In a former life, and for more than 11 years, I travelled 90 kilometers daily for a job I loved in Toronto. For the most part, I enjoyed the trek, however, through the years, the scenery changed from green to grey with neighbourhood views replaced by concrete sound barriers. By the time I left that life, my morning commute took 75 minutes.
Fast forward and I’ve been working from home on Vancouver Island for more than a decade. My most recent commute has been a rather short one; a few minutes down the hallway to my dining table, a view of neighbouring homes and gardens and a schedule that requires using a car only once a week; a much better work/life balance than I had in the Big Smoke.
Our Shirley build is another 75-minute drive from home, and while much of it includes spectacular scenery along winding roads, it has meant almost three hours in the car some days, which has led us to make a temporary and part time move to the building site.
When interviewing others who have also taken the plunge to build, many solutions were shared; staying put and driving back and forth, renting near the build site, living with nearby family, and selling the existing home and living onsite in trailers or huts.
For us, what has made the most sense, and while we are both still working, is to live part time here and part time there, a home and a home away from home. We are however, talking about two very different homes.
Our temporary Shirley abode is a decades old tent trailer, reminiscent of the wonderful summer holidays our family shared when I was a child. I have very happy memories of Expo 67, lying on one side of the trailer with my Mrs. Beasley doll, while laughing at my brothers’ jokes from the other side, and falling asleep listening to the fire crackling outside. I am far from 7 now and quite certain that the new memories are going to be very different. While the view from the front door is spectacular, the look inside is dated and tired. Luckily, the roof doesn’t leak and our snoring scares the bears. Steps away from our future bed, we tell ourselves it’s all part of the adventure, and while I no longer have Mrs. Beasley, I still keep my flashlight nearby, and walk very briskly to the portable toilet just as I did way back when.
Our trailer is a 2-minute walk to the meditation corner, a fire pit where we can distance ourselves, and our family’s trailers, leaving us close enough to feel the love and the heat. We have what we need; tasty food, clean water, and great company. There is nothing quite like waking to the sound of songbirds and the buzz of bees… and saws.
So, for now, we are camping, living alongside our family of builders, dividing our time between two different worlds. And while I never thought I would be living in a tent at this age, we are grateful to be safe, warm, and dry, when so many others in this world are not. Less time on the road, means more time on the land; close enough to have conversations and make decisions while we adjust to our new locale, roughing it now to make way for the smooth life later on.
Mrs. Beasley, Tent Trailer, View from the Front Door