Some thought on living in a small structure

I was reading some articles on tiny houses (since mine is 12' x 16'.) Having last lived in a land of McMansions, I have found it a learning experience to understand what I need / want to have in terms of shelter as I make my way here in the North. The following quote struck a responsive chord:

"In our study of basic housing we have developed the following list of recommended minimum standards necessary for a quality living environment:
- Shelter from the elements.
- Personal security.
- Space for the preparation and consumption of food.
- Provision for personal hygiene.
- Sanitary facilities for relieving one's self.
- Secure storage for one's possessions.

The following items, while not essential, we consider important for quality of life:
- Place for trash receptacles.
- Space for one to relax and socialize.
- An outdoor area for a small yard or garden"

Source: The ProHousing Project, The Issues -- Minimum Standards


I guess everyone wants different things in their living space. I love the snugness of my cabin, the coziness in winter with the stove going, the lake view from my window, having enough space for visitors to eat and sleep overnight, the flow of air from the side window on the lower level up to the gable window in the loft. And the beaded board walls, which seem so warm coloured to me. I'll add some more pictures in the future, so you can see what I mean.

Does a bearded telecom manager sh*t in the woods?

Short answer: YES! (A short break from my chronological approach to telling about life in the north woods.)

Most everyone I speak with in the Yukon talks about living in a cabin with no running water "back in the day." Now I'm doing it.

My toilet is a newly built, enclosed, plywood single-holer about 50' from my cabin. Tin roof, open air where the roof meets the walls (ventilation - good for the nose, bad for letting bugs in.) Beige plastic seat, and a great view (see accompanying picture) if you leave the door open! And I have found that it is in range of my cordless phone, so for the first time of any home I've had, I can call from my bathroom, just like in Ritz Carlton hotels! :-)

It's nowhere near as bad as I had prepared myself for. No smell in winter (everything freezes pretty quickly) and while I wouldn't go read a chapter of a book out there, the plastic seat isn't cold. Many Yukoners have spoken warmly about the virtues of cutting a U-shaped piece of foam insulation to place on top of the seat, but last winter I never felt the need for it. With our long winter nights (3:15pm to 10:15am) I do keep a flashlight hanging by the door for winter runs (so to speak.)

I guess, working for the phone company, I potentially have a virtually unlimited source of the classic outhouse toilet paper: telephone book pages. But I'm living large in the Yukon, and springing for Canadian Superstore jumbo packs of TP! Wahoo! Let the good times roll (no pun intended!)

Over the summer there has been a little more odour, kept in check with an occassional sprinkle of lyme. The big downside is the mosquitos, and some wasps seem to like to hang out there in the summer, waiting for something interesting for dinner (me!)

On the whole, I prefer the winter. No bugs, the quiet of the snow, piney freshness (the surrounding trees and no odour) and not as cold as people of our grandparents era made it out to be, even at -40 degrees, celsius / fahrenheit (the temperature scales cross at that point.) Maybe I'll treat myself to a foam seat cover this winter!

Coming to the North - Part 1

After I finished college (Class of '84, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia,) I moved to New York City, and worked for Macy's for four years there and in New Haven, Connecticut, and married my college sweetheart, Rebecca. Then followed a nine-year stint with pioneer ISP, Prodigy Services, in White Plains, New York, during which Becky and I became the happy parents of daughter MacKenzie ('93) and son Peter III ('95.)

In 1997 we pulled up stakes, left our 18th century New England home by the shores of Long Island Sound, and moved to the suburbs of Kansas City, at the eastern edge of the great plains. After eight years of working at Sprint corporate headquarters in business development and strategic planning, I was let go, and spend the better part of the following year looking for my next job.

I'm not quite new here...

Like many people who live in this part of the world, I am not originally from here. Born in Montreal, raised in Toronto and Michigan, college educated in Virginia, married to an American from Texas, and father to an Connecticut-born and Kansas-raised daughter and son, I never expected to return to this land of endless summer days, and long, dark winter nights.

In my last summer of high school and first three summers of college, I was an apprentice (later gang) lineman up here. We climbed telephone poles, built microwave towers, lived in tents and banked $1000s of dollars over the short, intense summers. Big money for a high school or college kid, and it paid for much of my tuition. And I saw country I never expected to see again... Whitehorse, Yellowknife, The MacKenzie River, Inuvik, Norman Wells, Hay Riiver, Fort Providence, Rae Lakes, Muncho Lake, Fort Nelson and Rae-Edzo...

The names come back to me as memories formed along the dusty, then gravel topped, Alaska Highway, which runs north into the spine of the top of the Rockies, meandering through spruce forests and un-named mountain peaks up to Whitehorse, and beyond. Little aborginal towns of 100 souls, almost lost on the broad expanse of endless lakes and rock the comprise the Canadian Shield. Fast flowing and figid rivers that carry the last of the winter ice, and wash the bugs and the forest fire smoke and rain clouds through the memories, now a quarter century old, of the summers of my youth.

The days were long, the work just what a 17 to 21 year old needed to feel exhausted by day's end. Work days were fueled by huge breakfasts of ham and cheese omelets, toast, pancakes, bacon and milk and coffee, all paid for, along with my room and transportation, by the company that employed me. What an adventure to study English and History all winter in Virginia, and then train and fly 4000 mies to put on a hardhat and gloves, and breath the fresh, cool, spruce-scented air of this open country, and work from 8 am until 11 pm in those endless summer days. To commute to work by hitchhiking, or riding in a Ford F250 pickup, or fly to a jobsite in a bright yellow Ptarmigan Airways Twin Otter floatplane, and old red Aero Arctic Sikorsky helicopter or PWA (Pacific Western Airlines) 737. As I reel off these names, I realize that they are all gone now, swallowed up by corporate consolidation, or closed down by the end of the last century.

Introduction to this northern jewel of a place

Picture the ever-changing sky, the spruce and aspen tree'd mountains, and the icy and gold-washed rivers that are the historic arteries of the Yukon. For 10,000 years and more, these waters have pumped life and peoples from northern British Columbia, through the Yukon, to the Alaska border, and beyond... all the way to the Bering Sea.