Open your eyes

Escarpment lookout potential

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Laura

Wikipedia says: An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that occurs from erosion or faulting and separates two relatively level areas of differing elevations.

The land under Tiny House Ontario is on a limestone fault, at a quite high elevation when compared to the surrounding land.  There are a lot of rock piles here too.

The closest city to us, is Kingston, Ontario, Canada.  Kingston sits at about 25 feet above sea level, whereas Tiny House Ontario, which is within 30 Km of Kingston sits at about 200 feet above sea level.  The difference in height is not so great; the approximate height of a 20 story building, and the gradient upward is not a sheer drop.  As a matter of fact probably about half of the height is covered in the distance before you arrive at the escarpment, and it is somewhat hilly too, so unless you are on a bicycle or on foot, you would probably not know that you are going up hill.

Along the same escarpment where the road goes though, they have the same elevation as me and because the road is through, you can see Kingston’s water tower, radio towers and also lots of the windmills on Wolfe Island.  I have included here some images from two different seasons near the edge of the escarpment on my land and one where the road is open so you can see the height and view.

My cousin Kenny, who knows this land, says that I should remove a few of the softwood trees so that the hard ones will grow larger with the light and I will have a better view.  What would you do?  Cut a few trees so that you would get a better view and more light?  Let it stay the way that it grows naturally?

**Please note that I changed the title of this post from view to lookout because Tiny House Ontario sits far away from the ridge, so any potential for seeing into the distance would be purely as a place to walk to, and lookout from.  At Tiny House Ontario, you can see only inside the forest.**

Categories: Forest, Nature, Off Grid, Ontario, Open your eyes, Tiny house, Tiny House Ontario, View | 4 Comments

Ancestors and Descendants

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Laura

The Embers and the Stars by Erazim Kohák is one of my all time favourite books.   It is not light reading.  It is dense and hard to get through, but beautiful, lyrical, life changing, and worth all the effort.  This book certainly impacted me in ways that I never once expected.*

With this book in mind as it always is, in the morning, I woke up thinking about forest.  Specifically about the hickory trees that I hope to keep safe on my land, then I thought about big Bonny tree, the giant oak that my grandmother would have walked under on her way to school.

My thoughts then brought me way back to the Irish family who first settled here pushing out my native ancestors and their long history by shaming it away and marrying in.  It was not so much the natives that I was thinking about.  Sadly and honestly, because I know little about the natives, the history for them is vague and sporadic like a dream of better and harder days.    It is the settlers who I know, and understand.

I thought about my original Dixon (also spelled Dickson) family, because it was the settlers who brought land ownership with them.  Specifically I thought back 162 years to the time when Robert Dixon, took up a land patent for this land in 1850*.  I also thought about his descendants, too my ancestors, who walked this land working it and planning for it, just as I work and plan today.

A funny thing is that work is easy and planning is not at all.  Planning is complicated.  You see, I suspect that Robert Dixon had great plans in mind, when he divided his land at his death.  It was left to his boys; girls out of the equation, including his wife Alice (who was inherited, like a cow to be managed by her sons).  Great, great, great Grandpa Dixon would not have imagined that it would be a sixth generation granddaughter (GGG granddaughter) who would be the keeper of it.  I don’t believe that he could have fathomed that my G uncle Lewellyn (G grandma Caroline’s brother) would lose his 50 acre share in 1943 because of a $2500 loan he took and could not pay during great depression.  Old GGG Grandpa Dixon, could not have imagined that the wonderful neighbours, the Miller family would buy that land and continue calling it “The Dixon Farm” even to today.  He could not possibly have known, when he set his plans, that the Miller descendant would be thrilled to see it in the “Dixon” hands once more.  More over, I expect that the biggest thing that he could never have imagined is that a woman would be the one who is interested in planning for it now.

So what about my plans?  I have one biological son James, as well as a son Conrad and daughter Kasha who are mine too, emotionally.  Will any of them have interest in Tiny House Ontario and her beautiful forest home?  I don’t see any signs of this.  Will it be another long lost descendent of the Dixon line who will want her?  This is not apparent to me either.  Will it be in the hands of family?  Who knows?  I believe that I cannot know what is in store for these acres.

The only thing that I know for sure is if little chunk of land is protected from greed, it will outlast me.   Perhaps another 162 years from now someone walking it will find the extra chain saw blade I lost out there, and wonder about the person who was connected to it.  Time will tell.  Time always gives us some version of the truth.

*I plan to read The Embers and the Stars again this summer at Tiny House Ontario.  If any of my friends or locals wants to join me in this, I would love to do a Tiny House book club weekly meeting to discuss the chapters.  Wednesdays at 6:30 pm?

*First a full 100 acres then the rest of the lot and concession of 100 acres was purchased from John Ilan (also spelled Island) in 1857 for ₤225.

Categories: Environmentalism, Erazim Kohák, Forest, Open your eyes, Simple living, Sustainable living, Time, Tiny House Ontario | Tags: | 2 Comments

Eat a frog

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Laura

I admit it!  I can be a terrible procrastinator!

There is stuff that I do not love to do and this is the stuff that I always leave behind.

I heard today that if you eat a frog for breakfast that it helps a lot.  I am a vegetarian, but even so this really makes a lot of sense.

Here is why.

Categories: Art, Environmentalism, Money, Open your eyes, Time, Tiny House Ontario | 1 Comment

Through The Thicket

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Laura

The first time I went to look at the land was before I purchased it.  It was a cold fall day, and was pissing rain.  Not to be dissuaded, I went through the brush and found that about half way in there was a wall of thicket, of what the locals call prickly pear. The great barrier of it went on as far as I could see to the left and right of me; I wanted to get through to see what was on the other side.   Tenaciously, I pulled my coat sleeves over my hands, and began to push my way in through the canes and their sharp little thorns.

They tied themselves to me, through my clothes and into my skin.  I was the soft side of velcro and still I pushed my way though.  What was about 200 foot wide band of the stuff felt more like a mile.  My cousin Ernie says that this Great Wall has been there forever, that he would hunt rabbits there as a kid, and with great success.  Truthfully, there are still grouse, partridge and rabbits by the plenty in these thickets; since then, I have cleared a small path through, so that I can walk back to the ridge without the pain of being caught in bramble.

When I finally arrived to the other side, I was thrilled that I persevered.  It was just as I thought.  The woods opened up and I found it just the way I expected to.  The back 7 acres is all Carolinian forest, hardwood trees as high as the ridge itself.  It opens up and is as beautiful as can be back there.

I can’t help but reflect on that adventure and how it strangely mirrors life.  It is not just in nature that you have to push through a lot of difficulty, sometimes getting poked by the ugliness of life until you bleed.  The fact is that a lot of life is similar to being caught in a giant rose bush, you just have to escape it to get to the great stuff.  Generally, I think that those who go through the biggest prickly patches, are very often the people who have the most to offer; they are the hardest workers the ones who know how to live.

I bought the land, and then not long after I built Tiny House Ontario.  I located it right before the thicket at the place where I stood wondering if I could get through a few months before.  I did this not just because I want to preserve the sanctity of that wonderful deep woods, but because I wanted to face the obstacle in that land.   There are great rewards in this location, mostly the constant movement of animals around me, who I hear much more often than I see.  I am surrounded by life, by those who are amazingly well sustained by the difficult landscape.

On my most recent winter visit, I was out walking with Liisa.  We were nearly at Tiny House Ontario, perhaps 50 feet away.  She noticed this, not me and stopped to take this image.  It captures the density of the prickly pear.  You know, when the leaves come in and you stand right here in my little woman made clearing, you cannot see the Tiny House at all.

Mostly though, I chose this spot, because all year around the prickly pear stands, and reminds me that I can get through the rough patches.  I know that I can survive even the deepest injury and I can live with the scars too.  Survival is often tough but the great openings at the end of the rough patches, make the trip worth while.

Categories: Nature, Off Grid, Ontario, Open your eyes, Simple living, Tiny house, Tiny House Ontario, Winter, World | 2 Comments

Bob Marley

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Laura

I did not know that Bob Marley was a Tiny House dweller. Did you?  This is his childhood home.

He actually had a tiny house of his own that was destroyed by a hurricane and is being rebuilt.

No wonder he believed we need not worry.  I think that a Tiny House makes it much easier to live happily too.  Getting off that consumer roller coaster rocks and it also reggaes too.

Categories: Art, Bob Marley, Materialism, Open your eyes, Tiny House Ontario, View | 2 Comments