#18 Making a Reality of a Dream

Hectic
The process of cabin transformation reached its apogee in the last week with the confluence of tiling, electricity, plumbing, final installation of doors and trim, all conspiring to leave me with a home that is now 95% complete (an unscientific meansurement). What joy emerges from this hectic process!

I Sing the Cabin Electric!
At the beginning of the week, Ralph, electicial engineer par excellence, finished connecting the solar panels (see picture left of panels on the roof). I have two new large panels that each convey about 400 watts eacg, and three old ones amounting to another 200 together, showing how much the technology has advanced since those original panels were installed 15 and 25 years ago.

Now I also have a plethora of switches, receptacles and lighting fixtures. The trick will be to continue conserving electricty because I only have a 1000 watt inverter, meaning I can’t use any tool or machine that will draw more than that power or it will threaten to blow out my system.

For example, many vacuum cleaners use over 1000 watts, but I have a 600 watt vacuum cleaner. I will have to pick my machines carefully—or not at all. Machines common to modern life are simply untenable or overly taxing on a modest solar system. Leave your hair dryers at home! Don’t expect a blended smoothie chez moi. But you can plug in your laptop and electric toothbrush when the sun is shining and you won’t deplete the storage system at all.

A patient teacher, Ralph has promised a tutorial for me on the science of how the solar system works, a lesson I will transmit for those interested. In the meantime, I can watch a metering light show whether I have 100% or less stored in my 4 6-volt batteries; once the meter hits 60%, I have to start turning off whatever is draining my power.

Tiling or Sisterhood Is Powerful
An ecstatic aspect of the last week was having my sister Christina with me; she is a professional tiler, as well as a hard working friend much needed as I neared the end of this marathon of renovation.

Christina Devine is my step-sister, but since our two families blended early and often, I have grown up with her in many ways, and I consider her my sister in every way. Chris has a brilliant mind versed in German philosophy, a wonderful sense of humor, keen and intriguing observations about the human psyche and life (“I don’t believe we really die”), and uses the I Ching for daily meditation and guidance. She is also talented with a trowel and in ceramic design.

Chris showed me the process of tiling, from designing the tile pattern with a chalk line (photo left below)
to mixing the thinset and laying the tiles with spacers (photo center), and then finally grouting (photo right, Chris mugging as my taskmaster), and polishing.

Here we are looking very happy with our finished product.

When the claw foot tub moved back in (after an hour of cleaning it up following its dirty sojourn in the debris yard for the winter), the bathroom looks positively elegant. The water started flowing, hot and cold, at 3 pm on Friday night, July 8th, and Chris got the first hot bath in celebration.

The Party: Community is Powerful
Friday, July 8th was the day set three weeks ago for the Wrap Party, though it was really more of a “95% Done!” bash for the people who have worked so assiduously on the cabin these last six months and to whom I got a chance to make speeches of thanksgiving: Nancy Simpson, the architect and woman with a keen eye for design; Beda Garman, the septic installer with his dancing dinosaur backhoe (photo left); Ralph Pisciotta, the electrician magician and solar scientist (photo right in front of the "solar hut"); (Mike Trevey and his assistant Billy couldn’t be at the party but his plumbing expertise helped me join the 20th century with the amazing flow of water indoor, not and cold indoors—amazing after carrying buckets to and from the spigot in the yard all this time—(photo below with Tom before tub got moved back into bathroom).

Finally, I lavished praise on The Crew, Chris Beebe, Mike McAlister, and Tom Allen, who have lavished such hard work, good humor, patient instruction, and community information on me day after day for months. (Photo below right) I am also thankful to my sister Chris for her contributions, not only to the tiling but also to sanding off the dark stain on the steps to the loft so that the refinished stairs would be cleaned up and match the lighter woods throughout the house.

I did not get to thank in person but am grateful to Bruce Rumble and his family for helping clear the woods of debris in during the winter months; Miguel Torres for all of his work digging, carrying, and building; to Mike Beebe for his help with fallen trees, including the milling to come; to Johan Henckell for landscaping already completed and lots more to confront.

In the gathering on the deck, I took pleasure at seeing this assemblage of talented people with their "significant others." Tom’s wife Mary had her own childcare center for decades in Willits and thus has known many of the town’s children as they grew up under and after her tutelage, including some of the younger attendees at the party. With all of these folks having known each other for many years, they comfortably caught up on recent news: babies soon to join the community, news of a kayaking adventure on the Mendocino coast and a misadventure on the Eel River, stories of old folks in the town playing pranks and being featured in the Willits Arts Center oral history project [http://willitscenterforthearts.org/].

I could feel the power of community, people connected to one another and to the improvement of their community. When the town is small, it is perhaps much easier to see the impact of economic development and the input of vital skills, from architecture, carpentry, electrics, and plumbing to childcare and nursing. Everyone has a role to play and the community benefits from and supports those contributions, unlike in many economically depressed urban and rural areas where opportunities are more limited.

I was so happy to celebrate the warmth of my new home with those who made it with their ingenuity, guidance, and hard work. Take a look (views north, south and loft below).

Going to the Mountain
Friend John sent me a quotation that keeps resonating with me these days, a response to my request for a quote on perseverance from Nietzche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, whom John had been rereading. John found this: "I overcame myself, the sufferer; I carried my own ashes to the mountains; I invented a brighter flame for myself."

In the last few months, I’ve made many adjustments to life in the forested mountains, leaving behind the comforts of an urban life and even the comforts of indoor plumbing and electricity. At times, we must let our old selves die away to leave room for the new emanation to escape and grow. I am indeed seeking a brighter flame for myself, as so many of us do, whether that be a light of knowledge, serenity, love, justice.

When my sister Chris and I parted after our week together and the symbolic completion of my new cabin in the woods, she embraced me and told me to be proud of all the organizing work I had done for this project. “You did it alone.” No wonder I was feeling tired at the end of the process! I had much to overcome in myself in order to understand and move through this process.

Still to come: tending the landscape around the cabin which ranges from clearcut ugliness in what will become a garden to cleaning up brushy debris of a forest left untended. My forest adventures are not over yet, and the skills I have yet to learn in forestry and organic gardening, solar energy use and life on a dirt road will provide challenges ahead.

The Skies Shine for Her
By way of thanks Chris for all her help this week, we took a trip to Orr Hot Springs outside of Ukiah, where we also ventured to the Montgomery woods redwood grove.

I will take as a symbol of the positive possibilities the sun shining on Chris and me the day we wended our way back from Willits via Mendocino and the California coast where the coast is often socked in by chilling fog in the summer.

Nothing like a little sunshine in a beautiful place after a cold winter to renew one’s pact with life.

The door will open when you come to visit....

#17 That Darkest Hour Thing

Cliches become cliché because they are so often true. "The darkest hour comes before the dawn": Does it have scientific truth? I don't know, but the emotional truth seems obvious, the anxiety that builds while waiting all night for the light to return and being plum worn out with whatever keeps us up and exhausted.

For me, the physical renovation of the cabin has been nearly three months in the making, not interminable compared to constructing a whole house or renovating a building larger than my 600 square feet, but made more difficult for me by not having electricity, heat, or indoor plumbing at home for the duration. The process has reached a contradictory climax in the last two weeks: The end seemed nearer because the walls were freshly painted (by Miguel and me), beautiful trim graces the windows (thanks to Tom, Chris, and Mike, featured right) and light fixtures gave the place a finished look inside (the work of Ralph and Jeff, below).


Meanwhile, outside all hell broke loose.

The septic tank going in behind the shed (see photos below of the tank arriving, the Really Big Hole dug by the backhoe and its placement) meant having the excavator and backhoe ripping up terrain in what was essentially my front yard and outdoor kitchen area. It only lasted a few days, but the open trenches were an open wound when I was already weary of coping with carrying water. The resulting dust—and when it rained lately, mud—from the newly churned earth were not much fun.

The contagiously cheerful and splendidly helpful “Septic and Big Equipment” man, Beda, made enduring the havoc pleasurable. As he looked at one open trench for the phone line and another for the water line, with the excavator poised for replacing the shed, he commented, “It’s really coming together!” Yeah.

True enough. I mean, this trenching means that the connecting energy sources of the cabin will be conducting their forces soon, like the nervous and digestive systems of the body. The water, gas, electric and phone lines all converge and soon will spark and flow.

In the meantime, I keep my weariness at bay, my brain juggling new understandings of all these systems. I work this job from 7 am to 4 pm, then race down the hill into town to get online and deal with other projects and responsibilities, then back up hill while it's still light to clean up the newest debris or otherwise trying to make order out of the chaos of construction. The debris, dust, noise and garbage seem endless (see some piles, right).

During this whole process, I keep renewing my faith that at the end of each day or after a few days, the latest stage will reap benefits and ultimately order.

For example, on Monday, another Mike (left), the brother of Chris the carpenter, arrived and with Miguel, helped transform the stack of tree rounds into useable firewood. I now have about two cords of wood that will keep me (and you, when you visit) warm for a couple of cold winters (below, right). Mike used a wood splitter, a gas powered machine that supremely simplifies the work of heaving an ax over and over again (so my ax wielding lesson will have to wait). I learned about such obvious basics as 2-stroke versus 4-stroke machines; using an oil-and-gas mixture; that gasoline comes in red cans while kerosene comes in blue; and that a cord of wood is 4’x8’x4’ (the latter is valuable knowledge for me, since I had to buy a cord at the beginning of the winter but didn't really know what it should look like). After Miguel, Mike, and I all donned earplugs, we spent a couple of hours cutting and stacking. The end result of this hugely loud process was this amazing pile of wood. Now to cover it and keep it from getting wet and moldy in the winter…

Bats in my belfry I haven’t wanted to mention some of the more unpleasant aspects of living in the shed, like finding mouse poop on my bureau after I’ve been absent for a day or so. Also disturbing is listening to the mice scurry in the wall behind my head at night when I’m trying to sleep. Earplugs work well for that little problem, though getting a “mouser”cat is recommended for the long term. One evening I saw a bat fly above my head in the shed, rather startling. I thank Mike (the carpenter), an eternal optimist, for pointing out that the bat will take care of mosquitoes. So yeah, I stopped worrying about any nefarious impact of bats. Besides, I don’t have enough hair for them to mess with, should they even try to live up to their reputation. I’m good with mosquito patrol. After a few months of all this home havoc, it might drive one a little batty.

Who knew that I could ever miss a cold, wintry night? But now that the summer is setting in, mosquitoes can plague the evening with their insistent buzz. I keep thinking about the saying in Minnesota that their state bird is the mosquito. At least ours are still small. I strive to work that “eternal optimist” discipline, too. It sure creates far less anxiety and resentment.

Lessons learned

So all of this web-log is about sharing what I am learning as a neophyte in the woods and getting a chance to exercise my sense of humor under often challenging moments.

As the renovation process comes to its gradual close, I see reinforcement of lessons learned along the way. One is the warning that Nancy, the architect, and Tom, the contractor, offered at the beginning of the process: It is usually better to tear down a dysfunctional structure and start fresh. So far I am glad I didn’t, but I understand now much better why they would advise such a seemingly drastic approach.

For example, Tom had Chris muck around under the house to inspect piers and posts that form the funky foundation after we had the humongous support beam go in under the loft. Chris showed me one of the posts he had replaced: it was “mushy,” he said, and I was horrified to see it broken in two pieces like mere cork. They also found that the floor of the loft was not well supported (here Chris shows the horrifying hole in the floor that one might have fallen through had there not been a chair in that corner all these years). Thanks to all of them, I have a fairly well supported house now. Since I’ve now got a beautiful home, I want to insure it will last longer, so a future urgent project is to get a continuous foundation poured under the perimeter of the cabin.

I also keep returning my lesson about the way the mind sometimes only opens when forced to see new possibilities as the old version of reality drops away. We are sometimes forced to lose someone or something, perhaps due to neglect or to some force beyond our will and control. We grieve, we mourn, but soon we can begin to see new opportunities that arise from that vacancy, perhaps a way of being for ourselves that could not exist because of the predominance of whatever was there before.

That new possibility was true in a very physical sense for me in this project when the closet came down. It once dominated the cabin, dividing it into two semi-rooms, and because the cabin had always been that way, I was attached to The Way It Was. We can convince ourselves of the inherent value of The Way It Was and thus perpetuate the past, unwilling to adopt or even think about change. However, when change happens (such as the closet being ripped out), we can even feel some relief.

In the same way, I experienced that breath-giving change when the tool shed got dragged from its previous location—an amazing process in itself, requiring Beda, Chris, Mike, and Tom to make many calculations of how to use the excavator, chains, and skids to get the shed off its post and piers and out of the way for the septic tank to get put in, and then return the shed to a post & pier position. The problem was worthy of a high school mathematics study brought to real life. But once the shed was moved, I had the opportunity to think about permanently relocating the tool shed, rather than just putting it back where it had been. In fact, it was better to move it further away from cottage shed (where I am currently living, and that will one day be a guest cottage).

Finally, I keep learning over and over how electrifying it is to try out new skills. Here I am with the "whacker," compressing soil after the new phone-line conduit trench was covered up again. I don't have a driver's license for this machine any more than I did for the excavator, and I nearly lost control of it, but I had fun trying.

Next week my sister Chris arrives to teach me about tiling with her help in the bathroom--it will be so great to have family here and have help from a friend! One more week to go and then a little celebration with the cabin 95% done. The light is coming.