LNOYL

It was getting colder, and although it rarely snowed in the winter, a certain type of damp chill was settling in on the island. The basement of the vet clinic would soon be too cold to do anything in other than sleep, and I needed to find a new place. Living with a persistent chill during the day is like living with extraneous noise – it is a constant distraction. I’d get to experience the real truth of this a few years later, when I lived a “BC Box” during the colder months. From what I could tell, a ‘BC Box’ was a particular style of home built during the 70′s. The nice lady who owned the home was just trying to get by financially, and to save on utilities, the lights stayed off most times, and the heat was set just slightly higher than ambient temperature at night. The heat was off during the day, so the bones of this home never had a chance to heat up. The house exuded the type of chill where your fingers would instinctively lock and grip one another to conserve heat. It didn’t matter how much I turned up the electric heater in the room – the air from the rest of the house would seep in (bad 70′s insulation) and keep it cold. I slept under three blankets while fully clothed, and wore a hat to bed to keep warm. I lasted about three, maybe four weeks doing that, then proceeded to crash on a few couches until a friend let me house sit at her place while she was on vacation for a month. The second I was warm again, I could get back to mixing…

As fall progressed, Jay helped me with finding a new place to live. I started perusing the grocery store community pin up walls after work, and scouring local newspapers for rental and house-sitting ads (I wasn’t really aware of craigslist in 05′, and in small towns, traditional media still functioned well enough at that time). I knew that if another house sitting opportunity didn’t arrive soon, I would end up paying substantially for rent, which would stifle the flow of instruments and gear I needed. Given the amount of noise I’d be making, I figured that cheaper apartments or living arrangements with roommates wouldn’t work so well. Sometimes it’s not the transient loud sounds from a snare drum or cymbal splash that upsets the neighbours. What gets under the skin instead is the jarring starts, stops, and repetition. The similar sounding takes, and snippets of song sections that appear to repeat for no discernible reason. These sounds are filtered through walls, and become unintelligible, out of context, and therefore grating.

When September arrived, I started looking for a place to rent. I spent a lot of time in the corolla, checking out various places. Trish’s parents had a home that was available. I had a hard time resisting that one – I knew that if I rented it, Id have a beautiful, motivating place to record in – but no cash left over to fill it with the right equipment. Another accommodation was right on the beach, complete with inspiring panoramic ocean views. Unfortunately, living there required assisting the owner with yard work on the weekends, and the guest house where I would be staying had eighties floral patterns on the walls. Jay found this other place – which was modern and of perfect size, but it was being drywalled at the time, and wouldn’t be done for a while. I found an ad for a place near Shaunigan lake. I called up the number, and got these strange directions to view the house. I eventually found it – it was a house, placed in the middle of what seemed to be wild forest. You had to reach it by dirt road. The guys who had lived there had girly posters on the walls, and there were piles of budlight cans everywhere. No lights were to be found on the property, so when the sun went down, the dirt road must have looked like a black hole. They were asking 850 a month plus utilities. I didn’t think my 1990′s low suspension could take the dirt road to get there (there was a plethora of pebbles stuck in the tire tread and the bottom of the car got scraped up), and my imagination didn’t want to tango with the pitch black nights out in the isolated hillbilly void.

Closer to town, I found another place for rent that might have worked. It was this little cottage like cabin, arranged apartment style, on the front lawn of the main home it was associated with. It was kind of like Alice in Wonderland on the inside. It had this weird, sloping ceiling in one of the bedrooms. I wasn’t the only one checking out the place that evening; there was a single mom and her pre-teen kid also looking it over. I think they got the place as well. I wonder how they managed in the small, oddly shaped space.

The series of towns within the valley were all connected by the island highway, so they were sort of close knit. By word of mouth, someone in a neighbouring town, Cobble Hill, heard that I was looking for a long term house sitting situation. They wanted someone who could also take care of their cat while they were away in Mexico for six months. Six months! One place for fall, winter and spring, where I could get really settled in and work on the recordings. I confirmed that it wasn’t an apartment, and that their were no roommates. I met the owners, Cathy and Ian, a few days later, in order to go over the details to see if this arrangement would work for everyone involved.

I met them in the vet clinic parking lot, and followed their red Nissan to their home. We took a winding road, flanked by the occasional set of houses, open fields and thick forested areas, so that the community seemed nestled within the terrain. We turned right, then right again and entered the park. Except it wasn’t a park with jungle gyms and benches. It was a trailer park. Now, most of us have stereotypes about trailer parks, and as I drove through the park entryway, I must admit that mine came to the surface. We slowly drove over the many speed bumps in the parks winding road. It was evident that the place was well maintained. But the trailers looked very small, close together, and I wasn’t sure if this was going to work. But up ahead the red Nissan kept driving…how big was this trailer park anyway?

The road began to ascend. Quit steeply. Up and up through the park and then a sharp U turn to the left, where the road then levelled out. There was a hidden alcove back here. There was a single row of prefabricated homes to the left, and my first impression was that they looked like summer cottages; sort of what you would find in Ontario cottage country. To the right was a large, steep hill, covered by trees. Ian and Cathy pulled into their lot, which had a fenced backyard. As I stepped into the yard, I saw this workshop out back, set against a garden. I walked into the mobile home, and toured the premises. There were two bedroom, two bathrooms, a dining room, living room, kitchen, laundry, and a front yard, that was beautifully landscaped as it rolled down the hill. When I walked onto the adjoining deck/patio, and looked out, and saw all this:

This was one of my favourite places on the island. I called it the golden trailer. Within a years time, I figured out many things about myself while living within the golden trailer. I also learned how to make a record.

Addendum: I think Ian and Cathy got it right. They purposefully defined their living arrangements to accommodate what they loved to do the most…travel. Mcmansion mortgages, even at their healthiest, require lots of life support…