by Stephanie Hainsfurther
photos: Kip Malone
Michelle Morgan’s passion to create a small home for herself was born of living on a sailboat. “Living on a boat is an environment in which you need to be conscious of what is necessary for living delightfully, and what is excess,” she recalls. “Because it has to be in trim for sailing, everything you take onto the boat must be counterbalanced by something that you take off. So there is a real consciousness of which things contribute to your life, and which things are just there.”
Michelle and her life partner, contractor Anthony Jacob, have transported that economy of living from sea to land, in a jewel box of a cottage that sails the treetops of the Santa Fe National Forest in New Mexico.
Just 600 square feet small, the three-room cottage provides all that is necessary, and beauty to boot. The great room includes sitting area, dining room, and a full kitchen. A sturdy ladder to the loft leads to a bed-sit that provides both guestroom and personal retreat. Below, a private master suite offers a queen-sized bed and a laundry room, closets, shower-bath and separate sink vanity.
But a mere laundry list of available space leaves out the details that make this cottage such a magical place. Handmade cabinets in the kitchen were tinted in sage, then sanded for an Old World effect. The refrigerator is full-sized for optimal food storage. The ladder retracts easily to free up floor space. Clerestory windows in the loft give Anthony’s grandchildren the sensation of sleeping under the stars. Although the home is wired for additional heaters, a pretty porcelain stove, a gift from Michelle’s brother, alone warmed them through a snowy winter. Extra storage is tucked in under the eaves, beneath the ladder, from floor to ceiling in the kitchen and in versatile, scaled-down furniture like the trunk that serves as coffee table in the great room. Everywhere there is a feeling of small spaces well used, and open space left unencumbered.
A trained architect, Michelle is driven to create living places that are beautiful and placed to take advantage of the natural resources around them. She and Anthony originally bought the property across the street from the cottage, on which sits an old adobe house they plan to renovate. When the land opposite became available, they bought it, expecting to camp out while fixing up the small adobe. Instead, Michelleand Anthony decided to make living there comfortable and fun.
“I have a dear friend who has characterized me as being a ‘beauty-making machine,’” laughs Michelle. “Anthony shares this passion to create a place of beauty, and that is about the greatest joy that I can think of in my life. Some get that joy from doing fine arts or their own crafts. Anthony and I both do that by creating built environments.”
Blending into the environment
Yet the man-made cottage does not contradict the environment that surrounds it. The details of siting the house were as important to its owners as the interior. “We wanted to place it to look as if it had grown there,” Michelle notes. “It is a little jewel in its setting, and we have been able to landscape around it so that it almost looks like a small treasure found in nature.” Beside the house, the couple are planting only perennials and herbs that survive foraging by wild animals; further out, they prefer plants that grow naturally in the surrounding woodlands and are xeric, and therefore suited to high-desert drought and wind. The cottage has a southeasterly orientation, taking advantage of the New Mexico sun in winter and the coolness of the forest in summer.
The wild outdoors is as much a part of the cottage as its civilized inside. The home is bordered by a deck to allow several more square feet of living space. Anthony’s hammock is placed to watch the hummingbirds that come to the feeders all day in summer. Jays and magpies visit another feeder he built for them across a tiny footbridge that links the cliffside with tall pines. Non-avian visitors may have more trouble finding the place. The cottage is around a blind corner and down the hill from a dirt road, the elevation is 9,000 feet, and the small town they live in is so far past Abiquiu, even the ghost of Georgia O’Keeffe couldn’t find it. Michelle calls time spent up here “profoundly peaceful.”
A lot of people would love this lifestyle. Michelle has a name for such folk – ”cultural creatives” – and describes them as those who think deeply about the life they would like to create for themselves. “There are those who believe that ‘trophy homes’ are a monument to what we think we should value,” Michelle remarks. “We have a tendency to say, ‘I’m going to do $3 million in sales this year,’ or ‘Ten years from now I want a big home and a vacation home and two Mercedes in the driveway.’ It is just now that cultural creatives and others are beginning to ask, ‘What is it that would create for me the life that I love?’ That could mean accumulating next to nothing and instead creating a mission that is important.”
Cottage industry
Dreaming on the deck may have lead to Michelle and Anthony’s important new mission to build cottages for others who also want to pare down and simplify their way of living. Cornerstone Homes is the name of Anthony’s business and, with a partner firm, he is crafting tiny cottages as guesthouses, studios and home offices, and vacation getaways. Michelle is the resident architect. Although theirs is a “cottage,” another family might envision a “casita” or a “cabin.” The basic home can be modified and added to, customized and embellished in any style, then transported to a chosen homesite.
For now, the mountaintop cottage is this pair’s chosen homesite. They continue to renovate the adobe house across the street, and have another home near Albuquerque where they live during the business week. However, says Michelle, “We have a very, very difficult time leaving the cottage on Sunday evenings. We far prefer to get up at four on Monday morning to come back.” They are purchasing and remaking rental properties at present, and hope someday to recreate Michelle’s sailboat experience by building and living on their own houseboat.
Can one locate a large life on a tiny houseboat? Certainly, this woman can. Michelle is no stranger to the lush rewards of creative risk-taking. “I came to New Mexico having no idea what I would do, with almost no friends here,” she remembers. “I have now a wonderful community of [colleagues] that I work with, a wonderful group of folks who are interested in simple lifestyles and the cottage life. I have a group of friends whom I adore. I have Anthony in my life, whom I never would have imagined, and whom I adore. And I have to say my real profound belief is that if you follow your passion, you can not only live the life you love, but you will be able to support that life, too.”
Stephanie Hainsfurther is the owner and publisher of albuquerqueARTS magazine.
