For the summer of 2016, I am blessed with (as of late) a very rare luxury. This luxury can only occur when my merchant sailor husband's time off ship corresponds perfectly with my slow time for design projects. Needless to say, that is the rare luxury; this extended time off together. These are the moments when we can retreat from urbanity and attend our personal little work camp in the woods. My husband chose this home of outhouses and solar panels, simplicity and restraint, but I married into it. For the first decade, I used this place as an artist retreat. I created the work for several art shows in the second floor of an unfinished plywood house which came with the property. We lovingly refer to it as "the bunker". But for now, I have lost interest in producing art. I have thrown all my creative juice into my architecture. Which is why over that last two years we have been tethered to the city and why island time has been slim. But not this year. This year we have time for this place. And as I am more interested in making places than things, I find myself engaging in the physical labor which country property requires. I have done several rounds of design drawings for "the bunker", but that was not a physical act. I want to physically make it better; scything paths through rambunctious grasses and weeds, mowing our huge lumpy, thistle/ fire-weed/ blackberry vine-covered field of a yard with a solar-powered electric lawn mower. Knowing I would not have art projects to accomplish, I brought up a teetering stack of books on simplicity, minimalism, buddhism, compassion, but find myself practicing my soul-craft far more successfully mowing a lawn, pruning a tree, or clearing a path.
