#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....