Off the Grid … My Dream Cabin for Solitary Reflection & Reading

 

Oh my gosh, is school over yet?!?!

The boys have been SO GOOD, but homeschooling just seems never ending.

It’s not that I mind having them around all the time — some things have been truly awesome — it’s just that I’m never alone anymore. And I quite liked finally having some head space where I could hear myself think after 8 years with kids at home full time.

Anybody else feeling this way?

 

I guess that’s why I started Googling — because if there’s one thing you can do without thinking, it’s Google surfing!

 

My search was off-the-grid cabins (Well, off-the-grid cabins and over-40 skincare. I’ve never spent so much on my fine lines and sun spots before! Talking to myself in the mirror too much in order to have an adult conversation, I guess. Ha!).

 

In my search, I came across Innermost House. Sited in the coastal mountains of Northern California, it was created by Diana Lorence, an inspirational speaker on the pleasures of simple life, and her husband Michael Anthony (who designed the home). The idea for Innermost House grew from Lorence’s 20 year search for “a perfect unity of experience in place, time, and mind” to be a place of reflection and conversation.

 

Images and quotes from Innermost House

 

This small cabin is about 12′ square and is sheltered behind by a hill and surrounding forest, especially that stunning oak. Thanks to their warm (or cool, as it were) embrace, the cabin’s temperature tops out at 75, even when outside temps soar to 100.

 

Now, Diana and Michael live at Innermost House as a part of their unpaid, nonprofit “association of friends,” which seeks to foster the exploration and discovery of “the unified beginning of society in the individual soul.”

 

 

“We draw upon the rational spirit of the American Enlightenment, the transcendental spirit of the American Renaissance, and the environmental spirit of the American West, all resting upon a foundation of Native American wisdom, to form a unified culture of individual possibility.”

 

Well, I think if I were to live in — or visit — this house, I could rediscover my own perfect unity of place, time, and, most especially, my mind!

 

 

The house does not have any electricity or running water (hence, off-the grid), so they warm the cabin, cook, and heat water (both for cooking and for bathing) over the fire. Light comes from beeswax candles.

 

 Innermost House contains 5 rooms in total:

 

 

 

 

OHHHH!! The BOOKS!!! All of the things I studied as a Lit. major in college. And to think I complained!!

 

 

Yes, once upon a time, I thought deep thoughts. Now I’m lucky if I think to put the mug under the Nepresso machine before coffee runs all over the counter. That wouldn’t happen if I were off the grid and DIDN’T HAVE a NESPRESSO!

 

 

The bathroom has a toilet and a drain in the tiled floor for sponge bathing. Shaker pegs always say “simplicity.”

 

 

Walls are white plaster applied over board, and the frame is of mixed post & beam and stick construction. Floors were made from tongue & groove pine boards, and the ceiling above from fir.

 

Shifting light on the plaster.

 

I’m having flashbacks to swimming in Walden Pond with dear friends and seeing the replica Thoreau’s cabin when I was a younger and more unencumbered woman.

 

At 10′ x 15′, Thoreau’s cabin is about the same size as my She-Shed Office! Not that I’ve been out there much, recently.

 

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately… and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

 

But back to today’s tiny house!

 

 

Truly, I wouldn’t change my life for all the tea in China, but nor would I mind spending a couple of days (or a couple of months) re-collecting my thoughts and re-connecting to my “original relation to life.”

 

Diana, if you ever want to swap houses for a week, you know where to find me! I can cook over a fire just fine. I was a very good girl scout.

 

Next week I’ll be back with either an art post or a window treatment post … or an upholstery post … or a stove post. Weigh in if you have a preference!

 

‘Til next Saturday!

-Amy

Additional quotes and pictures of Innermost House were taken from Tiny House Blog.