House Records

It has been my sometime custom over the years, having been lucky enough to have lived in many meritorious houses, to keep a house book.  That is to say, something of a record of what the house has lived through during my tenancy.  It’s usually just a commonplace notebook, and I try to remember to jot down in it things that happen to the house and garden over the passing year, and also sometimes things that have happened to us.  I have done better at some times than others, better with some houses than others, but I have been pretty reliable in keeping account of the present two houses, the one in Point Roberts, WA, nd the other in Roberts Creek, B.C.

Because I am in B.C. now, what I have at hand is that house’s book, a book whose last empty pages are coming up.  (Is that why we are thinking of selling now?)  It begins on April 17, 1993 (although we moved up here in July of 1992): “Back after 5 weeks in L.A.  When I left on March 10th, there were two salmon berry flowers: one on the road, one in the meadow.  Now there are salmon berry flowers everywhere.”  I’m sorry to have to note that today, March 26, there’s not even a sign of a salmon berry bud, let alone a salmon berry flower, although the salmon berry plants, barren sticks, are still all around us.  

As I page through the book, that is the content that most attracts me right now: how things used to be in bloom well before the end of March.  Thus, in March of 1994 (a month or so after rocking and rolling through the big earthquake in L.A.), the forsythia, thimbleberries, vinca, and bluets were in bloom, though none of them is (yet) today.  In March of 1995, the cherry tree was in full blossom, as were the native bleeding heart flowers.  In March of 1996, the daffodils were all in bloom.  None of those are in bloom this March.  And on, year by year, there is a record of past springs coming earlier than in recent years.  It’s good to know this.  To know what we have lost.

And it’s good to review all the other news that is recorded in the house’s book: the children, grandchildren, and friends who came to visit; the deaths of  all four of our parents, the construction of new gardens, the introduction of new roofs, new decks: the stuff that happens when you are busy doing something else, as John Lennon, I think, said of life.

And also in the book, an occasional phrase or sentence that had caught my ear or my eye, like this one by Witter Bynner (probably from his translation of The Book of the Dao, but perhaps from The Jade Mountain):  “Spring is no help to a man bewildered.”    No Kidding!  At least some things never change.

Room to Let

I am the kind of person who, if you put a cereal box in front of me, will dutifully read all the text on the cereal box, even though I don’t eat cereal and don’t have any need for whatever passes for information on the cereal box. Similarly, put a newspaper in front of me and I dutifully read it all, page after page, even if I’m only visiting in the town that produces the newspaper. Needless to say, when it comes to local papers, I even read all the ads in the classified section as if somewhere in there the secret life of the town will surprisingly be revealed.

And now and then, it is. Up here on the Sunshine Coast, we get a newspaper every week, so it is somewhat puzzling that I get anything done besides reading the paper, except that it isn’t very long. A front section with local news, an abbreviated ‘culture/events’ section, and an even more abbreviated sports section, where I can follow the travails of the Gibsons' Pigs. And in there with the sports are a few pages of classified ads. In the past few years, the ads have burgeoned, mostly because everyone living here appeared to have decided to sell his/her house. Except that in the spring, there’s always a lot of real estate for sale because it is, after all, a tourist economy for the most part (logging, a little fishing, and providing for the short-term and long-term tourists are about it).

In a tourist/seasonal visitor economy, like the Sunshine Coast as well as Point Roberts, there’s always a lot of real estate for sale but rarely much real estate for rent. Frequently, the rentals section up here was barely a column, and particularly spare were rentals in Roberts Creek, where we live. This is equally true of Point Roberts. But in this week’s paper, I find that rentals have suddenly expanded into a couple of pages, with Roberts Creek alone getting an entire column. Stranger yet, several of the ads mentioned that what was being rented was one floor of the house--not like a guest suite, but just a floor. I’d never seen that before. Some of the ads were for short-term rental (which is to say off season/not the summer/early fall), but mostly they were regular leases.

There’s a secret in there somewhere. I don’t know whether it means that financially-pressed folks are reduced to renting out floors of their house to make their house payments, that people who were in the flipping business got stuck with houses that can’t be sold and now need to be rented, or that the seasonal visitors (those with second houses here) are having second thoughts. In any case, it sounds as if it isn’t good news unless you are somebody looking to rent. And in Point Roberts? Well, we’ll see what it looks like there after the first of March.

Cheap, Fast, and Out of Control

That’s the title of a neat little movie by Errol Morris, but it doesn’t describe Point Roberts. How to describe Point Roberts? How about exotic, ordinary, and eccentric? The geographical location itself makes up much of the exotic quality. It’s just so strange to be outside one’s own country. Perhaps the Point should have been allowed to remain as a military reservation, whereby its geographical status would have been less of an issue: if not right in the U.S., it’s at least very close and the Navy could have shelled the peninsula for weapons practice. Perhaps it should have been made a Grand Duchy, like Luxembourg, or a Principality, like Monoco (which is 75 times bigger but has only 35 times as many residents) and everyone could have come here to be sophisticated or to gamble. But it isn’t any of those things. Wikipedia refers to it as “a practical exclave” (I’d have thought an impractical one) and a ‘small Census-designated place.’ Its exclave status, it says, is ‘similar to Alaska.’

When I am, say, in Bellingham, and I mention to a shop clerk that I am from Point Roberts, they smile and nod and say, “oh, yeah,” as if that explained everything. Somehow, I don’t think that saying I was from Blaine or Lynden would even begin to suggest an explanation for anything. You move to Blaine, you move to Lynden or to Bellingham: there’s a lot of reasons you would do that, reasons that have not much to do necessarily with those towns. But if you move to Point Roberts, it’s because you decided to go to Point Roberts and partake thereof of the exoticness and it marks you in some way.

Ordinary it also is, which is surprising in connection with its exoticness. I would think that exotic would require unusual, unlikely, rare, or something. But to see Point Roberts is, for the most part, to see an exercise in ordinariness. There’s really nothing special to see: houses are pretty straight-forward, no architecture to speak of (until very recently, alas, as pretentious, over-big, and too-big-for-the-lot have become more common), ocean full of water, land full of trees, beaches full of sand and rocks. There are boats in the marina but they don’t intrude much and they’re not all that big, as pleasure craft go. Its ordinariness is sort of like the ‘island that time forgot.’ Its ordinariness is soothing, pleasing; it does not stimulate the population (other than teenagers, perhaps) to long for more and different pleasures or stimuli. It says, ‘This is Enough!’

And, finally, Point Roberts is eccentric. It is possible that the exotic and ordinary qualities that are central to the Point draw out the eccentricity that is so abundantly evident here. But it may be that eccentrics are just drawn to the Point in the first place because of its exotic ordinariness. The eccentricity is demonstrated in lots of ways, but for the moment, I will focus on housing and personal style. The photos above are of two houses around the corner from me. Between these houses in reality is a house where the owner used to tether a goat on the roof of his shed.

Drewhenge appeared almost overnight. It wasn’t there and then it was. I have no idea who Mr. Drew (or Mr. Henge) is; I don’t think he has an airplane, despite the windsock. I’m pretty sure his gate was not architect-designed in any ordinary way and that he built it himself. I’m pretty sure it’s the only Drewhenge in the world. I love that it presents itself without explanation, and I love the perfectly ordinary house that stands inside the grounds of Drewhenge. Within the house may be other evidences of eccentricity. I hope I meet the Drews/Henges some day and find out more. But if I don’t, that’s OK too.

The other house I think of as ‘Wrapped Trailer with Iron Gate.” The owners of this place come here only in the summer and when they come, they unwrap the trailer; when they leave, they carefully wrap it back up again. There are many cottages and trailers here on the Point where people come only in the summer. This is the only wrapped residence I know of. The large iron gate provides a second level of eccentricity that is equally pleasing. It’s not as if you can’t walk on to this property anywhere along its perimeter except where is the gate. It’s a gated house as well as a wrapped trailer, but rather welcoming. I don’t know the residents, but I surely admire them. They have a fine sense of their own style.