Welcome to Paradise

Reflections 4

Welcome to Paradise

The most interesting dwellings in this country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque;

Thoreau

With winter fast approaching, a sense of urgency sets in. The question which is foremost in my mind on these cool late autumn days concerns my preparedness for what’s about to come. Am I really in a position to handle the onslaught that an Ontario winter can throw at me? If the winter is kind and not too harsh, then I am reasonably certain I am ready but what if it’s a severe winter with record breaking temperatures and snowfall? Do I have what it takes to make it through several months of the worst that my mind can conjure up?

Time to take stock and what better place to begin than with a detailed description of what has not only been my home for the last three months but will, I hope, protect me from the elements over the approaching winter.

 On first appearance the building is not especially attractive, in fact, it might be considered to be downright ugly. The siding is unfinished horizontal tongue and groove siding naturally weathered grey through exposure to sun and wind and rain. The upper section of the South side is finished with the most unbecoming, half sheets of plywood, baby blue in colour.  The shed roof, having seen better days, is coated with tar, cracked, and looking as though it is in desperate need of repair. Doors and windows lap pear to have been salvaged with no concern for aesthetics but merely as protection against the elements. 

...

The interior... is equally lacking in sophistication. The hydro poles which anchor the entire building and are the primary support of the walls and roof have been painted a bright fire-engine red and are, consequently, the most in-your-face feature of the interior. The walls are covered with panel board, as is the ceiling, and all are painted white. That’s it, red and white... Definitely not going to win any awards for interior decoration here but for now it appears to be more than capable of staving off the elements and if it keeps me warm and dry then there is all the time in the world for prettying the place up.

The small ‘L’ extension of the concrete base is the original kitchen, accounts for forty-eight square feet or about one third of the entire footprint of the building and contains a counter with sink, a cupboard and hutch, a couple of shelves and the ice-box embedded in the wall as well as the original entrance door.

The main room contains my loft bed with sofa bed below, an Ikea chair, a small set of drawers with a book shelf on top, several shelves added by me, a cedar chest for linens and a tiny closet which I built shortly after arriving. I also installed a skylight where the old chimney exited through the roof.

...

As a slight diversion I feel obliged to offer an explanation on the use of the word ‘cabin’ to describe my new home lest I be accused of deliberately misleading the reader. In the minds of many, most I would argue, the word ‘cabin’ calls forth a romanticized image of a small, rustic building often built with logs hewn from the surrounding bush and with connotations of nature, the pioneering spirit and Canadiana. It’s the log part which is problematic here, and thus, misleading. The only thing even remotely resembling logs on the original building are the eight vertical and three horizontal hydro poles which form the basis of the frame. On the other hand, it is a cabin in everything but appearance; it is tiny and rustic and romantic and, for me at least, it has the connotations of nature, the pioneering spirit and Canadiana.

Habitable buildings, homes, are known by all sorts of  monikers; cabin, shed, shack, and hut come to mind, each of which comes with its own mental images. House is somehow empty, lacking in detail, boring and only slightly more descriptive than building. It also has an urban ring to it and detracts from any character or unique properties that the home may possess. My house in the woods simply doesn’t cut it. It deserves more than that, something to capture its unique character. 

One of the more defining characteristics of the building is its shed roof, twelve feet on the high side and eight on the lower end, but a shed is a secondary building, a place where things are stored, not a domicile where people actually live. That leaves shack but, just as a cabin connotes an overly idyllic mental image, shack goes too far in the opposite direction bringing to mind a tumbledown, ramshackle derelict of a building hardly fit to be considered a home. In actual fact, in its construction, the building is closer to being a shack than a cabin. However, it is solidly built around the eight sturdy hydro poles anchored in a one hundred seventy-six square foot L-shaped concrete pad and although not the most attractive of buildings, it is still a notch or two above being labelled a shack. Hut falls into the same category.

I have been known to just refer to the building as “My little place in the bush” but that gets tedious after a while. And so, at the risk of sounding pretentious, I shall continue from time to time to refer to my new abode as my cabin. Problem solved.