Cabin fever Trio of friends lives self-sufficiently in homes they’ve built Down East

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Sunshine streams through the windows of Donna Kausen’s log cabin in South Addison, casting light over her shoulders as she applies the finish to a handmade wooden bowl. Her fingers caress the yellow birch carefully and knowingly – the hands of an artisan perfecting her work.

She pauses thoughtfully, her fingers still moving as she explains what motivates her to create the bowls.

“Everybody loves wood. Wood is so amazing. Making a bowl is an exercise in wood appreciation,” she says.

Kausen is a woman who appreciates the wood and world around her. Wood, indeed, is a part of her – from the 200 bowls she crafted this year to the logs in the cabin she built eight years ago with her late husband, Brad.

Then there are the woods on the 240-acre plot she owns with friends Pete Hudson and Geri Valentine, woods from which the three friends have gathered many of the materials they used to construct their respective cabins. These are the woods where they have learned to live simply and joyfully, pursuing a way of life allowing them to appreciate and celebrate their interdependence with nature, their friends in this rural Washington County community, and one another.

“The more you learn about the world around you, the more you appreciate it,” says Kausen. “It’s like when you meet people. The more you learn about them, the more you like them.”

Kausen, Hudson and Valentine have learned plenty from the sort of rugged work required to live off the land and the ocean Down East. From clam digging to sheepshearing to blueberry raking to scallop diving to making wreaths, the seasonal work of a Down Easter can test the physical limits of the body and the determination of the will and spirit. But, these three attest, that lifestyle can be beautiful and rewarding, too.

That beauty is reflected in Kausen’s bowls.

Kausen’s bowls vary in depth, diameter, shape and color. Each one is unique, its form determined by the defining characteristics of the wood from which it was hewn. Kausen can tell you where the wood she used to produce a bowl came from – an old eastern cottonwood over in Cherryfield; a stump by the side of the road in Alexander.

Hudson and Valentine have watched their friend at work at her lathe in her studio on the neck in South Addison.

“You like to open up a piece of wood and see what’s in it,” Hudson tells Kausen. “It’s like opening a package.”

“She can’t keep her hands off it. She just keeps smoothing it,” Valentine adds.

Kausen agrees.

“I like exploring the wood,” she says. “The rhythm of working the wood on the lathe, seeing pieces fly off the lathe. It’s like spinning wool – relaxing, almost hypnotizing.”

But a bowl isn’t built in a day. The process begins with finding a suitable log. Kausen covets ones with unusual grains, rings, burls or outgrowths.

Kausen has a network of friends in the community – woodsmen or construction workers clearing land for house lots – who often bring her unusual pieces. She constantly scans the woods, whether out walking or driving.

Once she procures the perfect log, she cuts it down to a manageable size with a chain saw, roughing it into an octagon-shaped piece that she can place on the lathe. Then she works the wood into a bowl shape, allows it to dry in her studio, and turns it one more time before applying the finish.

Kausen has been making bowls for 21/2 years, and they are her main source of income along with sheepshearing. She sold 112 bowls last year, and she also fills custom orders for objects such as a guitar pick stand, guitar holder, a candlestick and egg cup.

She says that bowl making is something she wanted to do for ages. She got her chance when Charlie Grosjean of Franklin gave her a lathe.

“It was a lathe I could use for free, but with no motor or stand,” she recalls. “I bought a $25 motor in Machias at a junk store, and I started.” And she keeps on, whirling the wood round and round, coaxing it into curves, taking the beauty of the Washington County woods and creating an object you can hold in your hand.

Kausen, Hudson and Valentine came to the Maine woods for the same reason: to pursue a life that let them choose what kind of work they wanted to put their hand to, and to do so without serving the tyranny of a time clock or overbearing boss.

Kausen landed in Milbridge in 1976 after driving a $60 Rambler from Glendale, Calif. Hudson moved from the Portland area the same year, and Valentine came from Duluth, Minn., in 1979 to work at the Black Fly Sheep Farm in Kezar Falls. They became friends in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when they lived in Steuben.

Their property in South Addison is reached by Bear’s Den Road, a two-track dirt lane. They have constructed 13 buildings on the land, including two outhouses, a smokehouse, woodsheds, a chicken house and a garden shed. They dug all three of their wells by hand and maintain vegetable and flower gardens. They use solar energy to run small electrical appliances such as lights, Hudson’s television and Kausen’s coffee grinder.

Their three cabins are the centerpieces of the man-made structures on the property, each incorporating the geography of the natural setting and reflecting the personality of the inhabitant. Kausen and her husband, Brad, were the original owners of the land, and they spent three years building their cabin, finishing in 1993.

The house’s dominating feature is the top of a large cedar tree, standing upside down, its three sturdy branches like pillars, forming an archway from the kitchen to the sleeping area. Kausen, who also tans animal hides, has a raccoon resting on one branch of the arch. Fox and bobcat hides, sheepskins and handspun rugs adorn the kitchen. A bearskin is draped over a wooden beam. In the bedroom, a rug-in-process waits on a Navajo loom. The bed is made of beaver-chewed wood. Herbs and flowers dry on the walls.

Outside the back entrance, a ramp winds down to an outhouse. Kausen has, she says smiling, probably the only wheelchair-accessible outhouse in the land. She and Hudson built the ramp back in 1995, when Brad returned home from the hospital after having a stroke. This summer, her 84-year-old mother used the ramp when she came for a six-week visit.

Brad died in 1996, and Hudson and Valentine, who were living in Steuben, decided to move to the South Addison property in 1998.

Hudson soon got to work on his cabin, completing it in a whirlwind four months. It was always a dream, he says, to have his workshop in his house. He made one of his rooms big enough to drive his vehicle inside for repairs. In the kitchen, large windows wash the room with sunlight. Hudson’s guitars stand in a corner.

Valentine’s cabin is still under construction. She is building it around a ledge, letting the rocks serve as both front porch and inside wall. Sunlight enters through cypress windows, salvaged by Mount Desert Island builder Eric Henry from the remains of an old summer cottage on Sutton Island. In all the cabins, pieces of driftwood or other twisted branches of trees serve as doorknobs, coat hooks or drawer handles.

Hudson and Valentine say they salvaged much of the materials for their houses; the remaining materials they bought. Most of Kausen’s cabin is made of discards. The process of salvaging is often purposeful – they go out with an idea in mind, looking for things that will fit their needs.

“I knew I wanted to use driftwood in my house, and it was fun to hunt the shore for driftwood,” Valentine says. “But in the woods, sometimes you see something and it inspires you to use it.”

“You look for a certain size tree in a certain condition,” Kausen adds. “You don’t want to take out the healthiest trees.”

Kausen, Hudson and Valentine say they drew some of their inspiration from the “handmade house” books that were popular in the 1970s.

“These are like all the hippie houses everywhere,” Hudson says, grinning.

These days, Hudson derives most of his income from clam digging, brushing and carpentry work. Valentine teaches yoga at Fitness Central in Harrington, shears sheep and makes wreaths.

“Regular jobs never had an attraction for me. Having to dress up? That would drive me bugs! I think of the tellers at the banks, all dressed up.” Valentine shakes her head in pity.

“The work becomes recreational,” Hudson says. “Cutting firewood is one of the most fun things I do. And gardening. The work and the play blend together.”

Hudson, at age 50, and Kausen and Valentine, at 48, are content with the life they have chosen and their decision to settle in South Addison.

“I feel at home in Addison,” Kausen says. “It’s just something to do with having friends, and fitting into a community among so many different people: the natives, the newcomers, the kids.”

Hudson and Valentine agree.

“Pete’s philosophy,” Valentine says, “is if you can live in a cabin in Maine in the woods, why would you go anywhere else?”

Kausen’s bowls may be purchased at Island Artisans in Bar Harbor and Northeast Harbor; Hattie’s at Darthia’s Organic Farm in Gouldsboro; Guagus River Inn and Gifts Bed & Breakfast in Milbridge or by contacting Kausen at 483-4679.