The essential

^{Magnificent natural fresco on my littly piece of land}

There is a sentence a friend wrote recently, I imagine that you can now concentrate more on the essential, since you have less sources of distractions such as TV, radio and this non-essential things which make me wonder what is the ultimate goal of my current endeavour that I started without much thinking, in a sort of frustration and yet leading to a selection of the essential.

The other day, 6 inches of rain fell down in a 24 hour period. As a result I had to go dig up some canals behing my cabin because water was running beneath the cabin as if there were a creek. It was a difficult task for the whole ground is made of roots, rock and mud beneath. I could at least make sure that for the time being no water would run beneath the cabin. That is the essential.

It certainly was not what she meant by "the essential" in her comment. But still, what is the essential. In any case it is clear that for the time being I must let go of material stuff. I still have a good amount of boxes in Maude's garage, especially books (around 800), paperwork of all sorts even though I emptied the content of 2 file cabinets of three drawer each of stuff I classified in there for the last 30 years or so. I also sent to recycling boxes of magazines, reports of all sorts.

Must I still throw away all that is left in order to reach the essential? There are houses where you can hardly find one book, but where you find three cars, trucks, three TVs, etc. Bigger bigger, more you want. Will my situation improve to the point of being able to repatriate everything under one roof, spread all over since July?

Since the cold season is rumbling in the background and the first snow today piled up at 5 to 6 inches, I did not have much time to build from A to Z a shelter strong enough to stack up 800 books though I would have loved to have all the books with me.

At this point I am incline to spend the whole winter alone reading. Everyone is welcome though. I've worked like krazy three years in a row. Never took real vacation. Some contracts are shit. When you are finished you are on your own and you are being discarted like old rags.

With globalization the work I've been doing for the last three years could eventually be given by contract to people in India. I would not be the first to be a victim of this tendency. Thus the urgency to learn to live within one's means for I have hardly any hope of improving dramatically my lot for some time to come due to the choices I made and my ethical positions.

I am really trying to strategically build myself a reasonable future under the circumstances where I can live decently on a string budget. My income is the same as it was 30 years ago, except that 30 years ago I was having a great time with that kind of money.

I was promise to a brilliant future with a life in a good standing. If I had maintain the trajectory. Such has not been the case preferring the unbeaten path to the highway all the time, going on foot instead of riding at 100 miles an hour. I have nothing and I am financially worth not a penny. That is the essential for me now. Pennyless and worthless in a society that put material and money above everything.

P.S. I forget my camera at the cabin. I took nice pics lately. Well, next time then.

Cute cubic cabin

^{Sunset at Mt Megantic in Hampden}

Funny how this life of deprivation is pleasing me in many ways.
When I am in my cute cubic cabin, I have the impression I am in a spacecraft en route for I don't know where, which is just about where we don't know we are going in this life.
I deploy one arm and I am in my bedroom, I deploy the other I am in the kitchen. I lean and grab a book on the shelf. Even though the space is small I could sit five people! But I will soon add a new "wing", the South Wing 'cause I'd like not to spend the whole winter in such a small space. The kitchen/dining room est structurally built yet not inhabitable for lack of isolation and other things. I am to build a small living room (6'x8') but cozy.

Unbuilding

^{Little house located @ Hampden that I will unbuild next spring. It is about 2 miles from my own shack}
I finally got the OK to unbuild a house after I tried this summer to do so for a huge barn and other places. I thus will have all the wood I need to build up my own place, according to the zoning.

If the zoning stays "green", it means I have to limit myself to 215 sq. ft. that I would make square (14'8" x 14'8").
If the zoning becomes "white" as requested, the limits will be according to budget and town rules.

I am quite enthusiastic being here and making priorities. I have very serious financial constraints but for the time being I do not live too badly that situation.
Then again, I have to establish priorities for the cats and me.
It is hard to understand why things are still so difficult, for I am working six days a week! The insolation work I just finished up at Maude's place was quite a challenge.

^{Installation of "Double-Bubble on the wood structure I built.}
* * *
Fiber optic goes by on the road just down here. The other day a man stopped by with his car and I went to ask him if everything was OK only to find out he was an engineer with plans spead out over his laps. He was a guy from the cable company. He explained to me there were two fiber optic cable on the posts. One from Bell and one smaller belonging to Axion cable. I asked him if he thought it would be possible to get the internet here. He told me that they could arrange for a 5% broadband of the main cable to be connecting me. It is true that with only 5% of a fiber optic I would have a fast link home.
At the moment I have a hard time grabbing the air waves. After sunset I sometimes turn to the AM band to receive the French CBC from Toronto...

^{Radio-Canada's homepage for Ontario}

By the way

^{Colours fashioned by an accidental click}

Why the hell did I leave Montreal to come here? Simple. I got tired of living in the city. Living in the city, especially Montreal, became a nightmare. Many spaces that were part of my daily life were disappearing, such as the little "forest" behing my place and above all an ambiance linked to modest families instead of the one gentrification brings along. The increasing traffic and the noise it creates, people shouting in their cellphones everywhere, the higher cost of living made it unbearable. I had no wish to perform in that environment.
Although here is no paradise, I have at least lost one element that tops them all, that is stress. I don't see the point in being always stressed out.

^{A plant in the forest at night}
Here I can minimize my lifestyle without having to justify anything. I can devote my time to the steps of creation without worrying about end of months, worrying about money all the time. I lived as I used to live 10 years and more ago in Montreal, lifestyle which is impossible to maintain over there anymore. I will come back on that subject eventually.

H2O means water. Lots of it.

^{The river bed is where we see the trees}

Monday October 17^th
It rained non-stop from saturday afternoon to sunday evening, a total of 29 hours. 6 inches of the stuff fell down the sky. Considering the incredible amount of water surrounding my place I guessed some other places might have been suffering a bit more. Yet I was not expecting the spectacle I was about to see on my way to NDB.

^{And yet cows were grazing right there on Friday! Some had to be rescued by... boat.}

From top to bottom

For the last month I have been working on the insolation of the basement of the same house where I was painting the tin roof last summer. I had first to get rid of all the stuff that was a nuisance to the work and demolish unused rooms and stuctures. Then my collegue Jack and I worked on repairing the cement floor as well as reinforce the mortar on this rock basement.
I am almost finished building the wooden structure on which I will apply the "Double-bubble"® plastic-aluminium coated insolation. Since the rock is about three feet deep I had to conceive a structure that would go as high as the top of the rock where I am to curve the insolation way back to the main house frame. It has been very long and rather complex, but the result is there to see. Instead of buying new wood, I reused the wood that came from de demolition of some rooms and shelves that were not needed any longer. I used my sawdust and split the 3 x 5.5 in two, making enough wood to build the structure that is all screwed, not nailed.

Some days I go upstairs in the attic where I installed my computer and worked on the blog and other stuff from up there.

Some pictures, just for fun

<sup>Interesting spider web. It resemble some native art form

Oil lamp lighting and reflection in mirror

Late autumn colours.</sup>

Working hard on a Sunday

^{Hard to thing this river Galt was a tiny creek last summer}

Sunday October 9^th
It has been rainy so much in the night of Friday/Saturday that it reminded me July 14, 1987 in Montreal which was soaked to the point of seeing tanker trucks floating on some highways.

Here the land has absorbed most of the water but the soil is soaking wet.

Today, it rained again and I did not feel like staying inside to read or listen to the radio all day long. Thus, since autumn is advancing rapidly towards coldness et seeing all my attempts at demolishing/deconstructing buildings going down the drain (no puns intended) I decided to make use of the wood that is already here, left over by the former landowner. On top of that I don't see myself living in 8' x 8' cube the whole winter.

^{First step: a floor base}

That owner built this big wooden platform made of "palettes" for shipping goods all over the world. Using a forklift it is easy to lift those from containers and placing them in wharehouses or elsewhere. These palettes are solid. I undid the platform he made for tents during the hunting season and during the day I made my floor and my walls for an annex to the little cube that is home.

^{Second steps: the walls}

I then added all those glass-window I brought along with me from Montreal. I used garden walls for the roof and a plastic as a temporary roofing. This will be my kitchen/dining room, small but cozy.

<sup>Third steps: windows and roof


Fourth step: relaxing in the result of a hard day's work</sup>
Up to now, my home costs me 3 dollars since I arrived and started building in mid-July.

It is not a grand view from a mountain top but it will be great to look through during the winter time the snow all over. I made a panorama of the view.

Obviously there is still lots to do to make the place well insolated for the -40� we get around here. It will be done in time.

I have the feeling of recycling material... A good bunch of those palettes are undoubtedly coming all the way from Asia. When I was living in Montreal I was noticing most of them ended up in huge garbage bins in the back of the Home Depot, next to my place.
I could not believe that all this wood was being wasted. I thought it could be well used for structural purposes. Since Asia is undergoing such an intensive deforestation cycle and knowing a good percentage of these clear-cuts are to make palettes for shipping merchandise all over the world, I decided to put wheel to shoulder or to not just complain about it but do something and prove the feasibility of their use as structure for housing.

^{Photo - Bazuki Muhammad/Reuters/File - Christian Science Monitor, June 30, 2005
The world's largest container ship,Orient Overseas Container Line Shenzen, is based in Hong Kong. It sails to Europe and back in 56 days!}

A grand view from the B&B rooftop

^{Autumn colours at Mt. Megantic}

It's been freezing again last night in my bush, in the rivi�re aux Saumons (Salmon river) valley, at the western foot of Mt. Megantic.

Yet it is a beautiful day and I decided to make a 360º view from the B&B rooftop.