Ode to Our Outhouse

Almost fifteen years ago, my husband Bob and I paved paradise to put up a house in a wooded area outside of Creston, Montana. We didn’t think about it that way at the time, of course. We thought we had found the place of our dreams—with gorgeous views of the mountains and ten acres of rolling glacial scree to call our own. The first time we walked the lot, tears streamed down my cheeks to have found a place of such perfection. It was silent but for the sounds of the birds. And while there were other houses in the neighborhood, we couldn’t see them from our hilltop hideaway. Small trees packed tightly together made up this third-growth forest. Our first task was cutting enough of those trees to make room for our house, shop and driveway—irrevocably altering paradise. Yes, the land had already been subdivided, roads and driveways put in. Yes, houses would inevitably be built around us, and if we hadn’t built on that site, someone else would. But this wasn’t someone else. This was us.

Looking back, I didn’t consciously come to realize I had any problem with the decision we made to build this house in this place almost up until the point we decided to move away from it. Something buzzed in my head from early on, though, and the buzz eventually grew to a roar I could no longer ignore. My increasing disturbance by the conspicuous consumption that surrounded me and my own participation in it all came to be symbolized by, of all things, my refrigerator. The source of the buzz. All the while the house was being built, as we sanded and cut trim boards, stained and varnished, as soon as the power tools were turned off, the silence returned. The sounds of paradise seeped in through the not yet tight windows and doors. As we neared completion and more purposefully tried to shut out the elements, those sounds diminished. By the time the appliances were in and functional, we might as well have been living in downtown Detroit. Not that there was suddenly the sound of traffic or anything, no, that was just the issue. We heard nothing of the outside. What we heard was the almost constant buzz of the refrigerator—the buzz that eventually drove me to realize what we had done. The paving of paradise was complete.

Bob and I lived happily in that house for eight years. Happily, that is, meaning we really liked the house, it’s location, and our neighbors. We had to work hard to make ends meet financially, though, at jobs we were increasingly unhappy with, and as the refrigerator continued to buzz, we came to see that by choosing this house we had chosen a lifestyle. We were homeowners, we had every material possession we could want; we were supposed to be happy. But we came to recognize symptoms of stress—in ourselves and in each other. We were both working at least fifty hour weeks. Bob had become a partner in his own company. I was teaching in a self contained classroom with ever-increasing numbers of wounded students, zapping every ounce of my emotional energy. Our work was taking its toll. The refrigerator’s buzz became more irritating than ever. Maybe this is what happens when you pave paradise.

We talked over our options constantly. We’ve always been dreamers, moving from one adventure to another with little hesitation. We play a game I call “alternative reality”—envisioning different lives for ourselves in places all over the country—and then all over the world. We by books about living in Costa Rica, read about expat Americans taking up new lives. We talk of the possibility of moving even farther away from “civilization,” at which my mother laughs. “How can you get further away than this?” she asks, not meaning to issue a challenge. We continually seek our next adventure.

Our current adventure came unexpectedly, on a Sunday afternoon. As part of this game, I had taken to regularly reading the Classifieds, just for fun. For a few years, I had seen an ad with a terrible photo of this funky looking cabin on a state land lease north of Whitefish. For years, Bob had dismissed it as being too much money for a questionable looking house on land you had to continually pay for. We looked at ads for land in other areas north of Whitefish, too, and one beautiful spring day we decided to take a drive up there. Since we were going right by the turnoff to Beaver Lake, where this funky cabin was located, we decided to finally go and take a look.

We pulled onto Beaver Lake Road, and drove the four increasingly bumpy dirt-road miles that led to the cabin sites. We turned down the first driveway—Lot 18—and saw a cabin that could not possibly be the one in the ad’s photo. Huge beautiful logs in a half-timber design, this cabin was anything but funky. This cabin was adorable. Most Americans would think of it as being too small for two people and two dogs, with its not quite 700 feet of floor space, but it seemed plenty big to us. And then we walked around to the back of the house and saw the lake. Beaver Lake--reflecting a deep, milky green that instantly brought to mind the glacial blue of Many Glacier’s Grinnell Lake. Now this, we thought, is paradise.

And so begins our next adventure—life on the shores of Beaver Lake. There are no buzzing refrigerators here, because there is no electricity. No running water. No plumbing. No snowplows clearing the three miles of road at the end of the county road. Let me back up just a minute: no plumbing. That means we have an outhouse. We’re one of the lucky ones; our outhouse is grandfathered in. Other cabin owners have to have porta-potties brought in, or composting toilets, or some other creative solution when there are no septic fields for miles around.

Bob, the initial skeptic, was sold from the moment he saw the place. I was not so sure. For every problem, he had a solution. For each of my doubts, he cited a benefit. I was fast approaching burnout in my almost twenty years as a full time teacher, and I knew it. If we moved to this cabin, our expenses would be reduced to the point that I could work part-time. Bob could pursue his latest passion—building artistic, beautiful wooden kayaks. We would shed the mantra currently espoused in this country—that bigger is better and a life spent working at a job that stresses you out is par for the course. Everyone does it, so what’s the big deal?

So we made the move, anticipating working hard, but consciously trading Bob’s job, which had become boring and unfulfilling, for a full-time job maintaining our lives here, hopefully with a little time to build kayaks . And for me, teaching part time would clear a space in my life for writing projects I hoped to pursue, a chance to slow down and take a breath, reflecting on the many paths before me.

As soon as we made the move, we knew it was right. In so many ways, our outward lives now reflect more closely the values we hold. I don’t know many people who feel that way. It is worth everything. We work harder than ever, but it is work that sustains us—work we have chosen. Will we stay here forever? I’m sure we won’t. Because alternate reality continues to be our favorite game, and there are many adventures left to be had. But our decision to move to Beaver Lake has been a turning point, one from which, in so many ways, there is no turning back. Once you have freed yourself, found your balance and a way to live deliberately, nothing else is ever quite the same.

My work has evolved in ways I never would have dreamed of when this latest adventure began, and Bob has become chief chef and bottle washer, and has moved on from kayak-building to a newly rekindled passion for photography. Life is good. And as the sound of the refrigerator dies away, this goodness has a new symbol—of all things, the outhouse. We moved in anticipating that one of our first “improvements” would be to put in a septic field and indoor plumbing. This time, though, we waited before pouring the concrete. And in the meantime, we’ve discovered that an outhouse isn’t so bad. In fact, I kind of like it. I spend at least a few moments each day walking the well-worn path from the cabin to the outhouse, noticing how much a person’s perspective can change. In fact, things I used to think of as “normal,” don’t always seem normal to me anymore. The thought of someone deliberately putting a toilet inside their house seems more than odd—it’s really kind of gross, when you think about it. And now I have time to think—about this and many other things. As old patterns break, I can see with new eyes. Our next adventure will look different because of what we’ve learned from this one. A person can live well with very little electricity. Water is our most valuable resource. Two people really don’t need much space to live. Material possessions—including home ownership—are never more valuable than our time. Paradise is really much better unpaved—above or below the ground. The outhouse stays.