New Life in the Woods

As I mentioned in my first post, it was just a few days after I first spoke to Susan, the owner of the cabin in Oregon, that I drove up to take a look at it. I had a little money for gas and food, but not enough to make a dent in November’s bills (not to mention October’s), so it seemed like a good idea to use what I had in order to see what I might be getting into.

Also, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to afford November’s rent in Berkeley unless I gave notice and let the prepaid last month’s rent take care of it. According to my lease agreement I had to give 45 days notice. It was Friday, October 12th, when I drove up and I would be coming back on Monday, the 15th, the day I would have to give notice if I was going to do it. But what choice did I have anyway?

The Drive Up

It is just over 400 miles drive to the cabin from my place in Berkeley, perhaps 405 miles, but both times I went up there I was too excited once I got there to check the odometer and then I forgot about it later. It takes about 6 1/2 hours in my little car, which gets about 40 m.p.h. on the highway, so in theory one tank of gas (10 gallons) would just about get me there. In practice, with driving around some while I was up there, it took 3 partial fill-ups to get me there and back. maybe 23 gallons total. The drive is peaceful, mostly through farmland, semi-wild areas, national forests and/or mountains. It is easy too, taking a short stretch of I-80 to another fairly short stretch on 505 and then to I-5, which takes you all the way up to Grants Pass in Oregon (or all the way up to British Columbia if you keep going).

The first part is through California’s farm and orchard country. Like most of California, it looks pretty brown, with hills off in the distance to the East and West. Redding is at about the half-way mark and once you get past that things get a bit more interesting as you see snow-capped Mount Shasta off in the distance to the North. An hour or so later you are within spitting distance (or so it seems) but in that mountainous area you have to keep your eyes on the road. You cross a couple bridges over extensions of Shasta Lake (or some other lake) and you can see how bad the water situation is at this time of year. These resevoirs seem to be about 80% empty. A couple hours after that and you are past Ashland and Medford and entering Grants Pass. Then everything changes.

Remember I mentioned the dry California terrain? Even in the mountains above Redding that terrain pretty much continues all the way up I-5 and into Oregon, until you get to Grants Pass. Then everything turns green.

On that first trip up there, as I entered that area, I felt a strange sensation in my chest. A tightening feeling, spreading out and rising up my throat. It was such a strong sensation that I couldn’t ignore it but it took me a minute to identify it. Adrenaline – I was excited. Then a big, stupid grin broke out on my face and I think I grinned like a fool the rest of the way.

In Grants Pass you take highway 199 West, past a big ugly shopping area that is kind of a shame with the beautiful mountains surrounding it. You go a little over 7 miles to Riverbanks road which follows the Applegate river (that feeds into the more famous Rogue River, which runs through town). A few miles up this road you come to Marcy Loop and a short way along this brings you to Dutcher Creek Road. By this time you are solidly in the woods, well outside town, and have been since Riverbanks road. These roads climb just a bit into the low mountains around Grants Pass to the West. There are small houses here and there along the road, but the properties are mostly big and they don’t crowd each other. About a mile back on Dutcher Creek, you cross a very small bridge and turn right onto Dutchy Way, a dirt and gravel road. About a half-mile up on the left you take the second driveway and then you see the main house in a small clearing in the woods. Several dirt roads go in different directions from there.

The driveway curves around to the left and right of the house to form a loop behind it, through the woods, and there the cabin sits on the back side of the little ridge, away from town. While the main house looks fairly big, perhaps as big as Mari & Jerry’s house, and is brightly painted, the cabin looks small (on the outside at least), with wood siding, well weathered. It sits on a fairly gentle slope that runs down to a seasonal stream about 100 feet to the South. The back of the cabin, the side with most of the windows, faces South. It is in a small clearing, but surrounded by woods.

Come on Inside!

I got there just as it was getting dark on Friday evening so there wasn’t much time to look around. And it was cold. Time to get my stuff inside and start a fire! Inside the cabin looks bigger. The front door is double-paned glass surrounded by wood. As you enter you face the back side of the stairs that lead up to the second floor, but the lower portion of the stairs is just a waste-high wall, so you can see over it. To the left is a good-sized, very modern bathroom with a big whirlpool bathtub. To the right is the living room with a fold-away couch-bed and two mismatched stuffed reclining chairs. The floors are all oak. The wood stove is in the back-right corner and the stove pipe runs straight up to the sloped ceiling in back. Next to the woodstove there are sliding glass doors on the back wall leading to a small deck. The back-left section of the cabin is the kitchen/dining area, curving around the stairs with another door to the bathroom on that side.

Upstairs there is a small dormer next to the stairs filled with extra matresses and a large closet on the other side of the hallway that stretches back to the bedroom on the West side (same side as the woodstove on the lower floor). There are windows at the East and West ends of the house on the upper floor and a large opening along the hallway through which you can see downstairs to the woodstove area and the edge of the kitchen to the left. This lets the hot air from the woodstove rise and air circulate back down the stairs, so the whole cabin gets heated well when the stove is working properly.

It is only when you enter the bedroom that you start to see some obvious damage from the vandalism. In a couple places there are long gashes in the drywall where the wires have been ripped out. That was the other thing I came to see. The deal was that I could stay there for free if I made repairs. But how extensive was the damage? Was I capable of making fairly major repairs? The most I have ever done with wiring was to move or replace a light switch. I have hardly touched plumbing in my life. But that would have to wait for morning. It was getting dark so I dug out a flashlight and went downstairs to start a fire. Luckily some wood was left by the woodstove and I soon got it going.

The First Night

The pictures I have included so far were all take by Susan some time ago and this one does not show the stove. I will have more pictures once I move up there. The woodstove was in sorry shape. The door was stolen, so it was more of a fireplace than a woodstove. The idea of a woodstove is to regulate how much oxygen the fire gets, so it burns slow and radiates heat from all sides. With the front completely open, it sucked in air to feed the fire and brought in cold air through any crack in the house. Most of the heat went straight up the chimney, so it didn’t do a lot of good, especially at first, but gradually it warmed things up a bit and it was a great comfort. I got out my camping stove, heated water for hot cocoa, lit a few candles, and settled down by the fire. Now what?

I fiddled around with my portable radio and found a country station that mostly seemed to play Bluegrass, although over the course of the evening I heard everything from Bing Crosby to Pete Seeger and James Taylor. Much later there was a call-in talk show where they discussed UFO abductions and conspiracy theories. The music was great, perfect for a cabin in the woods, and the talk made me laugh.

I got out the book on do-it-yourself electrical wiring that I had brought with me and read by a combination of candle and flashlight. I had been so busy leading up to the trip that this was my first chance to read much of it. I needed to find out how tough these repairs would be. But my head was spinning. I kept thinking of all the things I could do up there. And it was a little bit scary too.

It’s cold and quiet up there. I turned off the radio for a bit and went out on the deck in back to look around, although it was entirely dark at that point. I used my flashlight to check out the woods immediately around the cabin and then I sat down (there were a few lawn chairs on the deck) and looked up. It was a clear night and I could see what seemed like thousands of stars through the gap in the trees. I couldn’t stop looking. The city lights from Grants Pass don’t reach that far and there are no other lights in sight. None. At the front of the cabin, you can sometimes see the lights from the main house through the trees, but out back it is completely dark. I haven’t seen stars like that since the last time I went camping (in Eastern Oregon). I hardly slept that night. With the thoughts racing around my head I kept going back out to stare at the stars. There were strange but very interesting animal noises all night long. I think I slept a few hours near dawn.

The First Day

The next morning, after instant oatmeal and instant coffee (only hot water needed), I had a look around. There was surprisingly little damage inside the house. Where wires had been exposed, they were clipped right at the tops of the walls in the kitchen (there was no sheetrock on the kitchen ceiling yet) but the bedroom seemed to be the only place where they were ripped out of the walls. Poking my head under the kitchen and bathroom sinks revealed that the copper pipes had been clipped off at the wall, but were still intact where they ran through the wall or under the floor. I went outside to look under the cabin.

As mentioned, the cabin sits on a slope, so it is on stilts and you can walk underneath it at the bottom end standing upright. The entire first floor was covered in plywood underneath and I could see no one had torn any of it down, so the pipes would still be intact. At the back (SE corner) there was a utility closet about 10 feet long and 4 feet deep, built between two stilts. That’s where the fuse box and water heater were. It was not locked, having simply a latch at the top and bottom of the plywood doors. Almost all the wiring was gone from this room and all the plumbing. But the main wiring leading from the meter at the front of the cabin back to the fuse box was still there and connected. The vandals had simply disconnected the house wiring and snipped them at the ceiling of the closet where they entered the cabin (at the back corner of the kitchen. That wasn’t so bad. All I had to do was run new wires and connect them to the old wires in the kitchen and I’d have power.

It took me a bit longer to figure out that the big thick white PVC valve at the floor in back was the incoming water supply. When I turned the valve on cold water under high pressure shot out and partially drenched me. It smelled bad and I shut it off right away. Concerned that I might have opened the sewer line I went upstairs and cleaned up right away. But that didn’t make sense. You don’t put a valve on the sewer line, although you do put a removable cap on it so you can run a snake through if it gets clogged. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that it had to be the incoming water supply and it was just stagnant from sitting in the pipes unused for so long. Ok, so now I needed to learn how to work with PVC. At the back-left side of the utility closet the copper pipes had been snipped off near the ceiling, but a good 6 or so inches remained, enough for me to reconnect new pipes easily, once I cut off the damaged ends.

I Can Do This!

The whole idea of moving up to an isolated cabin in the woods in Winter with no money and lots of repairs needed before I would have electricity or water was still scary, but it was starting to seem a bit more manageable. I could do this! After all, I’d be getting some or all of my deposit back from my old apartment. I wouldn’t need much for food or to pay utilities. I’ve been living on a very small food budget off and on for years now. Water is trucked in and stored in holding tanks up the hill. It costs about $65 bucks per load and I later learned that Mark, the tenant in the main house, had only had it refilled once so far and he’s been there since August. With two of us, that would increase, but maybe not by much at first. Mark also told me that he has just gotten his first electricity bill recently and it was only about $30 some dollars. He also has a dishwasher, which uses both water and electricity, although I think his water heater and stove are propane. Heating was no problem (or not much): I could cut and split my own wood for heat….

Well, anyway, things were looking better in the daylight. It was warming up a bit so I decided to take a walk and look around. Up the driveway to the West about 100 yards there is an old construction trailer, left from when the house and cabin were being built. It is run down and ugly, but inside I found a bunch of old construction materials (mostly junk, but some good stuff) were still there along with some old furniture and the big prize – a table saw! Ok, maybe only I would be so excited about that, but I had been thinking that I could get back to woodworking up there, maybe even make furniture for some extra money, advertise on Craig’s List, etc., and here was just what I needed to start outfitting a woodworking shop! More ideas started buzzing around my head — I could put down a floor under the cabin in that big space where it is relatively easy to walk around, move the table saw there, gradually get a few more tools, and have a real shop! Now I was getting excited again.

Secrets… Shhhhh!

Outside the trailer to the left there is a short stretch of road that leads up to a small rock quarry where shale was dug out to pave part of the driveway. Along that short stretch the road cuts into the hillside a bit and there lies a strange thing. There are several cylinders made of wire fence filled with rocks along the hill at the side of the road, presumably to hold the hillside and keep it from eroding.

Later Mark showed me that two center sections of these cylinders swing inward exposing a passageway into the hill. It seems some prior tenants used to grow, um, “medicinal herbs” in a big chamber back there that was big enough to walk around in, standing upright! A lot of work went into that! I didn’t go in, but I still have my caving gear and I’ll explore it another time. On the other side of the trailer there is a concrete cubbyhole in the hillside that he told me was the generator room. Above ground there is a lot of junk lying around, like huge PVC pipes (used as planters) and old 55 gallon drums that held fuel for the generator, etc., all of which is pretty ugly but it is not in sight from the cabin or the house.

What Next?

On Sunday, I went into town and drove around a bit. I got several newspapers to see the local news and check out the “Help Wanted” sections. Back at the cabin I walked around the woods in back a bit. The trees are a mix of hard and soft wood: Fir, Oak, Madrone, Maple and others I can’t identify yet. There are ferns everywhere. Mornings are misty and drizzly. There are blackberry or raspberry vines by the roads (I’ll figure out which later). Back up by the main house there are a couple clearings, one of which was used as a garden before. Susan said she has no problem with me gardening there again, although half of that space is covered by more of the blackberry vines now. Looks like I’ll be making jam and jelly next year!

Back at the cabin I walked all through and around the house, taking notes on everything that needed to be fixed or finished (many details like trim, both inside and outside, had simply never been finished). That evening, I listened to the radio, watched the fire, and tried to make myself read the wiring book or the newspapers, but my mind kept getting distracted by other ideas for all the things I could do here: woodworking, wood carving, stone carving, pottery (I could build my own kiln from that shale up the road), organic gardening, chickens! I could grow much of my own food and make a root cellar to store some of it, can fruit or make jam and jelly, have chickens/eggs for protein. If I grew enough, or had enough eggs, I could sell veggies and eggs for extra money. Fishing! I haven’t fished since I was a boy, but I always loved it. I might have to learn fly fishing, but I have wanted to do that ever since I saw the movie: “A river runs through it” and it wouldn’t cost much to get started. Beekeeping for wax (to make/sell candles) and honey… the list goes on and on.

Around this time I went back out on the deck and noticed that a small flock of 4 or 5 wild turkeys had come to roost in the trees right around the cabin. Hard to miss since they blunder through the trees like tanks and they were making “gobble-gobble” sounds. Hunting! I have never hunted for food, and I wouldn’t want to own a gun, but archery is another matter. I always loved archery and I have been wanting to make my own bow for a long time. All the things I have wanted to do for years, that I have dreamed of doing, or somehow getting back to… I could do them all in this place. And about 10 minutes away, right on 199 at the edge of town, lies the Rogue Community College. Once I found some sort of job I could take classes and eventually change careers. How could I not move up here?!?

Still, at night, it got cold and quiet again. I could tell that this could be a very lonely place too. And I would need money to make some of these dreams happen. I would have to get out and find a job, if only so I could meet people. Plus, you can’t grow things like toothpaste and toilet paper… well, you can make them from natural items that are grown or gathered, but trying to flush leaves might clog the drain.

Decision Time

I drove back on Monday the 15th and called my landlord from Redding on my cell phone to give notice. As scary as parts of this whole thing might be, I knew I could do it, that I had to do it in many senses, not just because I was about to become homeless anyway, but for the sake of my mind, body, and soul. I would be gardening up there, eating better food that I grew or gathered myself, getting lots of exercise (hiking, hauling and splitting wood, riding my bike to the mailbox that’s about a mile away), and I would be getting back to realizing many of my dreams, finally! I would figure out how to make the repairs, I would find some sort of work, and I would meet people. I would buy another guitar and start singing again! (or maybe even build one myself… eventually).

A few days later I sent around the email that most of you got, announcing my plans. Many of you have helped out with money, advice, or offers to help me move. I really appreciate it. That has taken a lot of the fear out of making this huge leap. I already bought a bunch of canned and dry goods (veggies, fruit, rice, flour, etc.) and they are up at the cabin now. Look for gifts from the woods to start arriving in your mailboxes sometime next year as I begin canning fruit or crafting interesting stuff!