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This beautifully illustrated book is in part a journal recording the realization of Lou Mckee's dream of creating a cabin on the remote west coast of Vancouver Island. But more than that, it’s about her own journey through the natural world from childhood days spent boating on the inland sea between the BC mainland and Vancouver Island to her kayaking adventures as an adult exploring the coast. There is this sense from early on that Mckee was searching for a place that would resonate with her adventuresome self, her love of the natural world, her easy connection to people, and her clear need to find a place to center her spirit. Klee Wick became that place, an accidental find discovered when looking for a campsite in the rain while kayaking among the rocky shoals of the coast. The site and its beach become a favorite to which she return. In 1995, with her nephews, husband David Verwolf and friend Marilyn she returns once more to the beach and declares it as the place she wants to build her dream cabin. Mckee and Verwolf plot and plan to make the cabin possible. They can’t buy the land, but there is a tradition of fisherman refuge cabins built up and down the coast which they’ve used in bad weather. Theirs’s would fit that pattern. A friend architect draws a plan. Friends and family are called upon to pitch in and over the years the cabin becomes the refuge she wanted. Construction begins in 1997. The main materials of the structure, early on finished lumber delivered by boat to the site, later are found on the beaches nearby: split logs for siding, cedar rounds are turned into roof shakes and also used for flooring, beach gravel to fill the cracks between the rounds. Some stuff is imported from the city, such as a stove and windows, but much is created from the material the sea and forest supply. It’s hard work, demands planning, and can only be done during the summer season in a not easily accessed place. This journal records the fulfilling of McKee’s dream. It lovingly extolls the natural worId but equally the community of friends and family, and her husband David, who made her cabin a reality. What sets the journal apart is Mckee’s exceptionally rendered color drawings that were part of her journal. Her eye misses nothing: tiny plants discovered among the beach rocks, an ancient cedar shaped by time and weather, her neighbors, the mama black bear and cubs, the multi-colored textures of beach rocks. These drawing are scattered among the descriptions of the cabin construction and repair, of friends gathered for good meals around a campfire, and of days of her solitude at Klee Wick. The drawings not only illustrate the natural world but also the human artifacts scattered in it: kayaking gear, women’s hats, the cabin’s kitchen counter loaded with stove and pots, the outdoor privy. Each chapter in the journal covers a kayaking season and is sub-headed with the names of those who stayed that year. There are many repeat visitors from previous years, especially women friends, who enrich her life at Klee Wick with a resonating bond. Beside the building the cabin and its site, there are many day trips chronicled--some ending up quite hazardously--which enrich the readers sense of Mckee’s constant curiosity and adventuresomeness. And, each chapter provides drawings of the discoveries she or her companions found that year, giving the reader a rich sense of their experience there. The drawings complement what is good, often vivid writing. This not just a chronical of the place being created, or the daily life at Klee Wick, it is also Mckee’s reflections on the beauty and terror of the natural world, and her feelings and appreciation for cherished family and friends. Some of her nature writing reminds me bit of Sally Carraghar and McKee’s beloved Emily Carr with their sense of connection and beauty. Her descriptions of the food cooked over the fire makes one hungry. Where the writing stands out in my memory is when Mckee faces fear. She’s not reluctant to express this feeling when confronted by the black bears who are regular visitors to Klee wick. But as she studies them, she eventually comes to see them as curious neighbors you don’t want to mess with, but not as threats. Wolves are a different story; the writing of an encounter with a pack protecting its beach tightens one’s stomach muscles. Or, as a woman alone for the first time at Klee Wick, she wonders how she’ll cope with the aloneness, how she’ll fill her time, how exposed she feels there, especially when she encounters a strange man on Klee Wick’s beach. She’s often at her best when she describes the hazards of sea kayaking. The sea, of course, is the constant presence, rumbling and crashing just beyond protective rocks, that makes Klee Wick what it is. A crossing from the island freighter to Klee Wick becomes a vividly written terrifying moment of panic when the wind builds to a gale and the waves become steep white caps as she drifts away from her companions. For Lou Mckee, facing and overcoming fear was an essential part of the making of Klee Wick. Her journal is more than a story of cabin and its setting. It’s the story of a woman’s dream to create “…my home of homes.” She had to push herself to create Klee Wick, to bring all those people along with her to a place where she felt enfolded, where she had vision and purpose. For us, the readers, we are given a visual feast of the Klee Wick’s world through her eyes, and a sense of the deep sense her love of nature, of family, of friends conjoined in beautiful place.
