Sophie's Fort
We went down to the beach deliberately, wishing to learn what we could about the margin of the rocky shore between marsh and sea by living there, eschewing for a time the well known laneways of our relatives and townsfolk on the main road. We wanted to build a simple dwelling from materials already on the beach in abundance, a shelter that could outlast a winter storm perhaps, serving to feed our imagination and strengthen the bond between daughter and father as summer vacation drew to a close, with time seeming to accelerate as we measured its last weeks, then days, then the final hours until the first dread day of school.
We cleared the project with our neighbors first, in effect obtaining a ‘litoral’ work permit from them. We knew from past experience that someone had—quite amazingly—deconstructed our two previous efforts, and we meant no offense. Had the winter’s storms simply taken the measure of a child’s driftwood fortress it would not have been so bad; we had expected that. That the pieces were actually taken down and piled a hundred yards away seemed strange; someone had smashed our efforts, modest though they were. The contrarian effort made no sense, unless—we speculated—a legal statement was being made, say, by an wary neighbor fearful least we might declare “eminent domain,” claim ‘squatter’s rights’ or worst of them all, sue! We mentioned we were thinking about building a new fort, asking the owner if he minded. He said: “go right ahead,” implying that we need not have bothered to ask. Armed with that bestowed grace, we set off quickly for the beach and began our work.
One finds antecedents of our shanty-style house along the seaboard everywhere. Ours has the look of fisherman’s shacks Down East and in the Maritimes. An oar decorates the front entrance to the fort. As we began, the voices of my Ancient History teacher quoting the advice of Greek farmers about location and the words of the sage of Walden Pond and Concord to “simplify” guided us in our choice of site and driftwood, and I mumbled the words of the Calypso song “House built on a weak foundation will not stand, oh no…”
Remnants of some part of my grandfather’s bath houses provided a rectangle and integrity for the base of the fort, sea-worn and blending into the rocky shore. This same concrete slab had survived at least the great storm of 1938—the one never even named as a hurricane—when my mother and her father had discovered the drowned body of an Azores fisherman in yellow oilskins, rigor-mortised knuckles still clutching a broken piece of wooden gunwale. Then in 1954, Hurricane Carol smashed onto the Rhode Island shore, delivering the coup de grace to the private bathhouses. Now, a half century later, what remains proved perfect for our needs. When we built our fort the year before, I had attempted to steer my daughter towards using it, caving in to her desire to build elsewhere. Site selection needed to be Sophie’s choice, not mine. I reckoned that she needed to figure things out herself. How could there be a wrong or right?
Our rule was to use driftwood and detritus found beachcombing, with importation of materials from beyond the beach verboten, but we were not strict. Post selection was critical, and we found two pairs close enough in length to serve, plus sufficient rafters and planks to span the roof of our post-and-beam construction. Here we cheated, bringing a plastic tarp from the garage. On another return trip to the beach, still in an adult frame of mind, I brought a handsaw, a folding camp shovel, some nails and a hammer to make sure the roof would not easily slide down on top of us. There went the “no tools” concept as well! I used the saw to trim a particularly long piece, unnecessary in retrospect; I wish I had left it. And I wondered: was I sending the wrong “situational ethics” message to my daughter, that it is O.K. to break the rules when they become inconvenient? On the other hand, the nails really helped make things sturdy, while the shovel made short shrift of digging stones.
Found materials conspired with the rectilinear form of the old foundation to determine the length, width and height of the fort. Hauling the larger pieces hundreds of yards was the hardest work, but it served the purpose of making us think about each piece, and so our house ‘evolved’ square to the water, with a downward sloping roof, its cant conforming to the pitch of the beach. An old pallet weighs down the tarp-skinned roof, along with sticks and stones, and the walls are made from vintage salt-cured oak and pine, a bit of marine plywood from a destroyed boat, a swatch of fishnet, all scend from the sea
As for its interior décor, our fortress wants for little. Its middle school educated designer selected only the most colorful and unusual forms and colors of plastic and polyethylene, lending great authority to the guiding spirit of recycling. The beach yielded a profusion of flatware, table, lamps and vases for flowers, even a custom broom. We are scavengers, fond of our adage “One person’s trash is another’s sculpture, appliance and art.” The curtains are made from fabric ‘imported’ from home, that is, old “dog” towels tied back with bits of a lobsterman’s line, with square knots, if you please; no granny’s. A piece of densely woven industrial black mesh, spread over a sub-floor of flat rocks created wall-to-wall carpet. The floor itself is a foot or two below grade, enabling the forts’ denizens to see and not be seen. The diminutive Frank Lloyd Wright would have been totally at home here, while “short people” phobic Randy Newman might rebuke us for its vertically challenged scale. The style is pure and impure, at once none and all. Is it ‘post modern,’ Bumpzoid or Minimalist, Bauhaus, outhouse, or merely recherché, a mélange of many things? Who dares define it?
The fort has been well used. In only its second day of existence, our nest attracted a young couple, appreciating its privacy along an otherwise open beach. As we approached, quite suddenly, like a ruffed grouse flushed from its cover, we watched a surprised young man burst out the side door and jump into the sea. Moments later, a young woman emerged, adjusting her red bikini, following her boyfriend. We waved to them as they swam away, evidently too embarrassed to wave back, emerging a long way further down the beach where, shoeless, the girl clambered up on her boyfriend’s back, ardors temporarily chilled. This was a fort for child playing, not child making, thought I silently, wistfully. This went over my daughter’s head, I assumed. On second thought, it probably did not.
Another day we watched in horror from far above the beach while the neighbor’s grandchildren clambered over the ramparts of our fort. They were wrecking it, my daughter was certain, yet the sounds emanating were only those of excitement and fun, as far as I could tell. My daughter raged, wanting me to tell them “Get out! Leave our fort alone!” but I demurred, hoping for the best. Later, walking past our house, their grandfather complimented us, praising the artistry and “whimsy” of the fort, and I felt redeemed. “It was better to have kept quiet, wasn’t it?” I now asserted with knowing conviction; “diplomacy works the best.” It did not matter that his grandchildren had rearranged the curtains, the artifice and many of the artifacts, false renovations we could easily restore.
And so it went. Another day, another set of friends, this time invited, played in the fort. I asked one of them, at age 14, whether she were not too ‘sophisticated’ to play in it. She looked at me as though I were moronic. “Of course not, forts are fun,” she said. Overhearing our exchange, her father said to me “And I’m not too old, either!” which made me feel better still.
The fort now stands, facing Third Beach and “The Breakers” several miles across the Sakonnet River estuary. Our fort makes no such grand pretense to man’s permanence in the face of nature. How long things will last, Katrina reminds us, only time and the sea can tell. Most likely it will be when the next neap tide’s high waters engulf its base. Or maybe the roof will fall beneath the weight of winter snow, or maybe not; who knows? It has been loved and played in, enjoyed by a happy few, lured by its magic. This driftwood shack served to pull this father away from more pedestrian pursuits, to spend time with a fast growing child-woman-daughter who, hopefully, will never be too old for such fun. It all goes by so fast, this life, this fortress building. It is so important to make the time, for in a blink, we are too soon old, filled with memories of what we did and did not do.
We cleared the project with our neighbors first, in effect obtaining a ‘litoral’ work permit from them. We knew from past experience that someone had—quite amazingly—deconstructed our two previous efforts, and we meant no offense. Had the winter’s storms simply taken the measure of a child’s driftwood fortress it would not have been so bad; we had expected that. That the pieces were actually taken down and piled a hundred yards away seemed strange; someone had smashed our efforts, modest though they were. The contrarian effort made no sense, unless—we speculated—a legal statement was being made, say, by an wary neighbor fearful least we might declare “eminent domain,” claim ‘squatter’s rights’ or worst of them all, sue! We mentioned we were thinking about building a new fort, asking the owner if he minded. He said: “go right ahead,” implying that we need not have bothered to ask. Armed with that bestowed grace, we set off quickly for the beach and began our work.
One finds antecedents of our shanty-style house along the seaboard everywhere. Ours has the look of fisherman’s shacks Down East and in the Maritimes. An oar decorates the front entrance to the fort. As we began, the voices of my Ancient History teacher quoting the advice of Greek farmers about location and the words of the sage of Walden Pond and Concord to “simplify” guided us in our choice of site and driftwood, and I mumbled the words of the Calypso song “House built on a weak foundation will not stand, oh no…”
Remnants of some part of my grandfather’s bath houses provided a rectangle and integrity for the base of the fort, sea-worn and blending into the rocky shore. This same concrete slab had survived at least the great storm of 1938—the one never even named as a hurricane—when my mother and her father had discovered the drowned body of an Azores fisherman in yellow oilskins, rigor-mortised knuckles still clutching a broken piece of wooden gunwale. Then in 1954, Hurricane Carol smashed onto the Rhode Island shore, delivering the coup de grace to the private bathhouses. Now, a half century later, what remains proved perfect for our needs. When we built our fort the year before, I had attempted to steer my daughter towards using it, caving in to her desire to build elsewhere. Site selection needed to be Sophie’s choice, not mine. I reckoned that she needed to figure things out herself. How could there be a wrong or right?
Our rule was to use driftwood and detritus found beachcombing, with importation of materials from beyond the beach verboten, but we were not strict. Post selection was critical, and we found two pairs close enough in length to serve, plus sufficient rafters and planks to span the roof of our post-and-beam construction. Here we cheated, bringing a plastic tarp from the garage. On another return trip to the beach, still in an adult frame of mind, I brought a handsaw, a folding camp shovel, some nails and a hammer to make sure the roof would not easily slide down on top of us. There went the “no tools” concept as well! I used the saw to trim a particularly long piece, unnecessary in retrospect; I wish I had left it. And I wondered: was I sending the wrong “situational ethics” message to my daughter, that it is O.K. to break the rules when they become inconvenient? On the other hand, the nails really helped make things sturdy, while the shovel made short shrift of digging stones.
Found materials conspired with the rectilinear form of the old foundation to determine the length, width and height of the fort. Hauling the larger pieces hundreds of yards was the hardest work, but it served the purpose of making us think about each piece, and so our house ‘evolved’ square to the water, with a downward sloping roof, its cant conforming to the pitch of the beach. An old pallet weighs down the tarp-skinned roof, along with sticks and stones, and the walls are made from vintage salt-cured oak and pine, a bit of marine plywood from a destroyed boat, a swatch of fishnet, all scend from the sea
As for its interior décor, our fortress wants for little. Its middle school educated designer selected only the most colorful and unusual forms and colors of plastic and polyethylene, lending great authority to the guiding spirit of recycling. The beach yielded a profusion of flatware, table, lamps and vases for flowers, even a custom broom. We are scavengers, fond of our adage “One person’s trash is another’s sculpture, appliance and art.” The curtains are made from fabric ‘imported’ from home, that is, old “dog” towels tied back with bits of a lobsterman’s line, with square knots, if you please; no granny’s. A piece of densely woven industrial black mesh, spread over a sub-floor of flat rocks created wall-to-wall carpet. The floor itself is a foot or two below grade, enabling the forts’ denizens to see and not be seen. The diminutive Frank Lloyd Wright would have been totally at home here, while “short people” phobic Randy Newman might rebuke us for its vertically challenged scale. The style is pure and impure, at once none and all. Is it ‘post modern,’ Bumpzoid or Minimalist, Bauhaus, outhouse, or merely recherché, a mélange of many things? Who dares define it?
The fort has been well used. In only its second day of existence, our nest attracted a young couple, appreciating its privacy along an otherwise open beach. As we approached, quite suddenly, like a ruffed grouse flushed from its cover, we watched a surprised young man burst out the side door and jump into the sea. Moments later, a young woman emerged, adjusting her red bikini, following her boyfriend. We waved to them as they swam away, evidently too embarrassed to wave back, emerging a long way further down the beach where, shoeless, the girl clambered up on her boyfriend’s back, ardors temporarily chilled. This was a fort for child playing, not child making, thought I silently, wistfully. This went over my daughter’s head, I assumed. On second thought, it probably did not.
Another day we watched in horror from far above the beach while the neighbor’s grandchildren clambered over the ramparts of our fort. They were wrecking it, my daughter was certain, yet the sounds emanating were only those of excitement and fun, as far as I could tell. My daughter raged, wanting me to tell them “Get out! Leave our fort alone!” but I demurred, hoping for the best. Later, walking past our house, their grandfather complimented us, praising the artistry and “whimsy” of the fort, and I felt redeemed. “It was better to have kept quiet, wasn’t it?” I now asserted with knowing conviction; “diplomacy works the best.” It did not matter that his grandchildren had rearranged the curtains, the artifice and many of the artifacts, false renovations we could easily restore.
And so it went. Another day, another set of friends, this time invited, played in the fort. I asked one of them, at age 14, whether she were not too ‘sophisticated’ to play in it. She looked at me as though I were moronic. “Of course not, forts are fun,” she said. Overhearing our exchange, her father said to me “And I’m not too old, either!” which made me feel better still.
The fort now stands, facing Third Beach and “The Breakers” several miles across the Sakonnet River estuary. Our fort makes no such grand pretense to man’s permanence in the face of nature. How long things will last, Katrina reminds us, only time and the sea can tell. Most likely it will be when the next neap tide’s high waters engulf its base. Or maybe the roof will fall beneath the weight of winter snow, or maybe not; who knows? It has been loved and played in, enjoyed by a happy few, lured by its magic. This driftwood shack served to pull this father away from more pedestrian pursuits, to spend time with a fast growing child-woman-daughter who, hopefully, will never be too old for such fun. It all goes by so fast, this life, this fortress building. It is so important to make the time, for in a blink, we are too soon old, filled with memories of what we did and did not do.
posted by Stonechuck at 9:34 AM
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