Chopper Hostel

The day starts whenever I crack my eyes open. In the winter it’s always later. The cabin is still asleep, and the mornings are frigid. The remnants of the previous night’s fire is usually enough to keep the pipes from freezing but there’s always a few gallons of water in jugs just in case. You really don’t know what the new day will bring you can only start waking the place and see where you stand.

Once it’s cold out I basically live in my Carhartt coveralls. They’re lined, waterproof and warm and they are the first thing I grab once my feet hit those cold, hard floorboards. I keep them on a hook near the woodstove and are usually pretty warm when I pile them on my chilled bones. Usually about this time the hound makes his way from under the blankets and aims for the door for his mornin’ walkabout. Of course, I sleep with my dog in the bed, I ain’t no commie!

I hit my porch and spend the next couple of minutes diggin’ around tryin’ tpo find my dick after a cold night’s sleep and layers of long johns and coveralls. That cold slap to the face and a long piss brings things into focus and after a few shakes I head back inside to see if the pipes are frozen up. If not I can take my mornin’ massive on the commode like a modern man, however the alternative is a caveman on a bucket in the cold yard and a propane heater thawing the frozen pipes

I have a kerosene heater I use to initially warm the studio while I get a fire going from the wood I readied the night before, tinder to start and dry wood for fire up. The woodstove will keep the studio warm and I’m usually turning off the kero heater about halfway through my morning coffee. I try to get a little writing done while the room warms. Usually only a paragraph or two but it’s nice to start the day with an original thought and that’s usually what I try to write down while I finish my coffee. By the time I’m done I have a handle on how to approach my day now that the cabin’s awake and ready for action.

This year I’m processing firewood as I go. I have plenty of trees on or near the property that I can fell and I have been since firing up the stove this year. The mornings focus is on chopping enough wood to keep me and the dog warm for that day and evening with enough ready for the next morning. This usually takes an hour or so chopping logs into usable sizes with an axe. I’ve probably chopped at least a cord or so with an axe so far and I actually enjoy it. It’s a surprisingly nice way to start the day once you get used to it.

I’ve taken to calling the Danger Hut a cabin rather than a house and with it a entirely different approach to living in it. In a house things are predictable, constant, a house is a safe place, a cabin, not so much. Although the cabin is MY safe space it is far from safe, you get what you pay for, and I didn’t pay shit!

When I first started living in this place it was nothing short of a death trap. Holes in the roof and an addition that doubled the size of the structure without making any sense in its layout or construction. Walls thrown up on a whim creating voids and leaks that continued for all those years of pill addled hillbillies setting fires and livin’ thier best fentanyl laced lives. Nothing about this place made sense but I bought it anyway figuring if I could sleep in some of the places I’m slept in before I could definitely make a life with this overwhelmingly horrible structure, with a lot of work and a strong stomach.

I’ve stripped away all the garbage, dirty diapers and questionable addition to reveal a hundred-year-old miners shack that leans to the North, leaks like a sieve, heated with a woodstove and an 80lb Tennessee Mountain Kure.

It’s a rough start for most but for me it’s simply better than it was. In the summer it’s fantastic and the winters are getting better every year. It’s now a functioning cabin and I really don’t see it ever becoming a ‘house’. I can handle settling down in a cabin, but a house somehow rubs me the wrong way. I can’t tell you why that is but the way I live in my cabin would never really fly in a house. Whether it’s a house or a cabin I call it home and my home simply isn’t as lethal as it used to be.

Once the woodstove is operating as required I need to access the condition of the roof and plumbing on that particular day and what, if anything, needs to be addressed to make it through the next 24 hours. If the roof doesn’t need mending and the pipes haven’t exploded, I can hit the studio and put in AT LEAST an hour of painting. After that hour I will either continue painting or if that previous hour didn’t find me in the ‘zone’ I allow myself to put down the brushes and focus my attention elsewhere. Surprisingly I hardly ever find myself walkin’ away. An hour is usually enough time to tell which way the day is going to unfold.

Rainy days? well rainy days suck and they will continue to suck until the money for a new roof suddenly materializes and I can make that happen. Until then I’m just doin’ my best to keep the leaks at bay and the whole place from collapsing from unchecked moisture rotting the floorboards. So far so good but it takes a lot of time.

Gorilla homesteading is what I’m calling this approach to the American dream. I found a place to live and took one of the millions of abandoned houses spread across the country and made that four figured shithole a place I can ride out my golden years. The place that I chose to homestead is right in the middle of most poverty riddled areas of Appalachia in southern West Virginia. No work, the collapse of the coal industry and the opiate saturation that ruined towns across Appalachia, these people live hard, and I planted my ass in the middle of it. I just started livin’ dirty, riding the mountains and figuring out my life far below the poverty line in an area where poor is the norm.

I ain’t better than anybody and in the hollers that I now frequent that mentality goes a long way but that’s not to say you can let your guard down. When you set your sites on your homestead deep in holler you need to plant your stakes with guns blazing and a firm resolve in the work that’s ahead of you. I cleared a pill house and the folks that frequented it. I made sure they heard me comin’ and made it clear they shouldn’t come back. That part can be a lot of fun and I had a blast, ain’t gonna lie.

I’m a single guy, no wife no kids, nobody to bring down with my decisions. If this ship sinks it sinks with me on it, by my own hand and I’m the only victim if this all blows up in my face.

Not that I plan on having it all blow up but shit happens. I already had someone try to pull the carpet out from under things so you never know. That is as close as I’ll ever come to fallin’ homeless again, now my only focus is protecting my few square acres.

My days got infinately better with the addition of a runnin’ truck. Being that I hadn’t had the bike on the road for some time I rode it late into the cold weather while I tried to figure out a mystery problem with getting the truck back on the road,

Eventually the snow started to fly I found myself living my days within walking distance. Walkin’ about a mile in each direction I was eating whatever I could find at Dollar General to fill my backpack and walk back only to do it again the next day. Just makin’ it day to day took all my time and waklin’ the mountain roads of West Virginia is exhausting and a real drag on the ol’ self-esteem but it needed to be done, Now I’m living the high life with a runnin’ truck, a trip to Wal-Mart bi-weekly some 13 miles away…and not walkin’.

Wal-Mart in my neck of the woods is somethin’ special. Drop in on any 15th or 30th when the state checks come in and the store stinks of Marlboros permiating off the welfare set, woodsmen stockin’ up on flour, beer and bullets and baby mommas in pajama pants out there workin’ the system. It’s a congrigation of folks just gettin’ by and I ain’t no different.

Short of any disasters that may need repairin’ back at the cabin I can spend the rest of the day in the studio paintin’ until around dinner time. Dinner in the winter is never a big deal and I usually just throw something in the oven while I take a look at the wood stash to see if it will cover me until morning. If need be, I’ll chop up another wheelbarrow full to last me depending on the outside temperature, I usually get by with on barrow full but when that chill hits the air I can use up to two and a half.

With the wood gathered I stoke the firebox, put on some warm socks and roll my first fatty of the evening. There’s a big old recliner with my name on it and I’m sure I’ll find some bullshit on Netflix to fall asleep to.

The winter’s not easy but it’s rewarding in it’s own way. Just makin’ it is surprisimgly good for my soul. For years I’ve found myself questioning the road that brought me here. The last few years have been trying. From clearing the property of decades of grossness and misery, to hookin’ up the electric service and now warming my bones beside the fire on a cold winters night.

When I first laid my webbed toes of this spoiled acreage I would have never have invisioned being as comfortable as I am here today. The prosperity I feel now is relative to the horrors I faced when work first started . Sure, this place is a dump if I was to go out and compare it to the Joneses, but they don’t live here and the only comparison that I’m making is what it was like when I first got here.

I’ve had to grow comfortable with the way I live. I’m a mildly successful painter and writer, neither of which seems to pull in much cash these days. This place, no matter how horrible it was when I signed that deed, has been a God send. I love makin’ my way through life the way I do. Makin’ my place in the mountains with next to no income has been a tough but here I find myself painting and writing, somehow, still payin’ the bills on my little shack in the mountains.

If you appreciate what I’m doing here and would like to contribute to me and Chopper Hostel please know anything is appreciated. This is how I’m makin’ a livin’ now and your donations go a long way to making ends meet. I thanks ypou in advance for your generous contributions…”GTP”