In my mind, I was standing on the hill this morning, watching the fog roll in off Smith Sound. I could still hear Uncle Lionel’s old make-and-break engine putt-putting out past the point to check his cod traps. It is easy to stand up here on the cliffs above Apsey Brook and let your mind skip ahead a few years. I can almost see the shape of the little cabin sitting high on the slope, tucked low against the cold north winter wind to watch the icebergs drift past in the spring.

Right now, though, it’s mostly just a dream drafted in the Newfoundland fog. Before we can raise a single timber, the raw reality of this coast demands respect. The Rock doesn’t give up ground easily, and we have a few stubborn things to sort out before any real work can begin.

Before the Trucks Roll In

• The Low Wires: There is a line of weathered Bell telephone wire hanging low across our boundary line. Before we can bring any trucks or machinery in, we need the telephone crew to come out and hoist them out of the way so they don’t get snagged.
• Marking the Lines: On this terrain, boundaries are always a negotiation. We need to get the survey lines marked out among the old mossy spruce trunks and granite outcrops.
• The Path In: To get up to the high ground, we’ll need to lay bulldoze a driveway and perhaps lay down a solid bed of local crushed stone.
• Clearing the Alders: We need to clear out the alders and some stunted fir trees where the shelter will sit. But we have to be careful—we only want to clear just enough to make room, leaving the surrounding brush intact as a natural windbreak against the sea wind. Plus the local aps trees are just too beautiful and scenic to get rid of them all!

A Place to Dry Our Boots

We aren’t planning to build anything grand on day one. The initial plan is to keep things simple: either roll a used travel trailer onto the cleared pad, or build a tight little cabin kit that we can raise quickly by hand.

It will serve as our base camp—a dry outpost where we can boil the kettle, fry up some kippers, and dry out our wet boots while the larger dream of the homestead takes shape on the bedrock below.

Have you ever cleared a piece of raw land, or did you start your own camps with a simple trailer setup? I’d love to hear how you went about it—leave a comment below!