From the outside looking in, it appears that not only do I live alone, but I maintain a hermit’s existence, an ascetic’s search for bare basics, primitively situated in the middle of a heavily wooded forest, with no avenue of approach, no charming old road bed, nor a new one. There is only a dogpath, barely discernible in the daylight, which disappears entirely at dusk.
Once, there was a crudely-cut road, open for two or three months when building materials were being hauled in. Outsiders were hired to do everything I could not: turn the tiny box I’d drawn on a piece of paper into a house. It had two windows each on the east, west, and south sides, a carefully pencilled-in door, doorknob, and final touch of a stove pipe chimney resting on a roof labelled “roof.” It was all I could afford on any level, and it was my harvest come home at last — an 18x12 foot womb for one.
