What we did to the house

If you're driving off into the sunset on Highway 6 between Lavington and Vernon and you squint off the road at the right moment you"ll see the last, low light shining right through a barn. The lovely old building has wide gaps between the planks that clad its walls and the baking light widens them and blurs their edges, lighting up the whole structure as if it is about to collapse in a heap of glowing coals.
So when Tammy said she wanted to rip all the drywall and insulation out of two thirds of our old hippy house and let the light stream in I didn't say are you fucking crazy. I said oh y'mean like that barn? And she nodded without hesitation. Yeah. Like that barn.
Our curious castle was built thirty years ago. The vision was my dad's, as was a lot of the labor. The rest of the work, and a lot of expertise, was contributed by whoever happened to be around. Which is quite a list, dominated by visiting remnants of the hippie thing. And we, of course, the kids.
I noted above the approximate time in which our house was built. I should have said almost built because it was never quite finished. My parents finally moved to town once and for all before the place was quite complete.
To their immense credit they've occasionally made serious noises about selling out in town and finishing the story  back out here. It may well have happened but for their differing definitions of a comfortable life in the bush.
My dad, who will be 81 in a few months, would gladly end his days taking his bedtime toke beside a yak dung fire under a tarp before rolling off to sleep in a pile of dry leaves with a dog and a couple cats snoring at his feet. My mom prefers an additional ammenity or two, although she's totally down with the dog and the cats. So they visit. Mom's coming next week.
Comming to see what we did to the house. We've tried to describe it but I don't think it quite took. They've no doubt heard whisperings from baffled grandchildren. I'm pretty sure the kids think we're crazy. Specifically about the house. In more general terms I know they think we're crazy. Except Kelty. Cause he's crazy too.
Anyway, I never batted an eye. Cool, I said.
It was almost as much work as insulating the place and drywalling it in the first place. Rippin' it all back out. Ten years later. Many dump runs. Many snide debates with my favorite enemy the dump lady. Tammy did most of the actual rippin'. I loaded, unloaded and drove. It took about a week, in the final glow at the end of another glorious Indian summer. To tear away the earnest effort and expense invested in a very different time. Till there were a lot of cracks in everything. Till the light came streaming in. In horizontal ribbons that swarmed with settling destruction dust.
Normally I let those song references drop without a sound. It's a bit of a disease. But indulge me while I labor  the Leonard lines for a moment or two. Cause here's what you have to understand about what we've done to the house. It is a repudiation and a belated repair of what we tried to do to it the first time around. Which was to make it, yes, a Perfect Offering.
We've painted house for money for many years and we get the good ones. Million dollar mansions. Monolithic monuments to rampant consumption and waste. Seven thousand square foot abomonations often occupied by two little retired people hogging way too much money, energy and other resources. Two little people who could live comfortably in something half the size of their garage. Say, the half that holds the RV. Something that could be built with what they spent on their countertops. Or, for that matter, they could live comfortably in the RV. We don't work on those new houses anymore. We do little repaints for real people in real homes. Cause it's real.
But  still not our idea of real. Though, we realize, that is what we were trying to in some measure recreate with all our townie finishing. Trying to cover up everything we're here for. Pretending to live this life while busily tacking on a tacky apology.
Now, if it seems like I'm being a little hard on drywall and insulation, it's because that as far as we got. There was to be a lot more tacking on to come.
Let me be clear. If you try to survive a Canadian winter, heating only with wood and without insulation in a 1200 square foot house with 24-ceilings in some places, you'll either die or change your mind. And drywall is a damn efficient way to finish an interior wall. Talking time and money both. And, yes, with all those kids we really did need all that space. The bullshit isn't so much in what we did but in why we did it and where we were headed from there.
But we no longer need the space. And we never needed the bullshit.
So now the winterized portion of the place totals about 350 square feet. Easy to heat. Open-windows-in-a-cold-snap easy. One upstairs bedroom, kept cozy with a large metal vent in the floor and the handy tnedency of heat to rise. The walls are unfinished as yet. When they are, it'll probably include some drywall.
The rest of the place is a big, wooden three-season tent. Eventually we'll pull the rest of the windows out (we've relocated a few) and let the rain fall in if it wants to like at the Honolulu airport.
There's tools out there, a week or so of firewood in a cozy stack, photos stapled all over the walls. The dog and cats sleep out there. In the warm months, so do we. Up in the loft. with a good roof and a good view. And now windows. Just big square holes where they used to be. And cracks. That's where the air gets in.
It's a workshop, a studio, a mighty porch. A place to play music, write, file a chainsaw, hang a deer, can some beets, barbecue or just hang out and be cool. Hell, do whatever you want out there, I don't care. Decorate, maybe. Visitors are encouraged to bring artifacts. Antlers, axe heads, odd-looking bottles. You name it.
If there's one lesson I should have learned from all those hippies I grew up among, it's that if you're going to be a weirdo, you might as well not piss around.
We'll definitely never again piss around trying to turn this place into something it's not. Something so much less than what its roots deserve.
We've seen where that leads. We ran screaming. All the way home.

                                                                                                                                                 -Dennis