Ten miles north of Tofino, British Columbia, off the west coast of Vancouver Island, Catherine King and Wayne Adams live in a sustainable floating complex. It’s called “Freedom Cove”, a work of love, crafted from recycled and reclaimed materials. It has been her home for the past 29 years.
Freedom Cove is a 25-minute boat ride from the nearest city, and don’t even think about getting in a car. “The only option to get here is by water,” says Adams. “There are no road accesses. Water is our highway.”
The entire structure is the size of two city lots and weighs 1 million pounds, floating freely in the ocean.
Although there are lines that tie the compound to the shore, it is not anchored to the bottom of the ocean.
When you arrive, you are immediately greeted by the bright magenta buildings with dark turquoise trim. A bow of whale bones welcomes you.
The complex has everything you can imagine and more: a dance floor, an art gallery, a candle factory, four greenhouses, six solar panels, and access to a small waterfall that provides constant water.
It has its own waste management system.
The couple has even discovered their own waste management system.
“It’s the most common question they ask us,” says Adams.
They installed a floating tank to, in Adams’s words, “deal with wealth.”
If they wanted, King and Adams could fully support themselves in Freedom Cove without having to go to town.
It was inspired by nature
As artists, King and Adams were always inspired by nature.
Adams is a carver who uses elements found in nature, such as feathers and bones, to create his works.
King is an artist, dancer, and natural healer, and studied homeopathy.
But why live off the grid?
“I wanted to be a successful and wealthy artist, live in Tofino and have a studio in the desert, as all wealthy artists should,” says Adams.
“I was hoping to make a lot more money as an artist. We were never able to buy real estate, so we had to make our own.”
A call from nature pushed them to make their dreams come true.
It was the result of an accident.
After staying at a friend’s cabin in Cypress Bay, a large storm blew wood onto the property.
King and Adams collected the wood and used it to build the bones of what would become their future home.
“I think they gave us a signal that this is the time to start,” Adams recalls.
As their home continued to grow, the couple continued their precedent of only using recycled and reclaimed materials.
Many parts of loggers and fishermen were collected in the city. Adams would trade them for anything they had in their backyard, whether it was old fish farms or floats.
A piece of plexiglass that came off the Victoria hockey rink forms a clear glass floor in her living room, which Adams can lift to fish from the comfort of her couch.
It started as a kind of “reduction”
Before Freedom Cove, the couple lived in an apartment in Tofino. They call their passage to nature a “slowdown process”.
“We had all kinds of things, like food processors and items that would require a lot of electricity,” recalls King.
“We give them away to people and download a lot of things in preparation.”
They had no other choice. The first iteration of their floating home had no running water or electricity.
Today, his day to day is quite different from what he was in Tofino.
“Living here, you can’t get anything instantaneous,” says King. “We can’t just order pizza … we can’t go to the corner store … You have to do the work to get what you want, if you want it.”
It’s more than just home, they say
Doing that job is a continuous process of learning, change and growth.
King begins his day by sweeping and shaking the rugs.
“In the desert, there is always a lot of dirt and dust,” she says.
Then he waters his thousands of plants and orchards, all sprouted from seed, and paddles in his canoe to collect algae for compost.
Adams begins by gathering firewood and setting a fire to make sure the house heats up.
Both of them work on building new components for their home.
“It is a project,” says King. “It is a food growing project to support the family. It is an art project … It is a project to have a space to move, dance, play music, do things spontaneously that you couldn’t just do it the same way if you were in town. “
Your neighbors are … unusual
And while they may not have human neighbors for miles, the couple still have plenty of company.
“We have some resident crows here that are part of the family,” says Adams. “We know all the birds here.”
“We’ve named Harry the heron, Sylvie the seal,” adds King. “Gertrude and Heathcliff the Seagulls”.
“He had lived in the big city, he knew what that was like,” says King. “I really needed the peace of the desert.”
Twenty-nine years later, that’s still the biggest draw in her home.
“Going to a city is shocking in the sound department,” says King. “They bother me a bit inside … the noise starts to reach me, I find it easy for me to lose my center.”
“We have carved a part of the world for ourselves here,” says King. “We can live uniquely, unlike any other person on the planet.”
But how about dizziness?
“I’m not dizzy,” says Adams. “When I go to town, I get sick of dirt.”
.
