The Caretaker Gazette: 26 Years of Dreams for Dreamers
[Editor's Note: Surprise! The Magazineer is back from a little hiatus. Please welcome our newest Magazineer, Jessamyn West, who works in rural Vermont as a library consultant. She also helps run MetaFilter.]
I can’t stay still. I fidget, I travel, I move often. Until I attain my live-in librarian dream, I’m always looking out for that nearly perfect living gig, whether it’s caretaking an Odd Fellows Hall in Seattle, housesitting the big Victorian in Vermont until my landlady returns from the Peace Corps, or being a vacation catsitter on the coast of Maine. Different people, different places. The Caretaker Gazette is the one print place to get you going, going, gone.
Gary Dunn and his family have been doing this for twenty-six years. Their dog Lincoln is on the masthead as “envelope sealer.” The cover price - $6 single issue, $29.95 one year subscription; you can pay in unused postage stamps - had kept me from subscribing in the past but I’d always check out the website and dream little dreams about living in a castle in Scotland or an island off the coast of Maine. They added a blog last year.
A few sample headlines from the 150th issue, November/December 2007:
- Experienced motel managers needed for a 14-unit mountain motel.
- Interested in becoming a hermit? A community of hermits is now forming.
- Ranch manager needed in Marble Falls, 50 miles west of Austin.
Ten years ago, a youthful indiscretion left me with some property that needed attention while I was on the wrong coast. I bought an issue and placed an ad. Over the next few weeks, my mailbox filled with letters and resumes and photos and promises. I stopped counting at thirty. I ruled out almost everyone without an email address. I wound up with someone whose coast to coast travels mirrored mine, who stayed in my Vermont cabin over the next two winters, keeping it warm, keeping me sane. My total investment: $6 for the issue, $15 for the ad.
Each bimonthly issue is sixteen pages of black and white and green all over newsprint featuring caretaker opportunities and “situations wanted” ads. The first page displays a high-tech map-with-dots graphic showing you where in the world you could go. There are a few display ads and letters to the editor and one caretaker profile article. This issue features lighthouse keepers turned Appalachian Trail maintainers Harry and Lawrene Denkers happily living their semi-itinerant lifestyle. The newsletter is hard to read back-to-front because I always catch myself staring out the window envisioning my future life overseeing a trout farm in Montana or a perhaps a pet sanctuary somewhere in California.
Their letters section says that they offer a thousand rent-free living opportunities every year. Surely one would be good for you.
