{"id":1593,"date":"2014-10-21T14:17:25","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T22:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/?p=1593"},"modified":"2014-10-21T14:22:36","modified_gmt":"2014-10-21T22:22:36","slug":"a-space-of-my-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/2014\/10\/21\/a-space-of-my-own\/","title":{"rendered":"A Space of My Own"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AK-ANWR-Kongakut-108094-627\"<\/a>When I was a kid I had a series of \u201cforts\u201d that extended from my backyard through several neighbors properties and into a stringer of undeveloped forest a 1\/4 mile from home. Usually centered around a partly fallen, or ivy-covered tree, these spaces were dirty, wet, bug-infested, and wonderful.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As an adult who spends a lot of his time in a technologically advanced, stormproof fort (or tent as they are more commonly known), I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve changed much. There is something comforting about these spaces, whether it is a tent, or a piece of plywood nailed to a fallen oak trunk.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My cabin here in Fairbanks too, is akin to these forts. It\u2019s a cozy place, small, made of logs, and warm when the wood stove is blazing. It\u2019s the kind of place I imagined living when I was a ten year old careening through the woods. I love my little cabin.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But, its small. Amy and I are comfortable there, but as we\u2019ve expanded our lives, and I\u2019ve expanded my home-based photography and guiding business, that smallness has started to feel cluttered, and maybe from time to time, cramped. The time came to do something about it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Our property has three structures: the cabin in which we live, a small sauna that we\u2019ve converted into a writing space for Amy and a good sized workshop built by the previous owners. The workshop is well-built, lightly insulated, and was equipped with a wood stove for occasional heat. The previous owner used the area to build dog sleds and kayaks. When we first moved here, I used the space a bit for building, but then it slowly became a storage space, where outdoor gear, books, and bicycles were stashed when we didn\u2019t know where else to put them. It became a disaster area, where things were tossed. Occasionally we\u2019d take a whack at cleaning it. I built a bed frame for the space, and it became a rarely used guest cabin when we could stuff the boxes and bags out of sight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Last fall I decided I needed a dedicated office space. Someplace to get my computer and camera related paraphernalia out of the house. At first I considered a new building, but the expense vetoed that idea. No, it was the workshop that needed conversion. This summer, in early July, I added on a cold storage area to one side of the workshop, a place to dump the mountain of gear that needed to be removed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That project was fun, and quick and rewarding as the mountain of gear, boxes and bags made its way into the neatly shelved space in the new shed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then just weeks ago, after my summer guiding season had wrapped up, I started work. The workshop needed more insulation if I was to keep it warm all winter, so I furred out the slanted ceiling and added a layer of fiberglass batts. Unsatisfied with the resulting R-32 insulation, I added two inches of rigid insulation across the walls and ceiling (It gets cold in Fairbanks, alright).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The messy work of drywall followed, then paint, then a day of reorganization. That was yesterday. Today, I am sitting at a desk, bookshelves loaded around me, camera gear secured safely out of sight, the dog asleep on her bed behind me, and I\u2019m tip-tapping away on my computer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a space of my own, almost as good as an old toppled oak.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid I had a series of \u201cforts\u201d that extended from my backyard through several neighbors properties and into a stringer of undeveloped forest a 1\/4 mile from home. Usually centered around a partly fallen, or ivy-covered… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/AK-ANWR-Kongakut-108094-627.jpg?fit=800%2C533&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8wo3z-pH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1593"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1597,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions\/1597"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}