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Hobbit Dwelling in Basin

Jer's blog yesterday showed one of the buildings on the "hobbit" compound in the woods near Basin. Actually the compound is owned and lived in most of the year by an artist who has cobbled together a studio, her living quarters, and two other habitable buildings that are rented or used by friends. None of the spaces have electricity, although the artist has a phone. A land line, not a cell phone because, duh, no way to recharge the batteries.

This is the artist's primary living space:

Inside, the area reminds me very much of Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language, the "Old Age Cottage"  -- enough space for a cozy nested bed, a kitchen with a wood stove and a sink, a table, and art art art, of all sorts, everywhere, inside and out. But no extras, like a living room, or formal dining area, or shower room.

This is an artist who did what many of us once imagined  doing -- 40 years ago she moved to the woods to make art. For the last couple of winters, she's bunked on the Oregon Coast (chopping wood and hauling water could get to be a drag on an older body when the temperature is below zero), but even in her absence, the whole area reverberates with her presence.

I was so enthralled I forgot to get a photo of the studio, which is a separate (and larger) building, but there is another important structure on the property.

All the mod cons. --June

Rat's Foot

One of the long-time residents of Basin gave us a tour a couple of days ago of a group of dwellings in the forest on the north side of town. The two houses and one artist's studio that we visited had no electricity, and at least two of the three structures had no running water. The house above is called Rat's Foot and was unoccupied at the time of our visit. It's as quirky inside as out. It appears to have been assembled room-by-room over the years from whatever materials were handy. A set of steps leads from the main room to a sleeping loft above. With a round door, it might become a Hobbit house. -- Jer

A Basin Alley

The Montana Artist's Refuge fronts on Basin Street in Basin, and the Visual Artist's Studio bumps up against the Basin Street sidewalk. But the Refuge also backs on an alley, which turns out to be both historical and useful.

The alley is off Pine Street at both ends, which only makes sense if you understand that Pine Street curves around in a semi-circle. The red car at the left of the photo above is our Honda, and the brick building that the car sits adjacent to is the biggest Refuge structure, the 1904 Hewitt Bank/Masonic Temple. The apartment, which is back of the painting studio, has a convenient back entrance, which has become our front door. It's where the Saloon Cat sits and waits for an opportunity to dash inside.

The photo above is of the side of a garage that faces the alley just across from our parking space. It is still used by one of the Refuge's founders. The sign says, "Carve a tile It'll last a while; leave your mark on Basin."  (The quote is only approximate -- the sign is even less clear in the photo than in person). My assumption is that carving a tile was a community event and perhaps fund-raiser from some earlier year of the Refuge. The sign, like the sign for the Jazz Event, got leaned up against a convenient upright, and there it stayed.

On down the alley is an even more historical "monument."

The stone building, just along the alley from the Refuge (which is the brick structure on the far left) was the Basin jail. It was built in 1899; the Montana Historical Society has a photo of it from the late 1970s, when it looked much the same. However, someone has added a nice new roof, and the chimney looks rather new, too. The jail can also be seen in the first photo on this blog.

However, jail facilities have been taken over by Jefferson County and moved 9 miles to Boulder, Montana, so I suspect this is currently a storage shed.

A prominent town alley, a memorial to an art function from days of yore, and a (well-kept) jail -- what more could one ask of a residency program? -- June

Smelter Stack

These are the ruins of the smokestack of a smelter in Basin. It appears to me that the smelter rested at the bottom of the hill shown above and that the broken half-cylinder running up the hill carried fumes from the smelter oven to the vertical stack. This is speculation on my part, though. I haven't found anything in print to confirm my hypothesis. The people in Basin that I've talked to about the smelter have told me that it was abandoned after it was built and never did any smelting. The on-line and printed sources that I've consulted suggest otherwise but don't give enough detail for me to be sure. The smelter itself is gone, though a stone wall at the bottom of the hill might be some of its remains. -- Jer

Recent History, Basin, Montana

As is usual with June and Jer's Excellent Adventures, discovering the history of places, whether of the last 100 or last 100 million years, becomes a kind of game for them.

Jer grubbbed pay dirt in a used book store in Butte:

Muriel Sibell Wolle wrote Montana Pay Dirt in 1963; (our copy is a third printing, from 1982). In the early 1960's, the author visited innumerable sites of old mining towns, including Basin, and did 175 sketches - paintings and drawings  -- of the mostly ghost towns.

This is her sketch (and my thumb) of the buildings which are three doors down from the Hewitt Bank building, where we are now living. The central building, with the bell tower, is the fire station. Our research says it is (at least) the second fire house in Basin; the one that now serves the area is just across the street. The sketched fire house currently looks like this:

It still has the old lettering, but the bell has disappeared. Here's the new fire house with its solar collectors:

And look what stands next to the front parking lot:

We wondered why this bell was here, since, as we found out at 3 AM one morning, the new fire station has the most ordinary of piercing fire sirens. The bell must have been the warning signal prior to the electric siren's appearance, and the fire company saved it when they moved to their less picturesque but  more functional quarters.

Another Basin mystery solved.

By the way, the mystery photo on southeastmain on Christmas day, was an old event sign, propped against the building across from one of my studio windows. The sign was for a big jazz to-do, fundraiser for the Refuge (that may have been the summer event where it rained, hard, and the men of the community heated quiche and drank beer in the basement of the Civic Center, but that's another story and may not be connected at all...).

And Janet, it is painted on the dismantled hood of a car, so your guess was good. Of course, all was obscured by the snow, which is what made me think of Christmas. That and the exotic logo of the Refuge, which looks a bit like a Hawaiian floral species. --June

Basin

This is Basin from the side of a hill to the south. The long brick buildings include the Artists Refuge. In the foreground is Interstate 15, snow-covered. -- Jer

Happy Holidays!

--June

Old Mine

This mine is in Basin, across the Boulder River from the Artists Refuge and down the road a bit.

The entrance is blocked with a metal gate, and signs warn against trespass. I noticed, however, that the lower left-hand corner of the gate had been pried back. I'm pretty sure I could squeeze past the gate and tour the mine. However, I'm not going to. -- Jer

Solstice Light

A great advantage to living in the north during the winter solstice is that it's easy to catch the light high on the hills. This is particularly true if you live in a basin below the hills. It's easy even if you don't get up until 9 AM (the sun comes over the horizon at 10) and you are still awake at 4 PM, when the sun goes down.

Note the little-eyed school steeple at the bottom of the photo. I see it from my studio window in all sorts of light.

The photo above was taken from a hill across the Interstate from Basin -- the smoke stack on the right hand side of the photo sits nearly at the end of Basin Street, before it turns into a dirt road and runs up the gulch.

This is a photo taken near Boulder, Montana, just up the road from Basin. It too sits in a basin, but it's a large range-like country side, and the close-in hills have golden grasses. --June

Saloon Cat

This is the cat that sleeps under the saloon in Basin. -- Jer