A Building Lifestyle

This is a project I did a while ago, inspired by the idea to mess around on the water in a self propelled craft. After two months in my shop, I was able to take pleasure in outings on mountain lakes here in the Rocky Mountains. Today it is white with snow outside, so naturally I'm provoked to reflect on seasons past and the summer to come. (I do enjoy being outdoors in the snow, as well, but that's another story.)

The idea of a kayak light enough to put on the water by myself grew in appeal with having a family member spending a huge amount of time training and competing in the sport of rowing.  Myself, after over a decade of racing bicycles, well, I wanted no more of the slavish routine of training and racing. That was fun while it lasted but I've moved on from that mode. 

 I've been a woodworker by trade, and have built a couple of other small boats. When I saw Ross Miller's modern skin kayak idea, I knew I would give it a go. (Ross Miller Designs is out of West Mystic, Connecticut.) This is not a kit; I like to build from scratch. But I'm not averse to learning from others, so I bought blueprints for Mr. Miller's "Egret" kayak. The frame would be out of clear pine, douglas fir, and "lauan" mahogany plywood for the bulkheads.

 One compelling thing about this design is its use of modern materials for the skin or hull of the boat. Using Dacron aircraft fabric, a light and very taut skin can be achieved. After building the wood frame on a strongback, this fabric is attached (glued with special adhesive) at key points and then shrunk with carefully applied heat. A drum-tight creation emerges through this process. It makes a very pleasing sound when you tap your fingers on the deck or the hull; yet I was surprised to note that when moving through the water, there doesn't seem to be any extraneous noise or reverberation. The skin is coated with either marine paint, or epoxy, or in this case, special two-part marine urethane over a base of epoxy.

I snuck out to a mountain reservoir for a test paddle before I had finished with all of the scantlings and deck trim. In later photos you can see pin striping and some cherry and    mahogany cockpit trim.    

                                                                                                        

In building this, I made some modifications to the design. The original calls for a snug Eskimo style coaming that allows for a sealed spray skirt around the paddler in ocean conditions. However one reason I chose this particular design is that I'd read that its shallow vee-hull has pretty decent secondary stability and it actually isn't that easy to roll. Since I wanted the features of a skin design, coupled with the versatility of a more open cockpit, this overall hull seemed ideal for my mostly flat-water paddling intentions. The 17 foot length looked like it would have some speed. But I wanted more room and easy access to gear for photography and quick launching. Knowing that the uncovered canoe-style cockpit would admit water, I built watertight bulkheads amidships between the paddler's seat and at the footwell. Essentially all of the aft and forward portions of the hull are considered flotation chambers. Even with water in the cockpit, the boat will float. These bulkheads also have sealed round hatches that open to small floored areas with bungee straps for minor stowage.

When the frame was finished, it almost seemed a shame to cover it up. I enjoy the sculptural beauty of the frames of buildings, the ribs and stringers of boats, the skeletal foundations of things. The dirigible bones of this boat, covered in varnish, smelled good and pleased the eye. 

I named her, "Hei Matau," which is supposed to mean "safe passage" in Maori.

  

Last summer, a highlight was paddling in a high mountain lake (10,000 foot elevation) at the foot of impressive mountains that make up the Continental divide of North America. 

Gliding along in my kayak was a thrill. I had a chance encounter with an aspen-towing beaver, who was nibbling on green leaves even as he moved along, headed toward the west inlet to the lake. The quiet hull had allowed me to get near him without immediate notice. I don't like crowding wildlife, and only belatedly saw his wake in the glassy water. I gave way to this superior water denizen, holding my breath. When he did notice me, he gave the classic "slap" of the tail, and submerged. I'd only ever read about this signal that beavers make in the presence of intruders.  I headed further out into the lake, leaving the creature plenty of room.

-all photos by the author.

Abode

The place in which you live.

  I go by this willow structure a few times a month. It's one part of a very appealing elemental sculpture on the grounds of Colorado College, installed by sculptor Patrick Dougherty.  It always makes me think about shelter; our conception of what makes a good shelter. It is often by chance or circumstance that we live in a particular abode. A place to be while pursuing education or some other thing, we reside in a home (or apartment) until a career move or other change takes us elsewhere. Usually we start out small. As we obtain more means, or become rooted to a place, we think to reach beyond making do, to make our habitation more permanent, or at least to let it reflect a bit more of our selves and our willingness to commit to a locale.

  We in North America are seen to be obsessed with making a display of our houses, the bigger the better. It's not exactly a humble approach, but then, many of these aren't humble homes. Traveling in Europe, I knew that giving guests a tour of one's home was not something generally done. I didn't even ask. Even to me, it seems an unnecessary burden to expect to give a tour on moment's notice of what is supposed to be one's private space.

  A popular tide sweeps many along, at which point their choice of abode can have more to do with what is expected of them, instead of being a reflection of their individual nature. I can only be thinly disguising my dislike of artifice and sheer size, as a measure of what makes a great home. A cookie-cutter development, spread across the landscape, is not my ideal. Other than the cost of sprawl and the disconnect from the larger community, I personally feel unease at the idea of coming home to that. This isn't meant to be a moral judgement of the inhabitants of such houses. There's nothing wrong with the people who live in them (at least nothing that can be attributed solely to the house they live in.) We can assume that inside these homes good, generous people are going through their day. But I do sometimes refer to suburbs ballooning with outsize houses, grand and looming over each other, as soul-robbing. It may be a case of  'maximizing-your-dollar.' Because you can. Because others already have. Because you won't be recognized as a success if you don't.  I don't intend to go into foreclosures and the overall home mortgage crisis happening now. But I do think about the impulse of overreaching to own a lot of house.

  In the minds of homebuyers, thoughts on the psychology of one's choice of home aren't at the surface, if they are there at all. Practical considerations such as square footage, the room count, number of bathrooms, and so on, loom large. Nearness to job or schools play a big role, as you'd expect. Yet I am amazed at how often the intelligence of a group, in desiring these practical amenities, is poorly served by the producers of those amenities. I believe that the masses don't specifically desire the papier-mache constructs that have been built for the average home-buying public by production builders in the last forty years. I think they'd appreciate something less 'faux.'

  Where are those homebuyers, scheming around their kitchen tables, proposing to "make it brick on one side only." "Put fake quoins on the corners of a stucco box, that's what I want" or, "give me a twenty-foot tall entry hall, I want the house to be visible for miles." There are technical and aesthetic reasons why these artificial approaches are somewhat out of balance. Perhaps what bothers me is the attempt to project a style using fakery, rather than accept that budget dictates using a more honest list of materials. Can't afford stone? Select otherwise.

  Anything seems possible in our global way of living; we tend to import, truck, or ship by rail, all the things we desire. If that is too expensive, we make up a veneer to resemble the materials that are native to another locale. Often the material is not the burdening cost, instead it is the labor to work with it in a skilled manner that is the budget breaker.  And we are reluctant to pay for the skilled execution.  Thus the fakery. I stop myself here, realizing that these points are just my own prejudice against artifice and against disconnect from materials' honest structural origins. For example, brick was not meant as 'cake decoration' over another structural element. Its real beauty resides in an engineered pattern of repeated courses, done to meet structural requirements, to become the load-carrying element all on its own.

  But to bring this back to the concept of shelter. I have the highest regard for an abode that meets perhaps its most important role, no matter how large or small,  simple or look-alike the abode may be: to house the people within, away from the elements, sheltered from the cares of the world.  (Too many do not have even the most basic form of this.) A shelter with perhaps a pot of tea resting on a chipped counter, a waiting chair, and an invitation to take refuge within its walls for a time.

  We create the feeling of 'abode' every time we settle somewhere to take a respite, in a way. The noun abode is meant to refer to a place we dwell more than temporarily. Yet the urge to make ourselves fit in any number of locations in a more than temporary way seems to emerge in surprising impulses. At a hotel, we find the ice machine and test the windows. We trust the roof over our head for a night or two.  At a restaurant, we look for an appealing table, away from the din by the door. Gathering chairs, we welcome our friends around.  Camping on a windswept beach, it seems a game to gather driftwood for a bonfire. With it we enhance the amenities of our abode-by-the-sea. When the stars come out, we sit near the crackling orange warmth as a defense against the sea-mist in the night. Once inside a tent's fabric shelter, the flimsy barrier suddenly takes on a protective dimension. Our abode for the night.

As my Scots ancestors might have said: "bide a wee." Abide. Stay awhile.

The willow sculptures seem to say that, too.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod              --all photos  by the author.