John Hanson Mitchell - Living at the End of Time

Living at the End of Time

ALSO BY JOHN HANSON MITCHELL

Ceremonial Time

A Field Guide to Your Own Back Yard

The Wildest Place on Earth

Walking towards Walden

Trespassing

Following the Sun

The Rose Caf

The Paradise of All These Parts: A Natural History of Boston

The Last of the Bird People

An Eden of Sorts: The Natural History of My Feral Garden

Living at the End of Time

Two Years in a Tiny House

JOHN HANSON MITCHELL

University Press of New England

Hanover and London

University Press of New England

www.upne.com

2014 and 1990 John Hanson Mitchell

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First UPNE edition, 2014

Originally published in 1990 by Houghton Mifflin.

For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com

University Press of New England is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014932194

ISBN for the UPNE edition: 978-1-61168-588-6

ISBN for the EBOOK edition: 978-1-61168-589-3

5 4 3 2 1

For my mother

Contents

Preface to the New Edition

The tiny house in which I lived for two years is still in use, although no longer as a permanent dwelling. Not to give away the end of the book, but a larger house and gardens now occupy the land, along with associated garden sheds, a teahouse, a toolshed, a writing studio, pergolas, and similar small-scale structures, all in the architectural style of the original cottage.

The development of these various follies, the creation of the gardens, and more to the point the square mile of forest and farmland surrounding the property are the subjects of five books collectively known as the Scratch Flat Chronicles. The first in the series, Ceremonial Time, is a fifteen-thousand-year history of this single square mile, which in the nineteenth century was called Scratch Flat. Living at the End of Time is the third book in the chronicles, and in some ways the most intimate, relating as it does my associations with the people who lived in the area and close observations of the immediate surroundings.

All these volumes were written in the little cabin, which has now been in use, for one purpose or another, for more than thirty years. In the pages that follow, the construction of the little house (despite my general incompetence in matters of carpentry) is recounted in full. The book does not mention two later additions to the house.

The first was a small lean-to, attached to the western wall, that served as a tool- and potting shed. A few years after that addition, my brother and I built a long, narrow, open-sided boat shed off the back of the potting shed. We undertook the project in order to house a collection of small boats, including the old kayak that has a walk-on part in Living at the End of Time. The main purpose of the shed, however, was to protect an antique Old Town double-banked rowing canoe, complete with sponsons and a rudder. After a few years, I sold the canoe, and the boat shed became a storage space where junk began to accumulate, alongside firewood for the woodstove in the cottage.

I had laid out a series of gardens around the original cottage and had cleared a small open meadow on the southeast side of the property, as described here. Still, the landscape seemed to call for a more permanent dwelling place. After two years of living without running water or electricity, and heating the house with a woodstove, I decided to rejoin normal society. I built a real house on the property, based on the designs of the nineteenth-century landscape architect and house designer Andrew Jackson Downing. The story of that house and its encircling gardens is told in two books that follow this one, The Wildest Place on Earth and An Eden of Sorts ( 2013 ), which is about the natural history of the gardens.

True to Andrew Jackson Downings landscape theories, the new house would feature even more structures. I built a little teahouse on the south side of the property, to create the focal point so important in traditional garden designs. That done, I started to lay out more alles and garden rooms. In one case a trellis was called for, at least as far I was concerned.

Many of the trees, shrubs, and perennials that make up the gardens I liberated from construction sites. Driving around the countryside in this rapidly developing area, I would often see some perfectly sound house under assault: developers were intent on building in its place a vast mansion, almost any room of which could hold my entire original cottage. In the process, they tore out perennial beds and perfectly healthy ornamental trees and shrubs. While creating the gardens around the main house, I formed the habit of returning to these sites after hours. I carried home azaleas, rhododendrons, dogwoods, and even entire beds worth of thriving peonies and roses, some of which I later learned were antique varieties.

At one of these sites I spotted a large nineteenth-century wooden trellis, lying on its side like a fallen rhino. I returned that night with a friend. We horsed it onto the bed of his truck and headed home with it.

This same friend, a man who cannot bear to see any good outbuilding, boat, flagstone terrace, or other architectural element plowed under, found a modest garden shed one day as he was making his usual circuit in search of salvage material. The shed was about to be torn down. In this case my friend knew the owner and learned the history of his find before carrying it off. The old building, which came from the town of Concord, may have had some association with the cabin of Henry Thoreau: the owner thought the two buildings had been located on the same property for a few years. The shed had been moved several times already and had had many uses. It had even, the owner thought, served as an outhouse. It was a classic tiny house, no more than six by eight feet. My friend rescued it and sold it to me. Together we hauled it down one of the garden alles on rollers and set it in place. I now use it as a writing studio during the warm months.

The last structure on the property was a garage. When I finally decided to add one, I designed it to match the main housecomplete with two gabled bays, and without doors. I purposely left the bays open, to encourage barn swallows. The swallows have yet to appear, but every year a phoebe nests in the rafters.

Shortly after I gave up my Thoreauvian lifestyle to move into the main house, a friend of mine found herself temporarily moneyless and living on her mothers couch. The little cabin seemed sad without an occupant, so I offered to let her stay there. She and her cat moved in. They lived there longer than I did, actually. Interestingly enough, shortly after she moved out, I received an official letter from the local board of health, informing me that according to town bylaws, it was not legal to rent the little house. The fact is, this was a small town; for well over three years my friend had lived there while board officials chose to look the other way. They also must have known that I had lived there without plumbing for a couple of years.

After the publication of Living at the End of Time, assorted pilgrims began arriving at my doorstep to see for themselves what they had read about in the book. For many I seemed to have tapped into some unrealized dream with this project. Presumably they were people living what Henry Thoreau termed lives of quiet desperation. Clearly, the dream of finding a place apart, a place of ones own, still holds appeal.