Mini house tour!

It's a mini house, but it feels just the right size to me. I wanted to take some pictures when things were at the very peak of tidiness, because it's all downhill from here, baby. The last big thing there is to do is make a concrete countertop and install the kitchen sink, and oh, what a luxury that will be!

After a year of living on Hungry Raven Hill, much has come together - we have a new pine floor, refrigeration, an oven and a shower. We have screens on the windows, and on the other side of those, is the bugs. It all feels rather civilized. The downside is, our thick walls muffle the nightsongs we slept under the spell of last summer, in the tent. I rarely hear an owl hoot, and haven't been lullabyed to sleep by the coyotes in months.

Matt and I both have been fighting burnout. Now that the house is comfortable, we've been dedicating more time to our day jobs (for Matt, that is a temporary gig making pizzas with a mobile wood oven/caterer; for me, selling art at farmers markets and craft fairs). And we are both ready for a break. We miss camping. We miss spending time together not working. We are trying to get back to that. I will keep you posted, and in the meantime, I hope you are very well.

On the cusp

Winter is melting, and this makes me feel panicky. Because where did winter go? I was going to have all my shit together by the end of it. But here we are, and I've haven't. Any of it. At all.

But... I love this cusp - the one where there is all the exquisite expectation of spring, none of it spent yet, only anticipated - and it is stretching long this year. A morning of strong sun rays warming our forest, drawing sap up from under the frost, and then all of it crystallizing and dissolving into dense snow flurries that block out the mountains across the swamp. When this happens, I say thank you kind merciful earth, for I am not yet ready.

Our little sleeping loft is a quiet cocoon. My aunt sent us a quilt made of old sweaters for our bed. It is teal and purple and weighty with sleep and warmth and darkness. I am not prepared to crawl out from up there.

In the past year, we built a house. We sold a house (just two weeks ago, and with much relief). I have never stopped thinking about my illustration career, business, marketing. I have been solely focused on accomplishments of the roof-over-our-heads-and-food-on-our-table variety. Matt has shouldered more than his fair share of those burdensome thoughts as well. I am sick of them. Recently I have felt a shell of a person, and the only time I've been really me was the day I followed a filthy trail in the snow, littered with bits of lichen and studded with perfect little ochre-colored turds, to the den of a porcupine, tucked under a tumble of mossy boulders, deep inside an enchanted bower of red elder canes. I saw the porkie's muddy paw prints and I inquired at the mouth of his cave. I saw where he went up a sugar maple and stripped the fine branches and, presumably, swayed and pooped in the breeze. I tracked his route to a hemlock, neatly crowned, the ground beneath strewn with deep green trimmings. The snow slowly melting and revealing layers of porcupine travel patterns, established over a season.

With taps and buckets borrowed from friends, we've collected sap from seven of our sugar maples, and boiled it down into the first batch of Hungry Raven Hill syrup. The days are longer now, and it is nice to be drawn outside. Yesterday we watched a barred owl and a sharp-shinned hawk fighting over territory. They were like two fragments of the forest - big flakes of gray bark - broken free and bashing each other in the branches. This morning there were little duck-footed waddling paw prints in the fresh snow. Raccoon? He went hither and thither and not much of anywhere at all, then up over the bank and away.

That is the small news. The big news is that Matt, my very own Matt(!), performed a miracle on Easter Sunday, and brought forth clear clean water from deep under the ground. We have running water! You can turn a handle and water comes out of a pipe, into your drinking glass! It doesn't have algae in it, and you don't have to twist your ankle and slide down an icy precipice to get to it. Halle-fucking-lujah! And thank you, Matt. I am eternally grateful.

The settling in

I've found it difficult to write here lately, and I think it's because this house is a big hungry gobble-monster, and what it likes to eat best is creative energy. So I just don't have much left over to write with. But I'm going to try.

We finished the drywall, and vacuumed up all the dust. The gobble monster doesn't eat dust, but it does make dust. You see.

That was a happy day, the vacuuming one. An even happier day was when we finished painting, just this past week. I belabored the point of choosing a color, as I am wont to do, but I can make fun of myself now because I picked the perfect one! It is a warm, smoky gray with a little lavender and orchid. Pictures are going to look really good on the walls. Cacti in bloom are going to look really good in the deep window wells. My cat, when I get one, is going to like this color. It's going to run right in the door and curl up in a sun spot because it feels so at home.

We have a loft for sleeping. I am pretty sure it is a bad idea to move into a sleeping loft just when you are becoming an arthritic old person, but oh well. There is also the problem of having to pee, because the ladder in the middle of the night is kind of extra discouraging. But oh well again. I have discovered in recent months that there is a lot a person can get used to, and besides, the loft is very cozy and fort-like.

Our insulation and passive solar are working! We have not yet burned a cord of wood, and if the sun is beaming in the windows, the temperature rises fast and there is no need for a fire. Sometimes there is a need to run outside and stick your head in the snow, but that is an okay problem to have, as problems go.

The tent collapsed under the heavy, wet snow that also knocked out our power for a week in December. We were not in the tent (we'd moved into the house), so it seemed quite funny. Important belongings were salvaged, and the rest will wait til spring.

Matt is spending a lot of time in the utility closet, where he has two tanks, an electric panel and a whole bunch of pipes and wires and conundrums. Sometimes he comes out for snacks.

That's just about everything! We have rounded the corner from feral beasts living in the midst of an itchy debris heap to domesticated children sleeping in a pile of sticks with a clean warm blanket. That feels like a milestone.

Mount Moosilauke

There was one day when I said to Matt, The End Is Nigh, and I can not toil another hour without losing my faith in this godforsaken fools' dream and plummeting deep, deep into the bourbon bottle, not to reemerge til the new moon.

And Matt said to me, well why don't we go for a hike instead? And so we climbed Mount Moosilauke, and it was beautiful, and might I say: if you choose only to bag your peaks on clear days with long views, you will miss out on the sad dark heartbreak of the high, cold fog, where the boreal chickadees are.

The frosty damp damp

We had our first hard frost in the middle of September, and I was like, what the hell!? no one said this was going to happen. That's a joke, because everyone said that was going to happen. Vermonters have a tradition of welcoming newcomers by asking how many cords of firewood you have put up, and then after some quick addition, they say you need two more than that to survive.

So that's how I knew it was going to get cold, and boy howdy, has it. But tonight I am warm, enjoying the second fire in our newly-chimneyed wood stove, in the house. I will soon retreat to the icy black depths of the wall tent, which still shelters our bed and kitchen, but for now my toes are toasty.

In the weeks since I last wrote, here is what has happened: We tar papered the roof and walls, and a roofing company installed standing seam. It was the only house-construction project we've had the pleasure of hiring out, and it was fun to watch a small crew of professionals bang out our roof in two hours. Nothing, oh nothing, has taken us two hours. Everything has taken so many more. But for the most part, we are having fun and satisfaction.

We installed eight windows. With much help from family, we stained the shiplap siding, and installed half of it. With the roof on, the rafter tails and eaves stained, and some of the siding up, we can see what this place is going to look like, and I am pleased.

Also, the Season Spectacular has been and gone. The maples put on such a fiery riot that it was like being inside the pumpkin. The ash trees are not as notorious, but they are my favorite - each one a smoky, smudgy bruised-bronze lantern on the mountainside.

What it's like

Let me tell you what it's like, living out here. I've wanted to tell you that for awhile. People ask, is it like camping? The answer is, it is and it isn't.

I love camping. When I'm camping, I'm my happiest. I'm silly and relaxed and in touch with the place I'm in and the person I am. I like myself when I'm camping.

This is like that, because we are in the outdoors, all the time. Even when we're sleeping, it's just the tent canvas between us and the stars. Throughout June, there were so many fireflies in our clearing, and so many stars in the sky, that they met where the treetops ended, and it was just one sparkling veil from the ground up into the Milky Way. The black was so black, it was bottomless and ever expanding.

The owls talk across the hills to one another, and I hear them when I'm swimming up from dreams at night. They are in the trees when I stumble out the tent flaps in the wee hours to pee in the grass. There is one called the Little Monkey Owl, whose hoots are very silly. There is Cockamamie Raven, who fledged from the nest this year, and never quite seemed to grow up all the way.

There is Mouse, who enters the camp kitchen late at night and finds a good chip bag or brown paper sack to crumple loudly. He jumps from mason jar to mason jar with just enough oomph to make a satisfying sound when the lid depresses and then pops back. When I rise from bed to confront him about his Unacceptably Loud Midnight Trespass, he perches on the edge of the peanut butter jar and questions me with his enormous satellite-dish ears: you wouldn't pick me up and throw me, would you? little old me?

There is a hummingbird that visits each morning while we're having coffee. We have a small garden of potted plants on the tent deck. There are zinnias, nicotiana, nasturtiums and verbena, and hummingbird enjoys them all, then perches on the little cage of branches I made for our tomato plant. One of these days she'll be off to sunnier shores, and we'll miss her as we're warming our fingers on our mugs.

It smells good here, like different kinds of honey (the locust, the milkweed, the goldenrod), or like hot balsam. It never smelled so sweet in Scranton. Today when I called and left a message for a friend, I had one small pang of missing our back porch in Scranton... I thought how nice it would be to sit there with her and share a bottle of wine, like we used to do. I can honestly say that was the only such pang I've had. This is home now, and I am attached.

The part of this that is not like camping is the pressure. We now have a house shaped box, but it isn't the kind of cozy box a person could spend the winter in. There's a long way to go. Will we have time to do it all? Will we have enough money? These are the constant questions, besides all the technical ones like, how the hell are you supposed to fucking do this? I ask myself that many times a day. Then I ask Matt, then I ask my dad, then sometimes he asks our friend Carl, and when all else fails I ask the internet. In the end I either get the right answer or cobble together whatever-it-is in the best fashion I can.

So, that is what it's like. I am sitting here in the house, listening for the first time to the rain on the roof. We got the felt on just before the weather turned. Or rather, I watched Matt swing and scamper back and forth across the roof and roll out reams of felt and tack them down while I clung white-knuckled and for-dear-life to the totally bombproof rope and harness he'd rigged up for me. I am grateful that he is not a'feared of heights, or we'd have a very short house indeed.

Water and some walls!

We've been so busy framing, I've had no time to write! Today we are Both Very Tired. Here's what's been happening.

First, we had a well drilled. 240 feet down, 35 gallons a minute! Now there is a big black pipe sticking out of the ground, and you can hit the lid with a stick and make wonderful echoing noises that go deep into the heart of the earth. We don't have a well pump or a water line to the house site yet, so we continue to haul pails up the hill from the spring for washing, and carboys from the neighbor's tap for drinking.

Second, we have been hammering nails. Big ones, 20d. My arm is tired. My mom and dad have been visiting frequently - they bring tools, manpower, guidance (they've built lots of stuff, including a house of their own almost 40 years ago), and FOOD. While Dad is helping us build, Mom paints the landscape and then cooks a wonderful meal over the campfire which fortifies and revives us.

We've also had a lot of help from friends. Francis spent a day with us sheathing the house, and Pete was here for two days raising rafters and roof boards. Because of this, we now have a house-shaped thing. It feels monumental. Momentous. Amazing. Thank you, our friends - you're the best.

There are so very many things I think of to tell you throughout the day, and I look forward to remembering those things sometime. When I do, maybe it will be snowing, and I'll be sitting by the wood stove. That's a nice idea. If this happens, I will write. Til then, hammer on.

P.S. Today we just simply couldn't hammer one more nail, so we went for ice cream. It's a half hour drive for ice cream, and that feels kind of extravagant, but a person has to live a little, don't they? The best part of ice cream was, we passed so many sheep on the way! They were all belly deep in fresh green forage, and there were all these new little fluffy brown ones, so I nearly deafened myself with squealing.

And... We have a foundation!

We spent much of last winter planning the house we would build this summer, and then trashed those plans entirely. The new plans evolved as we've been living on the land, and they are more humble: we are building a 16 x 22 house on concrete piers, with an open floor plan and a loft for sleeping. We settled on this because it is inexpensive and we can build it ourselves (with plenty of hands-on help from family and friends), and it will hopefully go up quick enough that we'll be cozy when the snow flies.

And so, it's been a busy couple of weeks around here. With the tractor and his very strong back, Matt dug us some footings. Eleven holes, each 3 feet wide and 4 feet deep. I was beginning to fear I would lose him to the earth forever, but he did eventually emerge from the last hole, a few pounds lighter and a few shades darker.

I scooped a few shovelfuls of dirt myself, but mostly, while Matt was digging, I was scratching out some house plans. I am trying to stay one step ahead of construction with these plans and cutlists and orders. It's just the way we do things, all last minute, when we can see the project laid out in front of us. It comes of not having any idea what the hell we're doing, but really wanting to do it anyway. It might be foolish, or it might just be the way we work best together. It is definitely one of the things that makes us kindred spirits.

Our first load of rough-cut hemlock and spruce was delivered the day after the concrete truck came. A few days later, with the help of Matt's dad and step-mom (who are here from Minnesota) and the direction of my dad (who has plenty of past construction experience), we got the girders on the piers and the joists on the girders. This is the fun part, I think (though I've never done it before): the framing. I like to cut wood and nail it and watch it become something.

There have been many compromises made in these house plans. I never thought of this place as our dream house - that sounds so big and extravagant - but I did have ideas about the way I wanted things, so they would be nice. Matt did too. But ultimately, we only have so much money, and so many months, and when both of those are all run out, we damn well better have a house to live in. So this house won't allow us to try out some of the more interesting and innovative building techniques we were excited about, but I think it will still be pretty sweet. We are using a lot of local framing lumber - stuff that was grown and milled here in Vermont - and we feel good about that. We will be warm and comfortable and have a nice (tiny) kitchen, and we will be here, in this amazing place, where the outside is so much bigger than the inside, and there is land to explore. And that's what we were really going for all along.

The toilet!

I promised I'd show you the composting toilet I built, and I never did! That's it up there. I wanted you to see it in a nice setting, and now that it lives in the tool shed, all cozied up amongst the splittin' irons, well... The bucket there on the side is full of wood shavings, and there is another bucket inside the box. This toilet is based on the Loveable Loo plans as described in the Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins. I recommend this book if you're interested in a simple DIY composting toilet system, but you know what? I didn't read it! Because when it comes to Important Stuff You Should Read before you go ahead and do something, I leave that to Matt. He reads the whole whatever-it-is cover to cover, and then if I want to know something, I just ask him! Anyway, two pages in the book are the toilet plan, and it's very easy to build, and so far the toilet is working out quite well.

I have so much to tell you, and so little time. So I won't say much right now. I am squeezing in a half day here and there to work on my art, and the rest of the days are dedicated to house construction preparation and the daily workings of life here on the land: hauling buckets of water up from the spring, cooking, scything paths through the wildflowers (my scythe! remind me to tell you about my scythe!), driving into town for supplies. We have phone, internet and power now! And we're getting a driveway as I speak. This involves mayhem and destruction with bulldozers and backhoes, and I haven't even burst into tears yet! I sure have toughened up.