First off, I'm
posting this pretty quickly after the last post, so if you haven't
seen the previous post about Marijkes return to America and our
wedding, check that out. This post picks up right after the wedding,
going from mid July when we began living together in the little
cabin, shortly there after finding a real house to live in, the
process of cleaning and moving, filing Marijkes immigration
paperwork, lots of stuff in the trees and then a celebration with
family in Seattle in early September. It was a busy time and a lot
of hard work for both of us but as we say, “the island provides.”
Everything went smoothly and it's been a great foundation to build
our marriage on for these first few months.
When I designed and
began building the cabin at my friends place, I was a single guy with
no goal or expectation of finding a relationship on a tiny island of
retirees, so winding up married was a bit of a surprise. Two people
living in the small space was certainly not impossible, but it was
going to be a bit of a challenge. Remember we hadn't ever lived
together, only started seeing each other 8 months earlier and now
were married and living in essentially a one room cabin with no
indoor bathroom. I guess you could say the situation got us to learn
more about each other very quickly!
One day I was
sitting in the cabin and noticed an awkward looking creature running
across the meadow, so naturally I ran after it to have a look. It
was a river otter, which are quite graceful in the water but on land
look like an over-caffeinated inch-worm with a limp. Anyways, they
are known to occasionally go after chickens and their eggs so I kept
an eye on it to ensure it didn't head that way, and then watched it
dive into the pond, come out the other side and run away into the
woods, probably to the next pond on another property.
There was plenty to
do on the farm, and with the garlic crop recently harvested it was
time to clean and process all of it. It's a rather tedious job that
requires cutting off the leaves, cleaning each head with a toothbrush
and sorting it by size, but when working with friends becomes a
social activity and is actually kind of enjoyable. One of the few
farming tasks you can do sitting down.
On the outside I may
appear to be a 31 year old married man, but on the inside I'm still a
little boy who likes to catch snakes…
This whole time
Marijke and I had been searching for a house to move into on the
island and had no luck thus far. Shaw is a very small island after
all, so rental houses are pretty much non-existent here. But just a
few days after our wedding that changed: out of the blue, I received
a call from another islander asking if we had found a place yet.
When I said no, she told me that she had a place that may be perfect
for us.
Shortly after, I met
her to look at the house and the property. It is an 80 acre piece of
land with a house built in 1968, with two 2000' airstrips, aircraft
hangers, numerous outbuildings, ponds, meadows and moss covered
balds. The house had been unoccupied for the last two years, there
was a fair bit of junk around and things were rather overgrown, but I
like a challenge and it did indeed seem like a perfect fit for us.
This is the primary
airstrip on the property (there is another smaller one as well) and
the largest on the island. It doesn't see much use these days, but
it is still maintained and usable.
The previous owner
was a pilot, heavy equipment operator and prolific collector of
vehicles large and small. A major cleanup effort is under way and
mostly complete now, but tucked away in every corner of the property
were dozens and dozens and dozens of old trucks, cars and more. I'm
a fan of old vehicles myself, and to me some of these trucks are
really beautiful!
As a heavy equipment
operator he built many of the roads on Shaw and had the tools left
behind to prove it. Parked all over were a crane, multiple
bulldozers, cement trucks, road graders and at least a half a dozen
dump trucks.
It wasn't time to
move in just yet, so Marijke and I continued to make it work in the
cabin for the moment. I was going to work on Orcas as usual but
Marijke was in a sort of limbo. She was no longer an intern at the
monastery, the life she had known on Shaw thus far, but without her
work permit, she was unable to get a job in the country. So she
filled her time helping on the farm, still visiting the monastery and
doing odd jobs here and there.
An evening walk at
the preserve. This time of year both of us spend a lot of time
outside, which helps a great deal living in a small space.
Still getting used
to having a wedding ring on my finger. And the green stuff? That's
what happens every Sunday from pruning the tomato plants.
One of Marijke's
duties while she was an intern was hand milking the cow Claire pretty
much every day. She really loves being around and working with
animals, and missed that connection after leaving the monastery, so
she would still visit on occasion and say hi.
Passing ferries on
my way to work.
Wednesday fire
drill.
I'd been looking for
an outboard motor to put on my boat for a while and through
craigslist found one that fit the bill, so we made a mainland supply
run and on the way back stopped at Cabela's, not because we needed
anything, but just to show Marijke the place. It is one of the huge
ones with fish tanks, giant taxidermy displays and all manor of other
things like that. Marijke was not impressed. Haha…
By now it was the
end of July and time to start cleaning out the house we would be
moving into. As I said before, it hadn't been used in two years, the
previous occupants were rather elderly, and it showed. The house
was still full of furniture, the kitchen cabinets were still full of
dishes and there were even still some clothes in the dressers. As
Marijke says “It's like someone just took their toothbrush and
left.” The house was a time capsule!
The house is a good
size, around 1,500 square feet, with a large porch, master bedroom,
two bathrooms, a laundry room, office, guest room, nice living room
and kitchen. There is even an attic and basement, a rarity in the
islands. On the west side of the house there is a 900 square foot
deck, which is awesome. This photo shows the office as we found it,
still full of books, papers and everything else. We had a lot of
sorting, boxing and cleaning to do.
A curious dragon fly
on a sunny summer day.
Farmin'.
As I said earlier, I
finally bought a 9.9hp outboard motor for my 12' aluminum boat. The
purpose of this is to free myself from the ferry boat schedule when
commuting to and from work on Orcas. Having to catch a 7am boat when
work doesn't start until 8am, and sometimes only having a 3pm or 6pm
ferry option to get home meant a lot of waiting around. Having my
own boat, something I should have done ages ago, finally solved that
issue. The weather was nice, so Marijke and I took it our for a
spin.
A man and his boat.
I've never been a
big water/ocean guy, the mountains have always been more my style
growing up, but living here changes that. Maybe I'll get a bigger
boat some day if the need arises, but I know better than to do too
far down into that money pit! I can detach the motor and carry it
myself, and with help I can even get the boat on the roof rack of my
van. For the foreseeable future, it's perfect.
At work we had a
pretty large job that I'd be doing the climbing on, a big leaf maple
that was 3/4s dead and partly hanging over a house. It was a two day
job and a lot of fun, far more interesting and technical than
climbing a straight up and down doug fir.
Looking down from
the only live stem in the tree.
On the first day we
got most of the brush off the tree and finished it on day two. Then
it was time to take down the trunk wood. Luckily we had space to let
it all drop instead of having to lower it out on ropes, but at times
we used tag lines to help pull pieces down as I cut. This was my
first time in a tree with a 32” saw, so that was pretty cool!
All done.
This whole time we
had been collecting documents and filling out forms for the
immigration process. Now that we were married, Marijke and I were
direct family and I can then sponsor her legal residency in America
(her “green card”). This has involved a great number of things,
such as tax records and pay stubs from work, birth certificates,
school transcripts, letters from friends and family about our
relationship and photos of us together to show it is a 'real'
marriage and not a ploy just for a green card. It has mostly been
straight forward, just collecting the right papers and checking the
right boxes, but I'm glad we decided to have an immigration lawyer
help us through the process. Once we had everything on the list, we
mailed a fat packet of paper to our lawyer and crossed our fingers.
Work cleaning out
the house also continued. We essentially went room by room, emptying
everything out, washing down the walls (which changed color because
they had such a layer of dust built up on them), removing the
furniture we didn't wish to keep and cleaning the furniture we did.
Found this moth
laying eggs on a piece of ocean spray one night.
As part of our floor
to ceiling clean of the house, naturally we washed the carpets as
well, and believe me, they needed it. This photo is in the master
bedroom, which has some pretty nice looking pine T&G paneling.
The house was still
a long ways away from clean (we had a few rooms to go) but we had
done enough by mid August, about a month after the wedding and
Marijke moving into the cabin, for us to move into the house while we
continued our work. We had a celebratory drink of cheap champagne
that was left over from the wedding and while I can't remember this
day exactly, I'm sure we got right back to work scrubbing!
We are only renting,
but to have a house of our own (with an indoor bathroom! Haha) to
live in and a piece of property where we can have our own quiet space
is wonderful.
Funny enough the
property we moved onto neighbors our friends land, we are even on the
same loop road! So when a group of friends from Seattle came up for
the weekend, we didn't have to go far to join the celebrations.
A look at the house
from the outside. It's a pretty dull looking rectangle of a house to
be honest, but the interior is well laid out and it's our own space
which is what really matters. The house is surrounded by beautiful
trees, moss, and sits on the edge of a cliff looking towards the
setting sun, I have no complaints!
The cleaning
continued. The kitchen is dated looking, but is extremely
functional. Every single surface was vacuumed, opened and
disinfected on each surface, front and back, inside and outside. It
took a few days but was worth it.
This is the best
side of the house, the 900 square foot deck. As I said, the house is
literally on the edge of a cliff, beyond the deck to the left in this
photo is about a 30 foot drop off. It is currently overgrown, but
below it is a big meadow, the north end of the secondary airstrip,
and if you look closely there is even a bit of a water view in the
distance, as well as the neighboring island. All of this is visible
through the huge windows in the bedroom looking west and in the
living room that looks south and west. My big project for this
property will be to remove a lot of trees and reclaim the view, which
I'm sure was spectacular 50 years ago when the house was built.
Because the house
was built on a 'mossy bald' (bare rock covered in a thick layer of
moss, almost no soil so to speak), the trees that have managed to
take hold in this environment are very, very slow growing. A small
fir, say 35 feet tall and 10” in diameter can be deceptively old.
I removed this branch off such a tree, about 3” in diameter, and
found the branch alone was around 80 years old!
The living room is
coming together! Ok, so Marijke didn't let me keep the speakers
setup like that, but the rest of the stuff has remained the same. As
I said earlier, all the furniture was still in the house, so while we
removed a lot of things, we kept what we wanted to use and that was a
huge help since all I had was a futon and a folding table. The
matching flower pattern couch and love seat are very 70s, but are
actually quite comfortable.
The other side of
the living room is the 'heart' of the house, the wood stove that
provides us with all of our heat. I know I'm old school in this
regard, and it's probably in large part because I cut trees for a
living, but I'd take wood heat over any other type of heat every
time. Again, it has a very dated look to it, but I love it. This
was originally an open fireplace, but a wood stove insert was added
later and while it isn't nearly as efficient as a freestanding wood
stove (and it's an insert from the 80s), it has been getting the job
done just fine. The large firewood storage space left of the stove
is a great touch, something I hadn't thought about before, but
something I'd like to incorporate into any future house of mine given
the opportunity. And the mantle above the stove is a great place to
display some of my cool nature items.
Looking off a dock,
at the marine life just below the surface. I've done a bit of diving
in warm waters (the Philippines, Thailand, South Africa, Malawi,
Tanzania) but never in the northwest where I live. I'm very curious
what it looks like down there, maybe one of these days I'll get
around to it…
Another day at work
and another tree to climb. Doug firs usually grow straight and tall,
but this one, growing under the shadow of larger and older trees
sought light and took a huge curve, overhanging an important water
system. That made it a high failure risk and it needed to be
removed. Luckily I was able to tie into the taller neighboring tree
for safety, but getting it down safely was a fun challenge.
Back home, living on
80 acres gives you a lot of space to wander around, and when the
previous owner collected cars, trucks and heavy equipment, there is
cool old stuff all over the place. This huge International bulldozer
is just one such piece of equipment parked under the trees.
Continuing the walk
around the property, this is one of the 3 large ponds on the
property, and not even the largest of them. It sits next to the
airfield and attracts a lot of ducks and other wildlife.
Of the many ways we
lucked out with this house, another was that there was already a huge
pile of already bucked firewood rounds right in the center of the
turnaround next to the house. I cleaned out and reinforced an old
carport (it was so shaky you could move the whole structure with a
single finger) to become the woodshed, and set to work splitting
wood.
At this point
Marijke had still not really seen me climb and cut trees in person,
so she accompanied me on a job one day to see what I really do.
Unsurprisingly, she found it a bit scary. But she also wants to
learn how to do some of this kind of stuff, so while she is not ready
to use a chainsaw just yet, I helped teach her how cut down a tiny
little tree with a handsaw, and she got a good laugh out of it.
The view from our
living room and deck. The house faces directly west, providing a
tremendous view of the sunset, but over time the trees have really
taken over. In the next two or three posts, I'll show the process of
reclaiming some of the view.
By this point we
finally had the house pretty much done and invited some guests, the
three interns at the monastery, over for dinner as a little
housewarming party.
A bad ass picture I
got of my boss Austen on a removal job one day.
Because we wanted to
keep our actual wedding ceremony so small, just immediate family and
a few friends for Marijke; my aunts, uncles and grandparents were not
in attendance. That said, we still wanted an event to include
people, so we returned to Seattle for a dinner with the wider family.
It was held at my aunt Katharine and uncle Steve’s house near the
wonderful Volunteer Park, which we took a walk in that afternoon
before the event.
The view towards
downtown from the top of the water tower.
Appetizers.
We had wonderful
dinner that evening with the whole family and then shared photos and
stories with everyone on the big screen TV.
The visit to Seattle
to share wedding photos and celebrate with my family was great, but
then it was time to catch the ferry back to Shaw. We still have a
ways to go before everything in the house is 'finished', but it does
feel like home.
Thanks for reading,
I hope you enjoyed it. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from
recent posts (marriage excites people I guess!) and while I know I'm
way behind, it gives me a bit of extra motivation to put more effort
into the blogs again, both in terms of keeping up and in terms of
writing a bit more story and thought instead of simply photo
captions. Next post will cover a bit more than a month, mostly
projects around the house, work, the transition into the fall season
and a trip to the cabin for a few days of hiking. Bye for now.
