They Built An Island Just To Dance On It
Catherine and Wayne built Freedom Cove—an off-grid, floating artscape on the wild coast of British Columbia—to live by tides instead of time clocks. After Wayne’s passing and with the float aging, her resolve is being tested right now.
They Decide to Live on the Water
He watched birds build without permission. She listened to the forest. Together they decided to use whatever washed up—trade, carve, labor—to make a home no one had to sell them.
They set one rule: try it for ten years. If their money, backs, and faith held, they’d keep going. A decade later, they looked at each other and said, “Let’s keep going.”
A storm delivered the first gift: a raft of beach-scrap timber. They built a tiny float house on shore, then towed it into a hidden cove the next year and stayed.
She Dances, He Engineers
Roof first. Then a floor strong enough for her to dance—an open square of cedar where bare feet and rain could meet.
The salads came next. One little float of greens became two, then four, until the garden demanded walls of glass to blunt cold water and wind.
Tomatoes and peppers needed heat, so they built four greenhouses that hummed with breath on cold mornings. Now she could grow almost anything she wanted.
They carved and painted through winters and opened their own gallery rather than tithe to someone else’s percentage. Their work paid for rope, nails, and beans.
He dreamed a beach into being—logs lashed into a crescent where they could sit at day’s end. A fire pit threw sparks while friends told stories over the water.
Boat houses kept rain off the skiffs, saving them from endless bailing and broken motors. Details like that are what let a life keep floating.
Out at the edge, a lighthouse rose with a working lamp and a spare shower for family. He even made the bathtub at home, because of course he did.
In another shed, wax cooled in molds—their candle factory—so winter nights glowed even when the generator went quiet.
He Builds an Island That Moves as One
“I built my own island,” he said, counting two million pounds underfoot. Ten years to gather the bones. The point was never size. It was living as part of everything around them.
For years the floats were wood and rot was a constant foe. Then fish farmers offered their cast-offs: armored foam and metal frames that don’t die easy. Security arrived on a barge.
He webbed the whole place to shore with big ropes, a spider’s diagram drawn in tensile line. When the wind hit, everything leaned and came back together. No more midnight collisions.
Storms still broke things. They learned to treat damage as instruction—each winter a nudge to reinvent, to add a curve here, a brace there, to evolve the art piece they lived inside.
Gravity Feeds, Sun Backs Up
He chose this cove because a lake sits above it. A four-inch pipe runs down the hill—no pumps, no noise—just gravity and cold water hitting a sink with its own clean sound.
Sewage became science: microbes in a Go Green system turn waste clear before it returns to big water. Compost, burn, reuse—bring little in, take little out.
Mail and snacks still pull them to town. “Pop, chips, candy,” she laughs, listing the sins of civilization. The rest they make or trade for.
Power is a patchwork: old solar panels sip sun, a generator hums when clouds win. He likes the redundancy. “These days, everything’s intermittent,” he says, not unkindly.
Heat comes from driftwood the rivers throw back to sea. Single-wall house, one-inch insulation, no mold. The structure breathes; they feed the stove.
They Learn How to Stay Fed—and Paid
Out here, protein swims toward dinner. He fishes; she grows beans, corn, quinoa, black beans—pairings that make complete meals in a place where grocery aisles are tides.
They’ve been down to their last coins more than once. When that happens, they carve something true, ride to town, and sell it. Belief covers the rest.
Her mother trained anti-aircraft guns and gave her a mantra: life is hard, and it gets harder. Work anyway. Choose your labor. Choose it again tomorrow.
Gratitude became daily practice—gratitude for partnership, for the Cove, for the odd physics of a home that rocks you to sleep.
The Tide Takes, They Rebuild
Morning arrives with water, forest, and the soft racket of wild things. It’s their proof of concept, visible through every window.
They vowed to live here to the end of their days. Time complicated the vow. Wayne died in 2023. The floats have begun to sag. The dream now requires new engineering—and more will.
She knows the math. Most float houses last a decade. Theirs lasted nearly three. To keep going, she’ll rebuild on the newer fish-farm systems, the kind that don’t rot from the bottom up.
Some nights she steps onto the dance floor and lifts her face to the moon. The tide moves. The ropes hold. The floor answers back under her feet.
Freedom Cove endures in motions, not lines on a deed: a place that breathes and flexes, that gives way and returns. The work is hard. The life is chosen. The rhythm is hers.
