeds can be extreme, sometimes reaching storm and even hurricane force, they are typically more moderate and well forecast. Often referred to as the “Pineapple Express,” an anti-cyclonic storm spins counter-clockwise around troughs of low pressure and packs warm, wet air from tropical regions across the Pacific Ocean from the southwest. Arriving on our coast and being confronted by a wall of high mountains, the spiralling vortex is squeezed upward and deflected toward the northwest. As the rising moist air cools it condenses, and the winds blow faster from the southeast and dump copious quantities of rain.
As these southeast storms roll up the 100 miles of open fetch of the Georgia Strait, all the way from Seattle, they accumulate seriously big seas, which are made even bigger by having to squeeze into the channels of the outer islands. An additional unique and spectacular local variable occurs when the southeast wind opposes the current of a big flood tide rushing in from the ocean around the top end of Vancouver Island and squeezing through the rapids between our islands. The resulting “wind against tide rip” kicks up steep and chaotic seas.
At the height of the biggest southeast storm we’ve ever had, when hurricane force wind speeds, recorded at a local lighthouse, were 70 knots and gusting more and all the ferries on the BC coast were cancelled, Laurie and I were watching a Jack Nicholson movie on TV. It was just before bedtime and we were getting quite spooked by the violence of the gusts that were shaking our house. Suddenly there was a horrendous crash and we both leaped off the couch. I thought for sure our roof had caved in and ran upstairs expecting to see a gaping hole. Laurie, smarter than me as usual, ran out of the basement door and found that the huge 400-year-old fir tree that used to stand beside our house had fallen, roots an’ all – fortunately away from the house – but it had pulled the outside deck supports clean off the side of our house.
Having ascertained that there was no apparent damage to the house itself and that there was nothing else we could do about it anyway, Laurie shrugged and said, “Oh well! Let’s go back in to Jack for some comic relief.”
Inside continental Canada people are used to very cold conditions in winter, but it is generally dry and cold. All they need are gloves, toques, thermal underwear and maybe a good down-filled jacket. Most of the time on the BC coast, winters are mild, wet and dull. All we need are oilskin rain gear and gumboots. However, a potential for dramatic variability exists in certain parts of the coast, when the intensely cold interior air spills down through the deep valleys of the Coast Range and collides with the intense wet on the coast to produce much more challenging survival conditions than either of the two elements on their own. The timing, diversity, complexity and intensity of the local mix are inherently unpredictable. This dramatic battle in the sky makes life more interesting for year-round residents of the outer islands and can often be a source of adventure eliciting our close attention and care, if not our horror and outright fear.
The day after the Jack Nicholson storm, in the late afternoon, I went over to the next island to pick up the mail. On the way over to the post office I noticed a westerly breeze and a swell picking up in the channel, which usually means an abrupt change in weather. It had stopped raining and turned quite cold. On my return trip the sky cleared very suddenly to reveal an amazingly spectacular display of bright orange light in the final rays of the setting sun. The storm and the dull grey gloom of the previous few days was suddenly replaced by intense sunlight and cheerful kaleidoscopic reflections dancing off the lively westerly chop. As I looked, the dramatic scene became the more vibrant, dazzling and brilliant, the sky quickly changing from orange to deep red. I couldn’t help noticing how far south and how low in the sky the sun was setting. “Quite a winter solstice light show,” I thought.
Then, before I reached the dock, with the last glimmer of daylight left, the sky quickly turned to dark, steel-grey blue and an ice-cold blast of north wind smacked my bare cheeks and froze my gloves solid as the air temperature instantly plummeted and the wind-chill factor increased dramatically.
“Bute Outflow!” I gasped as I hurriedly tied the boat to the dock and ran up the hill to the house in an attempt to keep warm.
This less frequent but vicious north wind blows out from mainland inlets when arctic high pressure conditions advance farther south than usual, sometimes over the whole of southwest BC and down into the States. This intensely cold, dry arctic air flow accelerates as it squeezes down from the Interior Plateau through the deep valleys and inlets of the Coast Range. By the time this air flow reaches the outer coast, the “Outflow” winds can deliver 100 mph, subzero blasts which pick up the damp ocean air and freeze it into devastating, icy maelstroms.
The interface, or battle line, between the cold, high pressure system and the warm and wet low pressure moves up and down the coast as the opposing forces recede and advance. The two huge elements are on quite different cycles. The arctic high, once established this far south, usually lasts a couple of weeks before receding and then perhaps coming back again later. The low pressure systems usually last only about 24 hours before dissipating inland, but they can stack up back to back in quick succession.
Sometimes, when both systems choose to advance at the same time, they can hold each other at bay, generating a sort of no man’s land as in a military battle. Or they can merge together to form a northeasterly wind that dumps large quantities of wet snow. Depending on which system wins that particular round of the battle, the snow will either freeze solid and stay on the ground for days and even weeks, or it will turn to mush and wash away next day. The battle continues, on and off, through most of the winter in varying degrees.
We happen to live very close to the mouth of Bute Inlet, which has the most direct route from the interior, through the biggest mountains and glaciers in the Coast Range. So we are heavily influenced by perhaps the most intense outflow conditions on the whole BC coast, the notorious winter “Bute,” one of the most serious winds anywhere on the planet. Fortunately, we are relatively protected from the full brunt of the Bute’s fury, where its effect dissipates as it spreads out away from the exit of the inlet. Nevertheless, we are close enough to be very familiar with protecting ourselves from the worst of the adversity. Water lines have to be kept running and covered by leaves and moss to protect them from the wind chill factor as well as the subzero temperatures. The driest firewood with the highest calorie content has to be reserved for these special occasions. Experience has tau
ght us to make sure we have reserves of staple food provisions, enough to last several weeks if necessary, so we don’t have to travel out to town.
That particular cold snap lasted two weeks, and though the days were brilliantly sunny, everything was gripped in ice. Storm force, 60-knot outflow winds blasted out of the mainland inlets with 20°F air temperatures and a further 20 degrees of wind-chill factor closing schools, downing power lines and stopping the ferries and buses all over Vancouver Island.
When it’s that cold for so long we start becoming alarmed by the hole in the woodshed. Normally we let the wood stove go out at night and rely on the heat sink effect from the solid masonry chimney in the centre of the house to radiate warmth through the night. But a cold snap meant we had to stoke the fire at pee breaks during the night in order to keep ahead of the wind-chill factor. We couldn’t afford to let the house cool off because it would take ages to warm it up again.
We were also concerned about our pond and hydroelectric system drying up or freezing up. Fortunately, the penstock pipe is well hidden in thick underbrush that is both insulated and protected from the wind. It is at times like this that we really appreciate what a crucial role our homemade systems play in our life support. Thanks to our Pelton wheel and the satellites, we were able to stay online and keep in touch. My sister emailed from Vancouver where, in a power outage, they were huddled around candles and worrying about us running out of candles and not being able to get out to the store.
“Candles my butt,” I replied, “We have every light in the place on.”
Another time, we were coming home from Heriot Bay in Quintano, late in the afternoon with a load of building supplies and expecting Bute Outflow conditions. We made sure we left well before dark, but by the time we secured the load there was a sharp, icy Bute wind blowing right on our nose. As we proceeded up the channel, the wind picked up and waves started crashing over the bow, sending clouds of spray, which instantly formed a layer of ice covering the decks and all my heaviest heavy weather clothing. With frozen beard and eyebrows, it was all I could do to steer the boat, peeping out from behind the shelter of the cabin. Laurie, Kiersten and Sheen dog fortunately stayed reasonably cozy with the stove going inside the cabin.
