SEPTEMBER 28, 2007 - We’ve often been asked if we see ways to extend the 100-mile concept into other areas of life; we’ve even joked about writing a sequel titled The 100-Mile Closet, in which we’d wear nothing but locally gathered pelts and buckskin in downtown Vancouver for a year. So when a man named Peter Matheson approached us in the small town of Grand Forks, BC, to talk about 100-Mile Housing, we were dubious.

“With the 100-Mile Diet, every ingredient in every food we ate had to come from within 100 miles,” said Alisa. “So for something to be real 100-Mile Housing, it would have to be the same - every part of the house from within the local area.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” said Peter, smiling broadly. His enthusiasm raised my curiosity, and I asked for a hand-drawn map to his building site.

The next morning I made my way up the starkly beautiful Granby River valley and finally followed a dirt track until it opened into a glade. I was surrounded by strange and wonderful constructions. There was an unfinished igloo made of ice-cream buckets, and beyond it more complete constructions of earth and wood and stone, with hardly a straight line to be seen. People were hard at work, mudding walls and packing stones for a new building, yet no power tools howled or bulldozers rumbled.

“Welcome to the Sanctuary,” said Peter as he seemed to pop out of the earth itself. “Everything indigenous. No travel costs.”

The Sanctuary, I soon learned, was the property of a man who introduced himself only as Sean. He’d bought the land with his partner Esther more than 20 years earlier - they had sought out an unremarkable property, wanting to avoid the petty feuding that often breaks out in areas that are in high demand. The Sanctuary, as the story goes, saved Sean’s life. While working as a medical doctor, he was diagnosed with cancer and given perhaps a year to live. He retreated to the woods to live simply and without stress, and to eat healthy food. Not only did he survive - he thrived.

“He knew nothing about building,” said Peter. “This isn’t something you need to be a builder for.”

We walk from building to building through organic gardens bounded by curving walls. The variety is astounding: from three-season constructions with nothing for walls but piled cordwood to the Grand Kiva, nearly 50 feet in diameter and inspired by the communal structures built by indigenous peoples in the American Southwest. The floor of the Kiva is a circle of fine sand surrounded by stone benches - it is designed to be a community meeting space. The roof is a 12-sided dome of criss-crossed poles, all taken from the property, mainly from dead timber.

The buildings go on and on, from cob “hobbit houses” (the “cob” - a more sophisticated term for mud - is made with a combination of local clay and dirt, manure from nearby ranches, and an invasive plant called knapweed) to more conventional log and stone cabins. Though the Sanctuary is entirely off the grid, some buildings have solar power, there are laptops about, and a TV for watching films is available in the Theatre.

“This is not about being cold, wet, and dark,” says Peter. “We’re trying to make poverty enviable.”

When the people at the Sanctuary talk about “affordable housing,” they don’t mean $300,000 homes on 30-year mortgages. According to Sean, the building I could see under construction would cost about $200 to create. Materials were being generated by the building process. While digging down to create a living space just below surface level, the builders produce earth and stone for the eventual walls. The roof will likely be made of wood, again from the property. The glass and other “extras” that go into these constructions are all salvaged from local landfills, home demolitions, etc.

“People say, ‘I want to build, but I don’t have building materials around.’ And I say, ‘Yeah, you do,’” says Peter. “‘You just have to look around you.’”

Of course, this kind of self-sufficient construction - the way we humans sheltered ourselves for 99.9% of our history as a species - is now technically illegal. Standing in his own 100-Mile Home - it looks a little more conventional than the others - Peter opens up about his past life in advertising design and, later, in architecture and construction. He recalls a moment, not long after he moved to Grand Forks, when he stood on a hill overlooking the town and spotted some renovations to a house that, as a professional, he knew did not conform to building codes. He remembers ranting: “Oh, lookit - they haven’t got a permit, they shouldn’t be able to do that.” He pauses. “I realized I was just jealous. It’s been really hard for me to build ‘not square.’”

Peter’s been working on his own house at the Sanctuary for eight years. It is small - though larger than Alisa and my apartment in Vancouver - but from his bedroom he can watch the stars, and his solarium gathers enough sun that he keeps himself in fresh greens, even in the winter.

“We’re creating a bridge from bizarre to unconventional,” says Peter, laughing. “I don’t expect most people to live in a place like this, but we’re exploring what’s possible. We want people to know they have a choice - exactly what you’re doing with the 100-Mile Diet.”  -JBM

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