Posted with permission - This was originally posted on WashburneMarine.com by Randy Washburne - I have reformatted Randy's original post to work with my blog format. In so doing I have attempted to retain all of the original look and feel including punctuation.
Randel Washburne
Randel Washburne
Copyright 2007
Over the next twenty years, people indeed found and used the
Burnett Bay cabin, beginning with Feathercraft folding kayak inventor Doug
Simpson who arrived there in one of his early boats in December of 1986! Doug and
others that followed left their own notes in a ziplock bag which eventually
grew into a series of notebooks, with dozens of entries each year. Along with
kayakers, there were notes from pilots who landed helicopters and even wheeled
planes on the hard sand at low tide (including RCMP’s and Coast Guard
helicopter pilots).
Of the several hundred entries left during that period, not
a single one criticized building the cabin, or thought that it detracted from
the wild beach setting. Quite the opposite. And its journals were a large part
of its appeal. Here are a few excerpts from the journals:
·
It
would be hard to imagine a more fitting complement to the incredible beach and
forest surrounding it - but the cabin builder has done it.
·
We had
heard of the cabin from various friends and they all spoke fondly of the little
cabin in the woods. I could never figure out what would be so special but now I
know the secret too.
·
You,
little cabin, are wonderful as always. Never change. Always be here, for the
next time!
·
...I
gave thanks for my life and the wild desolation of this beach. I also give
thanks for this dear cabin. After rounding the Cape in big seas and dense fog,
I was very relieved for its comforts and stayed for three nites.
·
I can’t
tell you all how great it is to be able to stay in a place of such great
community. I feel very lucky to be here and share reading about all your
experiences.
·
What a
gift it’s been, arriving here and having the great good fortune to spend a day
in the company of so many beautiful spirits. Its been a joy to read the words
of those who have come before and to do that here, in this sweet magical cabin,
built and cared for by such inspiration. Thank you to all who help maintain
this beauty.
I’ve saved most of the journal entries for the Inside
Passage Traveler chapter, since these concern their experiences. I’ll put one
here since it speaks so well for itself.
·
We
twelve persons and two guides from diverse locations and backgrounds were
graced by the majesty of your beach. We picnicked with white wine, crystal,
salmon delicacies, and chocolate chip treats before stumbling across this diary
of more hearty and vigorous folks. Shamefully we admit to dropping out of the
sky in whirly birds - yes, helijets. But your tales of primitive pleasures and
triumphs have made us to the man (and woman) vow to return without man-made
crutches to help us grow fat as we infringe on nature’s creation. Tomorrow we kayak
and perhaps begin a discipline which will have us return powered by muscle,
sinew, courage, and pureness of mind. We salute you, our brothers and sisters
in flesh. Soon we will return brethren of the spirit. Good luck, hardy folk.
You are a minority, a fortunate few. 4 from Sacramento, 1 Bermuda (the writer),
1 N.Y., 6 Vancouver
Burnett Bay Expansion
and Re-roofing
I’d built the cabin for myself and Linda as an occasional
visitor. But it really wasn’t suitable for couples, and most that stayed slept
in a tent and used the cabin for sitting, cooking, eating, drying clothes, etc
in wet weather, and storing gear on the top bunk (by far a better use for it
than sleeping).
In 1999, Ed and Dennis came with me to Burnett Bay to expand
the cabin to accommodate a double bunk. The concept was to add a low shed on
the back with a roof sloping down from the level of the upper bunk, so that
about 24 inches could be added to the lower bunk width, and leaving the upper
wall and bunk intact. Ed and Dennis learned about all the usual cabin-building tasks
– scouring the beach for dimension lumber, cutting cedar bolts, and splitting
shakes. To accommodate our three tents I expanded and leveled the beach-front
tent area so that we had comfortable room for three of them without need to use
the beach.
Ripping out the lower back wall and framing the addition was
easy. For the bunk extension, I found a huge slab of cedar on the beach nearby
that had been roughly flattened with a chain saw. It wasn’t nearly smooth
enough for the sleeping surface, so I spent a half day with my hatchet and the
spokeshave taking down the high spots. We man-handled it into place, and with a
few minor extensions from pieces of shakes, it fitted perfectly.
Covering it the addition with shakes didn’t go as smoothly,
since the log that we used for bolts was really too small for good shakes. It
took a lot of cleaning, removing waste, and trimming and didn’t make nearly as
nice a roof as I’d have liked.
While we were making shakes the clients from a kayak tour
group camped at the far end of the beach came hiking down to see the “hippie
cabin” they’d been told about. Most seemed to have some appreciation of
building with native beach materials. One pointed at the shakes and asked how
we made “those flat things”.
I’d noticed that the original roof was nearing the end of
its life. Many of the shakes were thoroughly sufficed with moss and most of the
upper layers were spongey. So in 2002 I returned alone to replace it.
I went up in early June ready to stay for two weeks. Due to
a lot bad weather and very difficult shake-making, it took the entire period to
do half of the roof – the western side which took the worst beating.
I stayed inside the cabin during the entire period, pushing
my gear into the lower bunk extension (under the new shed roof), and covering
what was being replaced with tarps during rain or at night.
New west roof on Burnett bay. The shakes found this time are
clearly inferior, and the skylight is regrettable. Lower left: auger handle for
countersinking nails in the new ridgepole. Lower right: hauling the ridgepole
and other lumber down the beach.
I also added a skylight, since I’d seen from the third
Deserters cabin what a huge improvement overhead light made, especially in
rainy winter weather. But it was probably a mistake, largely because of how I
built it. I covered it with plastic sheeting and tucked the upper and side
edges under the shakes and left the lower edge overlapping the shakes below
(tacked down to them with battens as with the windows. This worked fine except
that it would be hard to replace. Instead I should have built a box of
dimension lumber, sealed its edges with flashing, and then tacked the plastic
to the outsides of the box where it could be easily fixed by anyone with a hatchet.
I did make a cover for the skylight that anyone could remove and put back into
place, since the plastic would not survive long left exposed. All of this was
probably too much to expect from the average visitor, and a leaking skylight
would seriously detract from the cabin’s ambiance and life span. In short, I
wish I hadn’t.
As I finished, I also learned from a kayak visitor about
leaving a space between the shakes to flush debris, but too late.
In 2007 I came back again to finish re-roofing and replace
the skylight. Ed Putnam helped me with the work, which made an enormous difference.
We found a excellent cedar log for making shakes on the beach near the cabin.
After ripping off the east roof, we augmented the rafters with new ones of 2 by
6 dimensional lumber and added nailers make from Alaska yellow cedar (which we
found in abundance on the beach this year). We put on new shakes, and having
plenty to spare, added a third layer in places as added protection against
storm damage. In There were enough shakes that we also covered many of the
inferior shakes I put on the west roof in ’02 and the shed roof in ’99. I
replaced the skylight (which someone had covered with mylar, an improvement
over the original visqueen) with Lexan polycarbonate, which is tough enough
that it shouldn’t need to be covered for the winter. Though smaller than the
original skylight, it still let in plenty of light. I brought in a new stove
now equipped for 3” pipe instead of the 4” used previously and relocated the
hole in the roof directly over it so that it no longer used the elbow at the
side of the stove. The only problem was that we forgot about the stove when adding
the shake nailers so that the pipe had to go much closer to the wall than we
would have liked, but I insulated everything with aluminum flashing so I hope
it will be alright if a small fire is kept.
I made a large quantity of extra shakes and stored then
against the east wall for use in case or storm damage or leaks.
Deserters Cabin
In 1986 I realized I would never get to Burnett Bay in the
late fall to early spring seasons, the best time to have a cabin refuge. In
spite of the example set by Feathercraft’s Doug Simpson, the distance from Port
Hardy was too far, the daylight too short and the weather just too volatile. I
needed something closer.
I’d also come to a new perspective about where cabins should
be, or not be. I could see that the coast was changing fast, and that its
wildness was being diminished by increasing use, primarily by kayakers. Not everyone
liked cabins, I knew.
Consequently, I would not put another one in a place that
was in any way attractive for camping or even landing. Instead I would find a
place that seemed impossible to camp at, and conceal the cabin to the extent of
leaving no trace of any habitability. The primary impact of cabins is a
perceptual one – if people didn’t know it was there, it could not diminish
their sense of wildness.
I needed a place that was within one winter day’s paddle
from Port Hardy – no more than ten miles. That led me to examine the Deserters
Group, halfway across Queen Charlotte Strait. There was one place I had been
ashore that had a gravel beach in a cove separated from an outer boulder beach
by impenetrably thick salal brush. The outer beach, usually swept by waves from
the channel, would not be attractive for landing kayaks. If I could use the
inner beach, build a hidden trail across to the outer one, find a spot there,
and find the materials on either beach, it would work.
It did work. I went out in November and squeezed my
woodstove tent on to the upper edge of the inner gravel beach, which only
worked because there were no spring tides then. I spent two days cutting a
trail across through the six-foot high salal and clearing a new tent site just
in from the boulder beach. The next night my tent would have been swamped by
the increasing tides. (The next year I found signs of a kayaker campsite there which
appeared to have been driven out by the high tide, unaware that a comfortable
cabin and tent site were less than 100 meters away.)
I left the salal at the trail’s entrance in place, and wired
it back so that I could go through. When I departed and removed the wire, the
entrance snapped closed. A year later I stopped at the gravel beach with
several friends and challenged them to find the cabin. They looked hard for
about ten minutes before spotting the trail, only because they knew there was
one.
After moving camp to the new tent site, I picked the cabin
site. It was perfect – located in a stand of small trees and with a thick
screen of small spruce and salal screening it from the boulder beach, which
contained all the building materials that I’d need. I only needed to remove one
small tree and some salal to make plenty of room for the cabin. Later I cut
some “viewing ports” in the outer screen so that I could see out to the
channel, where ships and log barges passed a mile away. Even with these, the
cabin was invisible from twenty feet away on the beach.
The front boulder beach at the Deserters cabin.
From a photo
taken by Audrey Sutherland.
This cabin was my smallest yet – only seven by seven feet, because
I knew I’d be the only user. Largely due to the influence of Kayak Bill’s
shelters, and since it would be used during the darkest season, I made the roof
almost entirely of clear plastic sheeting, which also substantially reduced the
demand for shakes.
Deserters Cabin, showing the good effect of the plastic roof
on interior light. Water catchment on rear roof at bottom
The result was a somewhat simplified and reduced version of Burnett
Bay. The walls were only four feet high, since they needed no windows because
of the roof. I finished it in less than two weeks, in spite of almost constant
rain every day and daylight beginning at eight and ending at four. So I had
plenty of time to enjoy it in the first season. It had the same 24-inch wide
bunk, surfaced with half-inch thick shakes, and a small table with seating at
the bunk. The stove was set in a bed of rocks from the beach, with the pipe
exiting vertically through the single course of shakes on the lower part of the
back roof (above which the plastic began). For flooring, I hauled in buckets of
smooth pea gravel from the beach, and set two-by dimension lumber pieces into
it.
The result was perfect. Water was something of a problem,
since there was no reliable source in the island group. I depended on my catchment
system off the roof, which drained into a found five gallon bucket.
Getting to the Deserters in late October or November was
always uncertain. Before leaving Seattle, I’d try to figure out the forecast
two days in advance to allow for the full day of travel to get to north
Vancouver Island. Arriving too late to go anywhere, I’d camp at one of the
private campgrounds around Port Hardy.
Once I stayed, during pouring rain, in my woodstove tent at
a campground on the road to Coal Harbour. I took a shower in the campground’s
restroom and headed across the road to the nearby restaurant for dinner, clean
but wearing clothes suited only for camping. The restaurant was called
“Snuggles”, and this was Saturday night. In the dead of winter, the more
affluent of Port Hardy hire a baby sitter, put on their best, and splurge on
dinner out at Snuggles.
Against their better judgement about my appearance, Snuggles
admitted me. A fire burned in the hearth, and about a dozen well-dressed
couples dined by candlelight. They were entertained by a pianist attired in
tuxedo with tails. Accompanying him was a singer, similarly attired but with
the addition of top hat and cane. We dined to Broadway show tunes, delighting
the couples, while I lurked inconspicuously in my corner. The dinner was excellent
and not too expensive, and I went back through the rain in a daze to start a
fire in my tent stove.
By contrast – the next night. But first: getting there. The
forecast calls for a gale late in the evening but light winds before it. I struck
the tent at dawn, threw it all in the car, and drove out to Bear Cove, where I
loaded the boat at the launching ramp, took the car over to the ferry parking
lot, and ran back before the tide took my boat. Finally I was on the water by
nine and out of Hardy Bay by ten. A little southerly wind sprang up crossing
Goletas Channel, and it got rougher and colder across Gordon Channel to the
Deserters, the most exposed and lonely part of the crossings. I landed at my
beach about one pm, and had everything hauled into the cabin and the kayak
stowed in the brush by three. Cut a little firewood and went down to the low
tide level on the boulder beach to get some mussels.
Now the wind had risen. The full gale was in the works and
rain blew by in sheets. In the last of the twilight I regained the shelter of
my little grove of trees, while the wind roared overhead deflected by the high
rocks to the south. I lit the woodstove and a candle, and steamed the mussels.
I ate them while lying on my board and gravel floor in warmth of the fire,
listening to the rain on the roof, and watching the branches of the small trees
tossed by the wind overhead. This made all the work worthwhile.
Over the next three years I added a front porch with a
shelter wall as a place to store and cut firewood out of the weather. I also
cut a trail up and over the rocks and down the little peninsula to the south,
where there were open rocks and heather where I could look all the way down the
straits to the Broughton Group. The trail climbed through the brush just above
the inner beach but hidden so that no one would guess it was there.
I didn’t get there again until 1999, stopping with Dennis
and Ed on the way to Burnett Bay. The area around my little cabin was
completely changed – all of the brush screen in front and the trees overhead
were dead. The cabin was now completely exposed in a wasteland of brown. What
had happened? I couldn’t imagine how my activity there might have killed all
the vegetation.
Sometime later I figured it out – it had been sprayed with
defoliant, probably from the air. The cabin could certainly be seen from above,
but I didn’t think anyone would care. Apparently someone did, and that was the end
of it.
So that ends my career as a cabin-builder, but maybe not as
a maintainer. Re-reading the Burnett Bay journals encourages me to do all I can
to keep that cabin serviceable as long as I can, or until the authorities
decide to remove it. Keeping it in good shape and preserving and advertising
its extraordinary journals seem to be its best defense against that happening.
If you go there, please help with both of these as much as you can.
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