ARCHITECTURE
IDEAS
CABINS
Wild Woodz 
CATEGORIES
POPULAR
Nature Animals
People Craft
Science Design
Jump to WildWoodz
Glass tabletops are the best option for renewing existing coffee tables while round tabletops and rectangle-glass-tabletops are perfect for decorating ...
Modern Coffee Table Styles with Table Tops
Glass tabletops are the best option for renewing existing coffee tables while round tabletops and rectangle-glass-tabletops are perfect for decorating ...
Plexiglass is a great alternative to glass. Let's explore the applications in which plexiglass is preferred over ordinary glass.
Top 5 Situations When Application of Plexiglass is Preferred over Glass
Plexiglass is a great alternative to glass. Let's explore the applications in which plexiglass is preferred over ordinary glass.
Interior designs for homes and other spaces are changing faster than one can imagine. Sometimes, it gets too difficult to ...
Difference Between wooden base cabinets & glass cabinets (New Concept Glass Cabinets Design)
Interior designs for homes and other spaces are changing faster than one can imagine. Sometimes, it gets too difficult to ...
Scandinavian design is normally compared to mid-century modern design. While they are known to borrow details from each other, color ...
DIY Nordic wood designs
Scandinavian design is normally compared to mid-century modern design. While they are known to borrow details from each other, color ...
For the love of woodz, craft and nature.
 
Share
Life In A Fire Lookout
In People by Woodz, December 28, 2016

Dabney Tompkins and Alan Colley own a very special home – a 40 feet high and 388-square-foot fire lookout.

Their lives changed course on a ferry ride several years ago. Quite literally stumbling upon a book about fire lookouts used by the U.S. Forest Service, they learned how the structures on stilts were used to spot forest fires throughout the 20th century. Now largely replaced by satellites, very few lookouts are still standing.

Tompkins and Colley, who had downsized from their big Dallas estate to 1,400 square feet in Portland, wanted to know more. “It was a magical moment that the book sort of fell off the shelf to us,” Colley recalls. “We called the ranger district and said why don’t we rent this thing? That was the beginning.”

Life in a tiny wooden fire lookout

Photo credit: Tom Hanny

Life in a tiny wooden fire lookout

Photo credit: Tom Hanny

Life in a tiny wooden fire lookout

Photo credit: Tom Hanny

The urbanites rented several fire lookouts before purchasing 160 acres of meadow and forest land in rural Oregon, known as Summit Prairie. With the help of a local builder and engineer, their “treehouse without the tree” was completed in 2010.

For the first few years, it was just a weekend getaway, but those weekends quickly turned into something more. “About a year and half ago, we decided to be totally irresponsible and quit our jobs and move here,” Tompkins explains. “We were just going to do it for one year because we thought this might just be too isolated, too boring, too rustic. But then we got down here and we started to meet people and really enjoy the rhythm of it.”

The lookout is 388 square feet with a simple kitchen spanning the back wall and two narrow beds flanking the sides

Up a skinny wooden ladder, a “cupola” serves as a master suite — minus the bathroom. In fact, there’s no bathroom to be found. Historic fire lookouts never had them, and Tompkins and Colley didn’t want to obstruct their 360-degree view of the Umpqua National Forest. Instead, they created a few alternative options and put the shower out on the deck.

Life in a tiny wooden fire lookout

Photo credit: Tom Hanny

Life in a tiny wooden fire lookout

Photo credit: Tom Hanny

Life in a tiny wooden fire lookout

Photo credit: Tom Hanny

Life in a tiny wooden fire lookout

Photo credit: Tom Hanny

“My favorite time to take a shower is when we have snow outside and you have to walk barefoot through the snow on the deck,” Tompkins says. “Then you turn that hot water on and that yin and yang of hot and cold — and looking out and seeing the meadow — it’s heaven.”

Without the luxuries of a typical single-family home, Tompkins and Colley find themselves retreating to the “hammock tree” or soaking in their wood-burning, spring-fed hot tub.

“It’s quiet — so quiet it allows me to hear things I wouldn’t hear in the city,” Colley says. “There’s no urban beat. You don’t hear sirens, you don’t hear traffic — you hear us. There’s nothing like that.”

Life in a tiny wooden fire lookout

Photo credit: Tom Hanny

Life in a tiny wooden fire lookout

Photo credit: Tom Hanny

He says the experience has brought him and Tompkins closer, as they’ve allowed each other to grow and be different.

They’re also learning what it truly means to live off the grid, finding you often gain more than you lose. “The saying we love to tell each other is ‘just because we live off-grid doesn’t mean we have to eat bad food.’ And we have made some amazing meals,” Colley says.

Instead of buying organic produce from the grocery store, they have their own garden and are involved with the local farmers market.

Of course, living off-grid has its challenges

Like figuring out how to install solar panels — but the biggest challenge came as a surprise. “We’re so enmeshed in this community, as weird as that may sound, that we really have to back away and say I just want time on my meadow,” Colley says.

From vegan potlucks with the “old hippies,” as they call the neighbors, to looking for ways to stimulate a local economy still dependent on timber, Tompkins and Colley are keeping busy.

Life in a tiny wooden fire lookout

Photo credit: Tom Hanny

They laugh when they think about how they used to worry about being isolated and bored. “Reading, cooking, hiking and splitting wood are much more entertaining to us,” Colley says. “If you’re interested in those kinds of things as a DIYer, you’re going to be fine in this situation.”

And in the wake of a recent forest fire, they’re even more thankful for the view. “Every day, the sun is doing something different. There’s no repetition at all,” Colley says. “Many mornings, we’ll get up, and the entire meadow is shrouded in fog. And then as the sun moves up into the sky, the fog starts to kind of slip into the valley,” Tompkins adds. “As you look out, it’s like you’re in an airplane where there’s just this lower level of clouds. To me, that’s magic.

H/T to zillow

Reshare our content with appropriate credit:
- via Woodz.co (must include a link to the article)
- if it exists, give h/t (specified at the end of our articles)

Leave a Reply

So, what do you think?

avatar
wpdiscuz_captcharefresh
avatar
wpdiscuz_captcharefresh
  Subscribe  
Notify of
Latest
Sustainability, respect for the mountains and direct contact with nature are the principles that have guided all design choices. For ...
9 Dec 2021
Hotel Zallinger
Glass tabletops are the best option for renewing existing coffee tables while round tabletops and rectangle-glass-tabletops are perfect for decorating ...
27 May 2021
Modern Coffee Table Styles with Table Tops
With great views of the golf course and the magnificent trees in the environment. The design of the project follows ...
6 May 2021
GP House
Plexiglass is a great alternative to glass. Let's explore the applications in which plexiglass is preferred over ordinary glass.
12 Apr 2021
Top 5 Situations When Application of Plexiglass is Preferred over Glass
The steep forested hillsides around the Hardangerfjord above Odda is the location of two Woodnest treehouses. The architecture is a ...
3 Feb 2021
Woodnest Cabin – Treehouse
RELATED POSTS
Take a look at this unbelievable forest ski segment from the movie Valhalla.
Skiing through a Swedish Forest in the Summer
If all people decided to take action every time an injustice was witnessed, there would never be any need for ...
This Indian Man Planted an Entire Forest by Hand
Keep Matt Hunter company on a solo (except for the grizzly bears) two day ride-adventure through the Canadian wilderness.
Matt Hunter – Lone Wolfe
Architecture Wild Woodz About Us
Ideas Terms & Privacy
Cabins Contact
For the love of wood, craft and nature.
Copyright © 2015-2023 Woodz. All Rights Reserved.