Off On Our Own - Ted Carns

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      A while back, I consented to a short interview on Finland’s public television with two well-known Finnish environmentalists who came to see what The Stone Camp was all about. The first thing they said on camera was, “This place is like a fairyland but it’s real.” Another time an art teacher from New York said it’s an example of “living art.”

      How did it happen? How did it go from the lowest of dwellings to “living art”? How did it become the conscious entity that I know it to be? It didn’t happen all at once or from some pre-set plan. But it did have a lot to do with having Kathy in my life.

       Kathy

      Kathy and I went to the same high school. I was a year ahead of her. I don’t think we ever said a word to each other but I do remember thinking, She has pretty legs. We actually met at a place called Heavenly Foods in 1976. She was hanging out with the guy who owned it but they weren’t really involved. I invited them both to the mountain for dinner and then later asked her if she’d like to go for a hike. Next thing you know, three years later we were looking for a Christmas tree and I said, “Hey, come look at this one, it’s already decorated.” I had hung an engagement ring on one of the limbs and when she finally saw it I said, “Will you marry me?”

      Seventeen years later and a lot of ups and downs, we built our own chapel and tied the knot. I dressed as an Indian; my hair was long and two little girls braided it and tied feathers and beads on the braids. Kathy dressed in half the time in a simple cotton dress and a wide-brim hat. She looked like a young girl from “Little House on the Prairie” on her way to a Sunday meeting. I’ll let her tell her version of things.

      Kathy: I grew up in the little town of Ligonier near here. I always loved the woods and forests but rarely spent time in them growing up. I tried to join the Peace Corps but was denied because I lacked the skills they were looking for. For myself, I wanted to live a simple lifestyle that did not require a lot of money. This area had a lot of small cabins and summer homes dotted around the hills, without plumbing and electricity. I knew of several guys my age who had moved into some of these and were living there year round. It fascinated me that they could live like this.

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       Just married

      Then I met Teddy, who was getting ready to move into The Stone Camp. My first experience here was when it was still a small stone cabin in the woods, no conveniences whatsoever. The only previous tenant had been a Norwegian wood rat who played havoc with anything and everything inside, so it was not anything like what people see who walk in now. I remember when Teddy killed the rat. It was deer hunting season and he took it down to his dad’s hunting camp and hung it on the rack alongside the deer his family had gotten.

      In those early days I would stay here alone when Teddy traveled. There were no cell phones, no radio or TV, and at that time no dogs or cats. The road was not in good condition, so I would park a half-mile away and walk up.

      When Teddy did not commit to an actual wedding date I applied and went to West Virginia University for my master’s in social work. Afterwards, I moved back to this area and started working. I bought a small cabin that the neighbors were trying to get torn down because it was condemned. My brother and Teddy said it was salvageable. We still own it and rent it out. While it was being remodeled I lived with Teddy for about a year, worked full-time and spent a lot of time here helping with whatever project was underway. It seemed every vacation I had from work I spent mixing and carrying cement.

      There was a period in there when Teddy and I split for a while, but we had a dog named Pickles that we shared custody of, so that kept us in contact with each other. When we got back together he would say many times that I needed to quit my job to see what it took to live off-grid in a sustainable lifestyle. I told him I needed to save a little more money first. Then my mother died suddenly and a year later a brother died. I realized then that if I did not quit my job and see what it took to live this lifestyle, and something happened to Teddy, I would regret it forever – so I gave notice.

      That was in 1993. Since then, it has all come together to be what it is today. I didn’t work for a couple of years at first, then when I was accidentally dumped out of the back of our truck with a load of sawmill logs while we were trying to earn some money, I told Teddy I can make money without getting killed. So I went to work part-time for a while, eventually working full time in a nursing home in Ligonier, where I’ve been for the last ten years.

      Those early years I loved to camp, so it was not so difficult living here. And we were young. Now, I really appreciate the indoor plumbing, not using the outhouse in the middle of the night, the cold toilet seat. The house is warm in the winter. I think we have all the necessities.

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      My childhood was a little different from Kathy’s, except for the part about loving the woods and wanting to live simply. I grew up at the base of the Laurel Ridge. Old Route 30 runs through the town and then heads east up over the mountain. It’s a treacherous descent for truckers. Before semi trucks got air brakes the people in our town were always on the alert for a spilled load from a truck wreck. I remember coming home from school one day and Dad saying, “Go down and see what’s in the basement.” It was filled with huge clusters of bananas. They hung from the ceiling almost down to the floor. If a truck wrecked, it was all fair game. I remember potatoes, fruit, sugar and even 55-gallon drums of highway paint. Waste wasn’t something people believed in back then.

      While most parents sent their kids to the local pool or amusement park for the summer, I was probably home helping Dad with something. Sometimes I envied my friends who had season passes and wondered, Doesn’t your dad make you work? Don’t you have to do stuff like get up in the middle of the night a couple times to trowel the fresh concrete on the basement floor to a sheen before it sets up? Half the time my friends had no idea what the hell I was talking about.

      All I wanted to do was fish, catch snakes or else hike up the hill through the forest to where the wild grape vines grew. There I’d spend hours pretending I was Tarzan and perfecting his jungle call to Tantor and the elephant herd.

      Working with Dad was as exciting as it was boring at times. It was out of diapers and into power tools. As soon as you lost interest in your baby rattle he handed you a Skilsaw. That’s an exaggeration of course, but he did teach me a lot of adult work skills early in life.

      Dad seemed intuitively aware and cautious. By having watched him over time I learned about every danger and how to avoid it. Then he’d hand me the tool, show me the switch, watch me cut a board or two and then walk away and let me try it on my own. Then when the summer passed, at least I could go back to school and brag a bit.

      I used to watch people bring Dad broken watches and he’d tear them apart at the kitchen table with a coffee and a cigarette in his mouth. They’d bullshit about this and that, then he’d hand them back their watches, ticking. People who hunted up north would bring him a topo map. He’d look at it and say, “Stand here in the morning and there in the afternoon.”

      By my early teens I was a good welder. I hadn’t even begun dreaming about a driver’s license when Dad sat me on this huge WW2 airplane retriever we used to drag logs. It was essentially an army tank stripped of its turret and guns and armed with cable winches to drag wrecked planes off a runway ASAP. The darn thing would go about 30 mph full tilt. That was way more cool and fun than anything the other kids were doing.

      Now I realize Dad gave me the best gift he could. From an early age he taught me the fundamentals of how to do almost anything. He set me in a mindset that erased the fears and intimidations most people have when they approach a task they weren’t trained for. If I observed an intricate brain surgery technique three or four times I’d be itching for the scalpel.

      Without knowing what he was doing, he planted the seeds of mystical creativity into my childhood

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