For two artists living in a remote area of Canadian forest, the ultimate getaway isn't a luxury vacation—it's the floating home they built themselves. Catherine King and Wayne Adams have spent the last 24 years constructing a million-pound, unanchored floating island, which they call Freedom Cove.To realize theri monumental vision, the artists have become a regular Swiss Family Robinson with DIY solutions to life's daily problems. For example, Adams built every structure in Freedom Cove himself. "Everything is done with a handsaw and hammer. No power tools. I know every board and nail by name," he says in a new video from Great Big Story. Each building is distinctly recognizable as Adams' handiwork, and he decorates the floating compound with hand-carved sculptures. "I was hoping to make a lot more money as an artist, so subsistence living was our only opportunity to have anything as artists," Adams reveals. "We could never afford real estate, so we had to make our own."
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Four of the buildings on the island are greenhouses, in which King cultivates a variety of vegetables. Combined with the fish Adams catches in the biomass-heavy waters of Vancouver Island's Clayoquot Sound, they have all they need to persist on their homemade island getaway. There are no roads to Freedom Cove, only waterways, giving the couple the privacy need to lead their off-the-grid lifestyle. New York artists seeking greener pastures in LA, or vice versa, why not head to the wildnerness instead?
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