A Word in the Woods

A while back, I posted about the cottage that Suzanne Dimma was building in Southern Ontario with her husband-to-be, and I thought I’d follow up with a link to Arriz Hassam’s blog post on the same subject. Unfortunately, it seems like it’s just the one post, but there are such beautiful images of the countryside that I had to share. There are no pictures of the cottage itself, which is a shame, but you can get your fill with Suzanne’s blog posts. Some of it is about her personal experiences, or the design of the cottage. I like seeing how they’ve managed to make a very comfortable, secluded place in the woods. I have never thought that camping, canoeing, hiking, living, or just retreating to the woods has to be about “roughing” it. This couple has managed to prove this point in a graceful way.

See Arriz’s photos and blog:

• Treehouse: first impressions

Read Suzanne Dimma’s Blog posts:

• Survivor: Cottage Edition (The original post)
• Survivor Part 2: Cottage Construction
• Hours before the wedding (One of the nicest outhouses I’ve ever seen!)
• Cottage Kitchen Installation

Tags: Arriz Hassam, construction, cottage, Suzanne Dimma
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io9.com has an article on Nanotech sachets that use inexpensive materials (nanofibres and activated carbon particles) in a ‘teabag’ form, to use with individual-sized water bottles. Although it seems like it would be very affordable, I’m not convinced it’s such a good thing, as these disposable teabags only will purify one litre of water, but I can see it being used in an emergency. Then again, I’d rather have a sustainable ceramic filter, or the very compact activated-chlorine-dioxide (like in Pristine water purification) for point-of-use filtration. The former is heavy and requires a (small) effort, but is great for canoeing, since you can filter nice clean water on the go. The second is nice and light and small, but is not as sustainable, and requires waiting time. The focus is on relief efforts and helping under-developed countries, but I can’t help but think a proper, larger-scale purification method would be better for the long term, and for the smaller scale solution, something like the Lifesaver bottle might be more appropriate.

Nanotech tea bag creates safe drinking water instantly, for less than a penny.

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Let’s Be Very, Very Careful About Giving Genetically Modified Mosquitoes A “Competitive Advantage” – The Awl.

Tags: mosquitoes
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The NYTimes is shedding some light on why I’m always happy to be outdoors – glad there’s an actual reason for it… but let’s face it, we knowingly do plenty of things already that are bad for us. We’d be outside regardless, but it’s nice to know we reap some benefits while we’re wandering around these great forests of ours.

Read the full article here: Exposure to Plants and Parks Can Boost Immunity

Tags: health
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The last thing a spring and early summer hiker needs is a more resilient biting insect. Seems like DEET is becoming just so much hot sauce for backcountry mosquitoes, and here’s why:

Mosquitoes inherit DEET resistance: Scientific American.

Tags: DEET, mosquitoes, science
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Not entirely accurate, but if you’ve got a bit of a sense of humour, you’ll appreciate the fun at the weekend warriors’ expense.

White People Like Camping | Toronto Mike’s Blog.

Tags: external link, humor, humour
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Suzanne Dimma | Canadian House & Home

Great blog post about Suzanne Dimma’s cottage build. I’m very very jealous. She describes the truly epic process that it took to get her dream cottage ready for her wedding to Arriz Hassam. It helps that they and their build team (Level Design Build) are all very talented and this definitely has the look of a labour of love.

The cottage is water-access-only, and off the grid, so their methods had to be innovative and creative to get the level of  refinement and quality they wanted. A series of pulleys and ropes were used to haul all the materials. There was no power, no machinery once they got to the dock by barge, so from there, every single piece of lumber and other building supplies used manpower alone to get in place.

I love that this demonstrates an unplugged approach to build a very modern, elegant cottage. Nothing rustic about it, yet some ‘rustic’ cabins use much more modern building techniques.

Read the entire article on Suzanne Dimma’s blog at Houseandhome.com

Tags: construction, cottage, off-grid, Suzanne Dimma
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P8030118, originally uploaded by A Word in the Woods.

I’m going to try and streamline some things a bit to get my photos organized. I’ll put them all on Flickr, and link directly there. I’m actually playing around with creating blog posts in flickr, and having it sent automagically to awordinthewoods.com

Hope it works!

Tags: blogging, flickr
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I’m looking forward to my new vehicle, but it’s with a bit of a twinge of regret that I’m putting my VW golf up for sale. I’ve put it up on Kijiji, my first ever post on something like that, so we’ll see how things go. I’ve also now put it up on Craigslist, and I’m surprised they let me use HTML and CSS to style it a little. If I had more time, I’d play with that a bit.

Ah, but now, I’m looking forward to my new ride. I’ll have to get some more pictures of it, but still have to get some things sorted out with the government first (Grr). I’m really getting to hate the red-tape registration that they require on everything.

I’ll try to remember to take as many pictures as I work on the new acquisition… until then, here’s something:

hee hee.

I’m going to have to do some work on it in quick order, to get things ready for my first camping trip of the year – a winter valentine’s camp in mid-February, coming up soon.

Sorry, haven’t maintained in a while, there was just too much spam going on, so I had to take things off the hook for a while. I’ll get back on track, and follow up with some more frequent posting over the next while.

Tags: golf, Range Rover, transportation, vehicle, volkswagen, vw
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Although I’m not a fan of banning everything for our own good, this makes me smile. I’d have preferred if they just levied an environmental impact fee on buyers, but hey.

Read the article on the London’s plans to phase out bottled water.

Tags: bottled water, environment, London Ontario, politics, water
Posted in Conservation, News | 1 Comment »