Oklahoma Dreaming: Outside Shower

by Donna Schoenkopf

last time: inside the storm

Remember Susan?

She lived on Orcas Island, a magical place in the Puget Sound (get out your maps ... it's that large inlet on the coast of Washington State).

Orcas is one of the San Juan Islands. (Francisco de Elisa, a Spanish explorer, named them after St. John the Baptist in 1791. Indians watched his galleon all along the way from Mexico to that rocky northern coast, standing on cliffs or shorelines, watching, watching, watching this amazing THING moving through the water, sails billowing. Must have been like seeing a UFO.)

ANYWAY, Orcas Island can only be reached by ferry. So let me take you there.

Pretend we're in the car together. We've driven north along the Pacific Coast Highway, gone inland a bit once we've gotten to Washington State, and finally gotten to Anacortes. The commercial area is unpretentious, sunny, friendly. Soon we're in a residential area with comfortable houses gracefully settled around the nooks and crannies of the hills that slope to the sea. Then, winding our way along, the road splits into serious business with eight lanes, four of which are carrying us along like a funnel which will eventually dump us behind a million other cars waiting for the ferry. We are in long symmetrical lines, like colored beads on a necklace. We just point the car straight ahead, sheeplike, not knowing how a person is supposed to do this "ferry thing." Eventually we drive onto the ferry with no problem, just following the guy up ahead, park, get out of the car, climb steep metal stairs to a vast open room with huge windows all around overlooking the sea, and settle into big comfortable booths alongside those huge windows. There's food and drink and kids who are peaceful and happy. In fact, everybody is happy.

It takes a long time to make the trip ... I don't remember how long ... but long. Long enough to really enjoy it, get the rhythm of the sea, let your cares float away.

Then Orcas appears off the bow and we begin to aim for the dock. The island is as pretty as a picture. The docking area is built into the hillside, with quaint shoppes and hippie stuff. Pine trees, flowers, prettyprettypretty.

Everyone scurries downstairs to climb into their cars. We dock. We drive off the ferry.

And start the idyllic drive to Susan's, on the other side of the island. Pastures, woods, ferns, flowers, scenic farms and sweet houses. There isn't anything ugly, dirty or sad anywhere.

We arrive at Susan's. She lives in a cabin she bought years ago when she divorced. It sits close to the ocean on the side of Buck Mountain. There are stands of pines and ferns and blackberries everywhere. She is waiting there, on the deck, waving, with a smile on her face and a glass of white wine in her hand. She's tall and lean and has long, gray, straight hair, pulled back. She is HAPPY to see us. We talk and laugh and catch up and she tells us the plans for the day. She always has a plan.

And now, Dear Reader, I must leave you out of the story, because the rest is personal history. And you weren't there. I want to be as factual as possible.

The next morning I wake up. I am happy. The cabin is light-filled (there's a big picture window looking out on the ocean with the kitchen/dining table under it). Coffee, talk, goofing around. And I say, "I'm going to shower." And she says, "Try the outdoor shower." And I say, "Outdoor shower?" And she says, "Yes, it's around the back of the house."

So I got my towel and shampoo and walked out on the deck and down the stairs (with the view of the ocean before me) and turned left and THERE IT WAS. THE OUTDOOR SHOWER.

Now, some of you may not be impressed. But I was. It was a thing of beauty. The shower head stuck out from the side of the house. She had put cool hooks on the cedar wall and an even cooler soap dish. There were ferns all around and little wildflowers poked their heads out. Moss softened the ground. There was a sweet wooden grate to stand on, which let the water stream through it and disappear somewhere. There was wooden lattice work on one side that Jim had put up, which created a beautiful dappled pattern of light. The place was surrounded by pine trees. Nature (and Jim) had created paradise.

I turned on the water and it cascaded over the moss and wooden grate. It soon turned warm and wonderful and I stepped under its waterfall. And that's what it was like .... a waterfall. But a waterfall of water of the most perfect temperature. I turned and wet my hair and shampooed and soaped and rinsed and listened to the birds sing.

It was the Platonic version of the Ideal Shower.

I turned off the water. Took my towels from the hooks, wrapped up my wet hair, toweled off, put on my robe, stepped into my rubber thongs, walked around the house, up the stairs, across the deck and into the house and proclaimed, "Someday I will have an outdoor shower!"

It was many years before I made it happen ... a long time because I always rented. I had wonderful houses that I treated as my own, but a person doesn't put a lot of money into extra plumbing that you can't bring along when you move. I would think about Susan's outdoor shower from time to time. Sometimes I would ask Susan about it or, once in a while, tell someone about my experience.

Years and years, rental house after rental house. No outdoor shower.

Then, three years before I retired, I started to plan the house I would build. My Affordable House. The non-negotiables were for it to be environmental, in the country, surrounded by beauty and ... have an outdoor shower.

I made up and discarded all kinds of floor plans for my house, and finally settled on a simple rectangle, 20' X 60', facing south with lots of glass and metal. Very modern. (And the rectangle is the most environmental shape there is, it turns out. Like the Geo Metro, it is cheap AND environmental. Win-win.)

Three years went by. I was obsessed with my house during that time. I doodled on endless scraps of paper. I imagined the placement of furniture and sinks. I saw the vista from my imaginary windows. I felt the imaginary breeze on my skin.

Then ... the time had come. No more teacher, no more books, no more ... I forget the rest.

I packed up my stuff with the help of two Mexican geniuses who managed to put EVERYTHING in one container, like a Rubik's Cube, and left California, heading to my new place in Tornado Alley, Oklahoma.

Once I got here it took Peewee, another genius and guardian angel, about five months to build.

In our first meeting I told him I wanted an outdoor shower, and his face brightened and he smiled his big smile and said, "Good idea."

The land got bulldozed. The water lines came in. The concrete went down (which EVERYONE says is the most beautiful concrete ever), the frame got welded, the wiring went in, the plumbing went in.

I said to Peewee, "Don't forget the outdoor shower!" And he said, "How could I forget the outdoor shower? That's the best part!"

He put the guts of it in and even bought a pretty oak panel to cover the special handles in the wall that I must turn to empty the lines when it's winter so I won't freeze up the pipes. (He said he'd call to remind me. What a guy.)

I screwed on the shower head. It was official.

The Outdoor Shower stood there all winter. Just a showerhead sticking out of my eastern wall. Certainly not the thing of beauty I had experienced at Susan's.

Cold days passed. Gradually the bite disappeared from the air. Tiny bumps appeared on the sticks of branches on my cottonwood tree which would turn into leaves. Little sprouts of green grass poked out of the ground. Birds appeared. Frogs began to sing. (Yes, SING!) A butterfly! And wildflowers bloomed, a new species every day, all colors and shapes.

Spring was here!

I bought a rhododendron, and lilac bushes, a rubber mat thing, some hooks for towels and robes, and a soap dish thingy. The shower area is simple and stark. It is not Susan's dream shower. But that will come.

And this week, with balmy breezes and sunny skies, after three years of imagining and yearning, I showered under my Outdoor Shower for the first time.

It was 2:00 in the afternoon and I was covered with red clay mud from digging and planting my windbreak of red-tipped photinia. I started toward my back door and stopped cold in my tracks.

I could take a shower in my Outdoor Shower, I realized with a start!

I went around to the back of the house, the east side with the shower head protruding from the wall. I ducked through my sliding glass door and undressed, grabbed my robe, got two towels, stepped back out, turned on the water, took off my robe and hung it and the two towels on the hooks I had put there.

And then stood under that fabulous water.

It was magic. The sun shone on my skin as the water slid off my hair, onto my shoulders and down my body. The birds sang. The breeze touched me softly. The water ran down the red dirt hill, carving a ragged slash of erosion. The little rhododendron and the two little lilac bushes I'd planted stood valiantly on the hill. As I showered, I imagined moss on my hilltop, a wall of bamboo on one side, a wonderful wooden grate under my feet, and rocks filling the rough gash of eroded soil. And everywhere, flowers and ferns.

I could have stayed there for a long, long time.

(Insert beautiful music here.)

And now, every day, I shower in my Outdoor Shower. Sometimes twice a day. Just because.

And if you come to my house, you can shower there, too.

You'll love it.

It's magic.

next: getting tough