The Castaway's Guide To Making A Home

For a year or so I lived in a cabin on top of a hill. It was tiny, just a little bit longer than a futon. The sink was by the bed, and the kitchen was a hot plate next to the sink. My refrigerator was in my bathroom, and I slept under my pantry. The cabin had a peaked roof, and the man who had lived there before me had rigged it with a miniature loft, just big enough to sit in, with a view of the ocean. Every afternoon the fog would roll in and condensation would pour down from the pine trees like rain. I couldn't see my neighbors. At night, it felt like I was living in the middle of nowhere. It was like being at sea, or on a deserted island. Although it was cramped and far from everything, I loved living there. Sometimes I think about what it would be like to live on a real deserted island. What would I build? How would I live? Would I choose the hammock or the cave?

More than likely, I wouldn't have a choice. Uninhabited islands are usually uninhabited for a reason. The shipwrecked, the marooned, the stranded: they build their structures out of necessity, under the harshest conditions and with the poorest materials. Such conditions would, you might think, leave little room for expression. And yet everyone approaches the Crusoe problem—of how to turn survival into sustainment, and bare rock into a home—in a different way.