That’s when my mom’s friend of a friend brought me to her abandoned moss-covered cabin just around the corner from my parents’ house. I had walked by the place many times in my life and thought to myself that it was sad to let an adorable cabin waste away into the ground.

The forest was consumed it.

Mice inhabited every inch. Blackberries not only covered the yard but were crawling up the walls.

Tarps and boards covered broken windows.

  • The Creative Cabin (2019)

As I stepped inside across the sloping wood floors, while dust danced in the sunlight, I saw a glimmer of hope. THIS was going to be my creative space. I looked at the owner and said, “I will fix it up! I will do anything it takes to stay here!”. I felt a little insane, but it was the best option I had.

I put the van build on hold and spent two straight weeks reclaiming the cabin from nature. I put on rubber gloves, rolled up my sleeves, and got to work on the inside. I bleached the floors where there had been piles of mouse poo, cleared the cobwebs, and scrubbed everything down.

In total, I trapped a colony of twenty-five mice. I replaced broken windowpanes got to work on the outside, clearing the forest debris from the hidden remnants of a driveway, hacking blackberry bushes back, and weed whacking the yard.

The cabin had electricity but no running water. With help ,I had built a composting toilet and took showers at the gym.

With no running water, I hauled five-gallon jugs of water from my parents’ property.

In total, the place was about five hundred square feet, not including the loft, where I put the bed—sitting room only.

    Slowly but surely the cabin’s magic began to shine. Sitting above a ravine, I befriended the owls, deer, and forest creatures that inhabited that slice of heaven. It became our creative oasis. I spent most days painting on the back deck above the ravine, listening to the forest sounds. Only a five-minute walk over the hill from the Puget Sound, I spent my summers swimming and paddleboarding.

    • Painting inside the cabin

    • Cabin chores

    There couldn’t have been a better place when the stay-at-home orders and pandemic hit in March 2020. I had my own private little Creative Cabin, living closer to nature than ever before. I even had a little outdoor shower built seeing as the gym showers were now closed.

    • Stay Home portrait of cabin (2020)

    • Painting cabin barn door (2020)

    But as time went on, my career was growing rapidly, and the cabin began to feel too small. Not to mention, winter was looming, and I knew I wasn’t going to make it through with freezing outdoor showers. I began looking for a place of my own to purchase back in the same maritime town where I had first lived after arriving back from Mexico.

    Just as effortlessly as the cabin had come into my life, it slipped away, leaving a bittersweet goodbye. Within a couple weeks of searching for a home I found the perfect spot to buy. It was a beachy fixer-upper on a quarter acre, with a separate outbuilding the same size as the cabin — the perfect space for an art studio.

    Nestled beneath the mountains on a bluff above the sea, I finally had my first real home base — a place where I built my career, surfed, and set out on van camping adventures.

    I can feel my life unfolding into something far bigger than I ever imagined. Every step of the journey — the mountains, India, the crash, the quiet pull toward painting. . . helped shape the path that led me here. And this next chapter is only just beginning.

    • Painting mural in my current studio (2021)

    • Painting in the studio

    May this story inspire you to reach for your dreams! Thanks for reading!

    Xx,

    Gianna

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