Mr. Boyd's Girlfriend's House

This is what I call The Covered House, but is perhaps more aptly called Mr. Boyd’s Girlfriend’s House. After I found Mr. Boyd’s house and photographed it, people on the Point told me that there was another abandoned house on Rex Road. I went back but couldn’t find it. So they described it for me more carefully. ‘It’s right after you turn onto Rex Road.’ If it were this week, they could say, ‘It’s right across from that snowman in an inflatable globe.’ Then I would have found it maybe, but back in 2001, I definitely didn’t.

Time passed and yet someone else would tell me about the second abandoned house on Rex Road and occasionally I’d drive by but see nothing. Then, I drove by in 2003 in the winter and saw it. Covered in spring and summer by the luxurious growth, it was visible (and even then just barely) only when the leaves began to shrivel or disappear from the abundant brambles. It was like finding Sleeping Beauty’s castle. The house was right where people had told me it was: on the south side, just after you turn onto Rex Road from Marine Drive. In fact, it is only about 20 feet from the road.

So I produced the wall quilt, ‘The Covered House,’ and went on to looking for other abandoned houses, although I continued to visit all the already-found houses on occasion and rephotograph them. The Covered House in summer was as splendid as the covered house in fall, now that I knew where to look for it. Its only visibly recognizable part was one stone chimney.



Then, one day in 2005, I took one of my grandchildren who had seen the quilt to see the house. To my very great surprise, the brambles had been cut back and the entrance to the house was now not only visible but accessible. We poked around a bit, even got a little inside to take some additional pictures of the chaos that was clearly visible: furniture tossed round, shelves fallen over. For the first time, I understood that it was a log house with two fireplaces, pretty much in the same style as Mr. Boyd’s house.


When we were about to leave, a man from the house across the street (the snowman globe owner, I guess) came out and asked what we were doing. I explained who I was and what I was doing and he told me that awhile back he had seen some people coming around and photographing the house. For some reason (he knew Mr. Boyd, perhaps), he felt some obligation toward the house. I think he thought the photographers might be from the county or some kind of agency that would cause the owner grief, so he cut back the brambles so the house would look better. Of course, it now made it a real attractive nuisance: with the brambles, you could barely see it and you certainly couldn’t get into it; with the brambles cut back, anybody could go inside and that was one falling down house. Pretty dangerous, I would have said, but I have zero risk tolerance.


I return now and then to the house. The neighbor has let it go back to its natural state, perhaps understanding that it is only me visiting occasionally, taking yet another picture. This is the photo from last week, before winter came. It’s looking more decrepit, but more decently covered. It’s falling apart, but it hasn’t fallen down.

The story I got from the neighbor was that Mr. Boyd built the house for his girlfriend, but that when the relationship fell apart, she left Point Roberts. He then closed the house and never again went near it. The neighbor is the one who told me that the current owner is Mr. Boyd’s nephew, who lives in Vancouver. All hearsay, of course.