Remembering Coyote. Peter Roulston got out of town.

An old friend just died unexpectedly at the Silverton Lookout, where this picture was taken. A local poet wrote a poem in his memory comparing him to Coyote, most apt.

Peter Roulston was known to many in the region for his knowledge of the great outdoors. Through his column "Get outta town", maps of trails, and personal advice and assistance he encouraged one and all to get off the couch and explore the splendour that surrounds us.

What follows is my memories of the man.

Before he moved to New Denver Peter Roulston was part of our rural neighbourhood above Nakusp for many years. We met in the seventies when we were first getting settled on our respective acreages.  
Peter lived in a camper and was cutting down the trees that he would later turn into a sturdy house. I have fond memories of tea and cookies at the tiny table in the camper, that was dry and solid compared to our drippy camp.
From the very beginning there was order in the clearing. The logs were stacked neatly on one side, brush piled properly somewhere else. Peter liked "A place for everything, and everything in its place." Those were his own words, spoken when I admired the orderly bicycle workshop in his basement, years later. He was an amazingly competent person, good at everything he put his hand to.

Peter was a self made man. Like Mark Twain he did not let school interfere with his education. School had been ditched at the earliest opportunity and Peter took a job. He found his niche when a relative suggested a forestry technician course. 

Peter's ideal was to live a simple life in the country with as much self determination as possible. B.C. still had homesteading options back then. That may have been how a man in  his early twenties got hold of 5 acres, dry and rocky as they were. It is also possible he had purchased his land outright with savings from hard work. Back then wages in the bush were good, land was cheap and Peter knew how to save.
"A penny saved is a penny earned." was one of his quoted mottos. Yes, he actually said that. He always looked natty and groomed, but his clothes came from the thrift store. He once told me shampoo was a waste of money. Good old Ivory soap could wash hair as well as skin.

His freedom loving nature craved the wide outdoors rather than putzing around in a garden. At some point he had the peasant stuff down to 3 components: chickens for eggs, potatoes and kale. A man could live on that if he had to, and the set up was such that the chickens did most of the work. The Crescent Bay ridge is notorious for water problems. Peter solved his by building an ingenious system for catching rain water to supplement the shallow well. A hand pump on the counter delivered water for washing up and such. Nature's calls were mainly answered in an outhouse, and when indoor comfort finally arrived it was a composting system. The man was a practical genius.

Although he was one of the greenest people around qua life style, Peter refused to be put in any ideological or political box. As far as I know he got involved in politics only once: in 198(4, 5, 6)?, he and I paired up to canvas for the NDP in provincial elections. We actually did the door to door thing together a few times. It was an interesting experience. Some people were relieved we were not Jehovah's Witnesses.

The famous Bicycle Hospital was born when Peter got tired of jumping out of helicopters to fight forest fires and other strenuous work. He built his business with his usual competence. The hospital/doctor theme was maintained throughout the site. The ads he made up for the Arrow Lakes News, milking the theme for all it was worth, were hilarious.

Peter was smart and witty. He loved irony and had no patience for political correctness. He enjoyed playing devil's advocate and going against the grain, whatever the grain might be. His letters to the Valley Voice were rather refreshing. Like many people gifted with energy, practical aptitude and organisational talent he did not suffer fools gladly. When it came to sharing his passions for cycling, skiing and the great outdoors Peter was generous with time and advice. When it came to money, not so much. "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" was his answer when I asked him to be part of a small loan for a mutual friend in an emergency. The man liked his quotes. He had made it all by himself, thank you very much, and refused to get entangled in other people's problems.

And speaking of entanglements......No account of Peter's life would be complete without mentioning the many women he loved and left. As far as I know he was a serial monogamist rather than a player, with emphasis on serial. He once admitted over a neighbourly cuppa that no matter how perfectly compatible and nice his partner was, after about two years he would get restless. He recognised it was not the fault of the woman in question, that's just how it was. Peter was handsome, charming, fun to be with and he genuinely enjoyed the company of women. My impression, which may be mistaken, was that most women were no worse off for having spent time with him, as long as they did not build up expectations of permanence.

Peter, wherever you are, I suspect you would have enjoyed the acerbic wit of the Tom Lehrer song. 
"When you are old and grey". Click on link for the Youtube.
The final words are:
"So please do remember,
If I leave in December
I told you so in May".

Goodbye old neighbour. You may not have left a family, but you will be remembered fondly by many.

PS. I just got home from the memorial gathering in New Denver. My friend Karen Moody Ballard took the picture of the stage. The hall was packed.  Speaker after speaker remembered Peter Roulston as someone who was always first to help in any community effort. He was part of many organisations but also took personal initiatives, for instance ferrying vulnerable people to a warm place during power outages. In Nakusp Peter lived on a rural acreage, but in New Denver his home was right in town. The town became his family. He was deeply loved.

PPS. My daughter wrote some blog posts about her semi hippie childhood. One is about outhouses. This one was Peter's.

The Swinging Bachelor- I used to visit this neighbor just so I could use his outhouse. This thing was built on a cement foundation, with a staircase leading up to the throne. It had a a door with a big wooden latch (outhouse doors are not ubiquitous), a heater, a Persian style carpet, a window for natural light and a real toilet seat that somehow didn't get cold. There were usually witty and urbane publications of a liberal political bent carefully placed in a special magazine holder. This man had no children. He had time to make his outhouse nice.
http://www.brokenmice.blogspot.ca/2014/01/outhouse-hierarchy.html

July, where did you go? Emerging from life in the construction zone.

I have not blogged lately, or visited friends' blogs. life has been too chaotic. Things are settling down now, and I even found the camera. 
Apart from it being garden and visitor season, we are just emerging from life in a construction zone. 

Home on our ten acres of paradise is a mobile home AKA trailer, built AD 1976, bought by us in excellent shape in 1987. It is 14 foot wide and has an equally wide addition consisting of a  third bedroom and a covered deck. I like the lay-out, with a bright living room at one end and bedrooms and bathroom to the other side of the kitchen.  Some trailers have the living room in the middle, where it becomes more like a corridor than a room. I hate those. 

The dwelling is entirely sufficient for our needs and I quite like it. There are reasons we ended up in it instead of in the owner-built log home, but never mind those now. I have to guard against what we might call Leda's Egg Syndrome*, wanting to fill in too much back story.

Any building needs maintenance, including old trailers. The key to make trailers last in snow country is a sound free-standing roof over the whole thing. We finally got one of those in 2008. Much trouble and expense could have been saved by doing it twenty years sooner.

We had a few half-baked repairs to shore up the place in the past, but we knew there were serious problems. We crossed our fingers hoping for the best. Trailers are not built to last centuries, but neither are we.

To make a long story short, thanks to the legacy of my dear frugal sister we finally had a thorough job done by professionals who specialize in restoring old trailers. It took a large chunk of the windfall, but we now have a structurally sound dwelling, supposedly good  for another twenty years. Which is most likely longer than we are good for. This new ceiling will not come crashing down around our ears.

The whole process, including inevitable delays and complications, took a full month. During that time the deck was full of tools and supplies. Even when the crew was away it did not feel inviting. So much for my summer living room.

The yard was littered with piles of refuse and building materials, and our stuff was piled in the reflexology room while the bedrooms got done. The crew was a great combination of youth and experience, and respectful of working around our living space.

The pile above was on the side. The stuff on the lawn prevented a badly needed mow to add to the general sense of grubbiness.

Most of that time our cat went in hiding during the day. During a rare visit she fell in love with a micro fiber dish cloth. She treated it like catnip. Go figure.

For good measure the grandson is here half the week for the summer, and would you believe this was the time my dear friend Linda could finally visit for a week? She has had a standing invitation since February. 

Linda is the only person I could imagine hosting in those conditions. "I'll just fold myself into a corner" said she, as she came bearing gifts of cake and a giant lasagna.

Linda's daughter Chandra took this picture of us on the way back from an impromptu visit to the old house that Linda and her first partner John built back in the seventies.  This is the house featured in this memory  of the old off-grid times.

The present inhabitant was kind enough to let us in and show us around. The place has been lovingly restored and even improved upon. The old core is rock solid and still there. As Linda remarked: "I carried every one of those logs!" It was a bittersweet moment. Sad that she lost it, but pleased to know that the house she built is still there and is loved. To us, it will always be John and Linda's house, haunted by good memories of neighbourhood parties lit by oil lamps, with our slumbering toddlers tucked away in corners while the adults hung out.

Neighbour/Friend Beverley, who was our rock last summer, gave a party at her house on July 21, the day I turned 70. It was wonderful, and what a contrast with last year! In 2012 this was the first day post-colon surgery. 

The next evening a new friend organized a full moon paddle on the lake in a borrowed canoe that was pure magic.

The summer is flying by too fast. The weather was glorious all month, with 2 good rains in between endless sunshine. I got all dressed in red and white for Canada Day. Somehow I felt slimmer and prettier than this picture shows.

In a way I feel as if that wonderful sunny July was wasted. There were no days when we had neither builders nor grandson. In the past the kid and I would go to the beach, but a self-conscious teen has other desires. While I can relate, I missed my beach time and my pleasant yard. Not complaining, just stating. The construction work benefited from the good weather, and I certainly got more summer joy than the average cubicle dweller or than my house-bound friend Rosie. The overall feeling has been gratitude, but still.

The builders left for the last time Friday August 2, just in time for the planned visit from our nephew and family from Alberta the next day. I love those people. We so enjoy having family in the country apart from the ones I gave birth to! Linda's lasagna in the freezer came in handy to feed the crowd. The girls are now 9 and 10 and had a great time torturing their 15-year old second cousin. Tim took this picture of our Catan game on the last morning. Keevan even got up for it, at the for him ungodly hour of 9 AM.

 Things quieted down after that. The weather has changed from clear dry heat to muggy, with a constant threat/promise of thunder showers. We had one much-needed rain but need more. I am still reorganizing all the displaced stuff. The kids are coming over for a few days at the end of this week. I am looking forward to the visit, and to devoting undivided energy to the gardens afterwards. We have garlic. Life is good.

*Homer was praised for not starting the Iliad with the egg from which Helen of Troy had emerged. In case you're wondering, the egg resulted from the rape of Leda by Zeus in the guise of a swan. See what I mean?

The Edgar Principle, and some garden doings

Originally posted to Multiply May 7 2011

The good news is: we have a new washing machine. The old one died. In spite of all the warnings from sources both esoteric and mundane about imminent Collapse we're betting on civilization continuing. I have done laundromats and hand washing for years in the past, and sure appreciate at-home mod-cons while they last.


This is what we call the Alan Edgar Principle. Alan was a fellow counter-culture member who lived here in the seventies, during our tipi time. We worked together for a while in the same restaurant. Nice Californian guy with a great sense of humour and a beautiful Latina wife who had a hard time in the long grey Kootenay winters.
Once on the way to work we had a conversation about the impending doom mentality that was quite common in those days, and he said something that stuck with me: "If these are the last of the good old days, shouldn't we be....ENJOYING them more?" What a concept! Brilliant! I have dubbed it the Edgar Principle and invoke it frequently, especially in these days when we have a fresh wave of folks moving to the land to get ready for Collapse. 


Shortly afterwards  Alan and family went back to CA, where they built a successful business in solar energy and had a great life. Some common friends are still in touch. That is the trouble with geological and psychic time: In those terms California may well be swallowed up by the Pacific any day now, but a human life can fit entirely in the space between seconds.


Back to the here and now. The bad news is: in order to deliver the washing machine and get it up the steps to the deck the truck would have to drive over my flowering daffodils and primroses. So I spent all yesterday morning digging them up.  I stuck the dafs in another bed, but had a wheelbarrow full of primroses in full bloom. That sheltered flowerbed has been creeping outwards, time to re-do it so we don't have to deal with this again when the ancient stove bites the dust. So today I wasted all day on flower stuff that was not on the priority list.


The good news: it is perfect transplanting weather.


The bad news: that means it is cold and rainy.  Yesterday was decent. Cool,  but mainly dry with the odd bit of watery sun.  We have had a total of  6 or 7 days so far that could qualify as spring, and nowhere near real warmth. I keep reminding myself that the woods are rejoicing. They are overdue for one of those cool wet non-summers we get now and then in B.C. At this time of year garden work gets done rain or shine.


At least I made focaccia loaves and tomato sauce before I went outside so we could have pizza tonight, with baby kale and green onion salad from the garden. I am tired of eating overly fast improvised meals because by the time I stop outside I have no energy left to cook.


More good news: The 4 middle-aged hens laid 4 eggs yesterday! I have not had egg layers for ages. Some time in the nineties we had a series of predator disasters, and I finally gave up. After a hiatus I did just meat birds for 5 years. This was during the time that deer were devastating the veg garden in spite of fences, so filling the freezer with chicken was a compensation. After a few years off from that I am totally in a fowl mood again.
More good news: the asparagus I planted along the fence last fall is showing signs of life. The shoots are tiny but all they have to do this year is survive. I used to have a big asparagus bed, but ripped them out years ago because they were not yielding all that much considering how much space they were taking up.


And so it goes.......on and on....

Remembrance of snipes past

Posted to Multiply April 28 2011

A memory of 40 years ago, a time when late April reliably brought warm weather and luminous green trees.


We were living in Christina Lake, about 4 hours from Nakusp, and had bought the land the previous fall. This was the first time we came up here to camp. It was all a lot wilder then. The land went right down to the fence of the big field below without a road in between. It was a wide-open sunny abandoned hay field, gently sloping with a few more level benches, facing more or less South.


An island of big trees in one spot  had been too rocky to cultivate, ever. The rest was not really worth the effort to farm, too sandy/rocky, hence the decision to sell it. We were told so honestly.  On the other three sides there was empty woods, most of it crown land.


On this weekend of April 1971 we had basked naked in the warm spring sunshine, marveling at the idea that we owned these ten acres. In the afternoon the twelve-year old son of one of the hippie-settlers in the neighborhood dropped by. He took it upon himself to show us around.


First a walk through a swamp with blooming skunk cabbages and yellow violets,  past an old log cabin that had belonged to an old Australian trapper, long departed. The cabin is long gone too, and the trail has become a serious gravel road. The trapper's memory lingers on in the name of the road: Kangaroo Trail.


Up a ways we came to a clearing with a strange sort of shelter: a tipi made out of  cedar shakes and clear plastic. A young couple had cheerfully overwintered in it. They were now celebrating the new season in the same way we had. There was a lot of casual nudity in the Kootenays in those years. It was not nakedness in the 'look-at-me!' way. We just had no clothes on in order to feel as much of the sun and the soft spring breeze as we could. It was lovely.


The trail wound on and down into the homestead of F. and R., 15 gorgeous acres of woods and meadow, with a stream running through it and a usable cabin. They had bought it in 1968 for $2500. They were masters at the self-sufficiency game. The cabin may have been basic, but the gardens were brimming with food, there were fruit trees, nut trees, a cow, goats and chickens and pigs. R. even canned a bear once. It had been raiding the homestead and would not be scared away. Said R.,  years later when I expressed my admiration: "I was young, and the bear was dead".


Later we sat around a small fire, with cups of tea made from mint leaves that grew wild around the vernal pond, having dined (among other things) on wild violet leaves and bracken fern shoots. I was deep in my Euell Gibbons and Bradford Angier phase.  Wild asparagus could actually be stalked between Christina Lake and Grand Forks. I wasn't crazy about the marzipan-like taste of the fiddleheads. Later we found out later that edible fiddleheads are the young form of a different fern, and bracken is even a bit toxic. We suffered no ill effects.


As the campfire dies down we look at the stars and take in the deep silence. It was so quiet then. The neighborhood did not have electricity. There were no power tools. You could hear a car go by a few kilometers away on Highway 6. What we did hear was frogs and birds, all kinds of them. The sound I first mistook for starting machinery, popppoppopppp! turned out to be male grouse beating their wings to impress potential mates.


But the sound I associate most with those evenings has only recently received a name. A strange sound, heard mainly at dusk. It comes closer as the bird dives down, hunting for insects? Huuuuhuuhuhuhuhuh. Impossible to imitate. You end up sounding like a loon when you try, but we know loons when we hear them and this is different.


Thanks to a remark from Melanie in Ontario and the wonders of Google our mystery bird has been identified: Snipe. What we heard was a snipe. There is less swamp in the neighborhood than there used to be, and we don't hear this haunting sound nearly as often. But after 40 years it is nice to give it a name.

The year we were H&R Block

Originally posted to Multiply on May 1 2010

I wasted the usual sunny hours on the last-minute income tax chore yesterday. In Canada the date is April 30, not 15. It brings things back.


The year was 1973. We were living in Fife just above Christina Lake, B.C.
Chris' geology job had come to a natural end the year before. There just wasn't enough copper left to make Phoenix mine operable, and that was that. Unemployment insurance was about to run out. I was still working as a short order cook but was due to give birth to our first child on May 20.

Chris had noticed that the people who worked in actual mines had more job security and steadiness in their lives than the geologists who were looking for new ones. He decided to get some training as a mine operator. A course would be offered in Rossland in the fall, and funded by some kind of government scheme. We just had to make it through summer.


Christina Lake is not much of a town. Everything happens in Grand Forks, a 20-30 minute drive to the West.  One winter day Chris ended up hitchhiking into Grand Forks.
This was a rare occasion since the man is a master at keeping cars on the road and cannot stand being stuck. Even in tough times we have usually been a two-wreck family. But this time we only had one car insured, a little  Zephyr that  turned out to be a bit of a lemon.


The driver who gave him a ride was working for H & R Block. He was looking for someone to operate a franchise in Grand Forks. Here was a well-educated guy with nothing else to do for a few months, how about it?


To make a long story short, we were H&R Block in Grand Forks that year. We rented an office across from the old Post Office and set ourselves up. Apart from the manual, which included such gems as "Avoid over-staffing an office with women", we received no training whatsoever. Fortunately the start was slow, allowing us to learn on the job.


I kind of enjoyed the process of becoming familiar with the abstruse language in the official tax manual that was our Bible. It was just a matter of focusing properly. After a while the language became familiar and transparent, we were totally at home in the forms, and we knew where to find any information that might be missing.


We became quite good at pulling it all together, including taxes for people who dumped a box on our desk containing all manner of mixed-up receipts. Most, but not all of the business was simple.
"Couldn't you find me some loopholes?" asked one  memorable client with the simplest package possible, one T4 slip and nothing else. Sorry sir, not in your case. But we did save some people some money.


I remember two of them: one was a single mother who did not know that she could claim an "equivalent to married" exemption for her child, resulting in a generous refund. The other one was a father and son team who operated a little fence post business on the side.


By the time we deducted everything possible the business had actually resulted in an official loss that they could deduct from their main income. Fun stuff!


Then, just when we were really enjoying the work and were gearing up for the bonanza of April, we started seeing disturbed clients with rejected returns. Was something wrong with our work? Not at all! But the dye job had gone wrong.


DYE job? Yup.  We did the work on white forms, provided by H &R, which then had to be copied through some machine, also provided by H&R, that supposedly created the same shade of blue as the government forms. If the colour wasn't just right the government refused to accept them. We had to adjust the shade of ink (I can't remember what or how) and send it in again.


We tried to explain this to people, but some of them could see just one thing: they had paid to get their taxes done and the government refused the results. I can't blame them.
As a result our April  was no busier than March. When the dust cleared and we figured it all out we had made almost exactly what Chris would have  collected as the last months of  UI.


But we sure learned how to do our own income taxes. Even in complicated years when I had two home-based businesses and it took forever to collect the messy records, April 30 finds me pulling the last bits together.

DIY housing, a proud Kootenay tradition!

Building low-impact housing out of whatever happens to be at hand was a way of life when we first came to the Kootenays in the early seventies.


The back-to-the-land crowd was building log homes from the trees around them or living in improvised shelters any old way. Building inspectors were nowhere in evidence. 
One in particular stayed with me as the ultimate in flimsiness.


We had bought our land in the fall of 1970, when Chris still had the good geology job near Grand Forks, B.C. We still lived near Christina Lake, a 3 1/2 hour drive from Nakusp.


We made it a point to visit the place at least once every season. We’d camp in a tent for one or two nights in the weekend, explore the area and marvel at the idea that we owned this spot.


The first time was in the spring of 1971, right after the weather had made its dramatic shift from winter to spring. By late April the sun was warm enough to allow sunbathing au naturel, which we were doing when Scott, the 12 year old son of one of the hippie settlers came for a visit.


Scott took us for a walk through the spring-green woods to introduce us to some neighbors. The trail snaked through a swamp, alive with skunk cabbage and yellow violets, to join a larger trail that went up the mountain. At the corner stood a dilapidated log cabin that had once housed an Australian trapper. The larger trail is now a solid gravel road, but it is still called Kangaroo Trail.


Up the hill a bit and into the woods and there in a small clearing we found Frank and Jane, starkers like we had been earlier, next to the shelter where they had spent the winter. It was a Bucky dome made out of thin cedar strips, covered in clear plastic. That was it. They had cheerfully lived through a snowy West Kootenay winter in it and seemed none the worse for wear. Interesting times. So wonderfully free.

The picture is the log house my husband built while we lived in the tipi. It was home from October 1977 to September 87. For some of that time a good job for Old Dutch took us to Vancouver Island. We visited when we could. 
Below, the kids getting clean in the first year we were back on the land to stay. I hope this does not offend community standards?

Unfortunately the house never got finished. There were several reasons. First there is the time vs money conundrum, well known to other wannabe builders. You tend to have either one or the other, depending on if you are employed or not.
But perhaps most importantly Old Dutchs' enjoyment of carpentry work did not match his ability. He is surprisingly good at it, handy and inventive. He even did all the electrical wiring. It was inspected and found good.  But after a week on a job he loathed but did for the sake of the family, laying a floor in the upstairs was the last thing he'd feel like doing. I have two left hands that are all thumbs and am useless for building.

With the brilliance of hindsight I should have insisted on hiring a few professionals to speed up the job. It was an option at some point. At the time I had no idea that a pro could do things in days that take amateurs months. Also at the time I was a financially dependent SAHM, my self esteem was non existent, and I just went along.

At some point an inheritance allowed us to buy a mobile home and have a finished dwelling, paid for, NOW! It has served us well. My only regret is that we did not put a snow roof over it right away. But never mind, we have one now. 

How a nice girl from Amsterdam ended up living in a tipi on a mountain in B.C.

As a child I always wanted to live in the country, but in my late teens and early twenties I loved being in Amsterdam.
Leaving my native Netherlands all started with my husband being a geologist. There is a serious shortage of rocks in Holland.
Canada was wide open, and we knew one fellow student who had gone there and got work in the Calgary oil patch. So we packed up our lives and went to Calgary. It was a great adventure and I loved it.

Chris eventually ended up finding work not in Alberta, but with a mining company in Grand Forks, B.C.

I got dragged away from Calgary kicking and screaming. I had an opportunity to go to Graduate School and I did not want to be a stay-at-home anything. I even spent the winter living in a friend's basement so I could finish my courses. Every weekend I took the overnight Greyhound to Chris in B.C., a 14-hour trip each way.


But come summer time there I was, in Christina Lake near Grand Forks. With neighbors who had a big vegetable garden. And intriguing people nearby who had settled into abandoned farm houses in the hills, without running water or electricity. We  shook our heads at the folly. 

Then I made friends with one counter-cultural couple, and before you knew it our home was grand central station for quite a few people who used it for phone calls, baths, and as a crash pad.
The photo below is from the facebook album "Old pictures" by Carol Nye, Carol Leon at the time. The baby on Carol's lap on the left is my dear 'daughter-friend' Christine.

It seems everyone was looking for a piece of land. This was a new concept to us. Not just a yard, but LAND!
Civilization was supposed to come crashing down around our ears any day now, and we'd all better be holed up on our self-sufficient homesteads. Forty years later, with the 'prepper' movement going strong, us old hippies don't know if we should laugh or cry. Anyway back then I became obsessed with the notion of owning my own chunk.
We went land-hunting during the Thanksgiving weekend of 1970, and ended up with an undeveloped ten acre plot near Nakusp that was only $3500, the equivalent of $35.000 in today's money. I sincerely believe I had Guidance. We could never have bought at any other time in our lives. Land prices went up and our income went down.

As for the tipi, a year later we came home from a summer in the geology field to find our friends had been joined by a new couple who lived in a tipi. We shook our wise old heads some more. But when we went to visit the new folks we found they were actually quite cozy, even in mid winter.

A few years later our financial fortunes took a nose dive.
We had planned to move to our acreage some time in the far future, after we had earned the money to build a house and install water and electricity and other necessities of life. Instead we bought a tipi and just went there!

The first year was fun. The picture at the top was taken in the first fall. That is our daughter in the door opening. The transparent door was my husband's brainwave. It was a "white man's tipi" with a solid wood heater, propane for cooking, a round kitchen table and two chairs, and the rear seat of a car as couch. 

I can't remember when we acquired the wooden shoes. Did my parents bring them when they came to visit in September 1975, or did I buy them on my visit to the old country the following year? We never wore them in Amsterdam, that's for sure. Anyway, wooden shoes with thick socks are perfect foot wear when you live in a tipi and are always dashing in and out. I am so sorry I never took a picture of them parked in front of the dwelling. At the time it was just life.


The second year was a bit much, especially since the summer of 1976 was cold and wet and the baby was a toddler now.

By the time the first floor of the log home was ready to move into, fall 1977, the 16x32 foot dry space was absolute heaven.
Never mind that there was still no plumbing and the windows were covered with plastic.

I call myself an old semi-hippie rather than a full-fledged one. We were on the edge of the whole thing. Apart from some small experiments we never got into the drugs and we always looked presentably straight and had jobs. We had times on unemployment insurance, but never welfare.

As for the drugs, it is definitely true that trying marijuana will lead to harder stuff. I never took to pot. It makes me want to sleep and eat, activities at which I excel without help. But it took twenty years to kick the nicotine habit that I acquired in order to practice inhaling.

P.S. My daughter has started to blog her childhood memories, fun! 
http://brokenmice.blogspot.ca/2014/01/pointy-tents-are-made-for-babies.html

And after the tipi there was the log cabin.
http://freegreenliving.blogspot.ca/2007/11/proud-tradition-of-diy-housing.html