Lately my husband and I have been fascinated with tiny houses. I'm not sure who started it, probably Irad. Perhaps it is an outgrowth of our weeks on the Appalachian Trail, discovering how completely we could meet our food and shelter needs from a backpack. Or our happy experiences doing Outward Bound which were equally unencumbered possession-wise. And yes I know this is a very First World Activity, to purposely scale down from the wealth and luxury of possessions around us as an OPTION.
But I can remember as a 10 year old doing a science project on being a naturalist, and imaging living in a tiny cabin in the woods with one little table and one bowl and the sound of the birds as my alarm clock. Of course I was 10 years old. Of course Irad has that fantasy as a 50 year old!
Somewhere I stumbled on a mention or review of The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir
and ordered it.
The Tiny House of the title(picture by Stuart Islett for the NY Times)
The book is a delight. It reminds me of Cheryl Strayed Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Vintage)
.Though they are women at very different stages of life, they are both re-inventing themselves through a very physical quest that involves a lot of DIY learning and creates a lot of blisters and callouses. And they both write very humorously and humbly about their experiences. And both have a very West Coast ethos.
Loft bed looks comfy to me! (picture by Stuart Islett for the NY Times)
For example, Dee Williams reminisces fondly about the shoes she keeps from the days when she and friends would "drive half the night and then sleep for a few hours at the trailhead, like kittens. We'd push ourselves through the day, sweating and grunting, and hanging by our knuckles as we attempted overly ambitious, nasty clims called something inane...I was strong and eager, and willing to drag myself (and my shoes) on any number of epic weekend adventures." Don't we all remember those days. (Not.) There are many references to outdoor get togethers, and gangs of friends cheering each other on, and having the modern day equivalent of a barn raising party at a key Little House building juncture—a kind of perpetual summer camp for the adult refugees of other parts of the country. So there is that.
The author with the friend whose yard she lives in (picture by Stuart Islett for the NY Times)
But what it leads to is this tremendous savoring of the details of the world. A living IN nature. Or as she herself says in an interview in the New York Times, “In
a big house, it’s easier to ignore what’s going on outside,” she said.
“Or you’re constantly trying to compete with nature through your
thermostat. I’m more into collaborating with nature now.” Some of the loveliest writing in the book is when Williams describes experiencing the world around her through the heightened senses occasioned by living in such a modest and scaled down environment. I ordered the book imagining it would be interesting to page through, and to my surprise I read it cover to cover.
More perspective (picture by Stuart Islett for the NY Times)
The New York Times interview is worth reading and so is the book. Williams has a freshness and hopefulness about life, a kindness in her writing, and a deep appreciation of friends that is untarnished by her years as a toxic waste inspector. Nor is her sweetness tainted by her own terminal illness, whose advent lead her to re-evaluate the amount of time and debt home ownership imposed on her and start to explore a tiny house.
As for Irad and me, I don't know why we are both sending each other emails with links about other tiny homes, such as the recent Container Home Facebook Frenzy, since we have three kids and a dog and will not be fitting anywhere tiny anytime soon...but stay tuned. You never know!
Here are some of our recent shared links on the subject.
http://www.fourlightshouses.com/ (the guy who inspired Dee Williams to build her own)
Couldn't resist sending you this one: http://www.gardenista.com/posts/a-shipping-container-transformed-into-the-ultimate-summer-house?utm_source=fast_coexist&utm_medium=pubexchange
ReplyDeleteThanks for the interesting link! There are a lot of these out there!
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