#10 Creative Chaos and Renovative Thinking

It’s All Relative
11:30 pm Thursday. I’ve just returned from seeing the film Biutiful with Javier Bardem playing a mostly single parent coping with childrearing and working in the multicultural and poor underworld of Barcelona’s exploited immigrant labor. Thanks to the Noyo Theater’s Independent Film Series two nights a week in alternatively-oriented Willits (a town of many hidden gems, I am learning), I still get to see these cutting edge and relatively new films that try our hearts and souls.

I come home humbled. Though I am living in a “construction site,” as Ralph the electrician and solar samurai so aptly named my home at present, I can make myself relatively comfortable. It may take twenty minutes to get a wood fire crackling and warm in the 40 degree mountain night, but soon I can be thoroughly comfortable (and now I’m really good at building a fire!), unlike the Chinese immigrants in the film who sleep huddled in an unheated basement. And I will wake up on the couch in a sleeping bag to a view of the sun streaming over a ridge of redwood and pine trees.

Construction Sight
In fact, this week the cabin has become a site of wonderful creative chaos, offering me new perspectives on the world of building homes. The cabin walls have been pried apart and cut into for a new sliding glass door (see photo above) and windows. The kitchen sink is now in the yard, leaving me cooking indoors and cleaning up outdoors.

The closet was taken out, opening up the whole space inside and engendering a flurry of new plans. Until that blockade came out, I literally couldn't see new possibilities for keeping the space open and improving feng shui. A visit from Nancy the architect (right) stimulated new ideas. Our minds are not open unless we, well, open them somehow!

I still sleep on the tarp covered couch in the cabin, despite a bed set up in the shed, but with the mercury hitting 35 degrees in the night, I prefer the construction site with the woodstove. Even with tarps covering an opened window space in the cabin, a fire provides degree of heat.

Washing my hair in the bucket has gotten a lot easier after I had all my hair cut off. I keep adjusting to the more minimal conditions. Letting go of expectations that life should be normal makes the glorified camping a pleasure rather than a source of stress.

This whole experience makes me ask which of the elemental forces that make our lives comfortable would we least want to do without in our homes? And how does depriving ourselves of them change our relationship to ourselves, each other, the world around us? Which would you most miss? Heat in the cold? Easy light at night? Electricity for gadgets? Hot water for washing? Clean water for drinking? Any water out of a spigot at all? A flush toilet? Cleanliness (as in being surrounded by dirt and inundated with dust)? A comfortable place to sleep?

News of the devastation after the tornadoes in Alabama certainly humbles us as so many there have lost everything, if not their lives.

“How Did You Get Tom Allen to Work on Your Place?”
With the right contractor, like the locally famous Tom Allen, homebuilding dreams do come true. Whenever I tell anyone that Tom is the contractor, I get a kind of rockstar, adulatory response. Tom normally works on big, custom-built places. Renovating my cabin would normally not be worth his consideration, it seems—except with home building down, he was happy to take up this “interesting” project, as he said.

Tom (left) is ultra patient, good humored, knowledgeable and skilled, as are his accompanying carpenters—actually I want to say Renaissance Men—Mike (right) and Chris (left, below) . Everyday I learn from all of them a slew of information in a realm I have previously little pondered. In fact, at the hardware store, I glanced through a Handyman’s Pocket Handbook and was impressed by the range of knowledge in the book and manifested in what these guys know how to do. Of course, I over analyze everything. What else is a phrigging Ph.D. in the woods gonna do? I look at the amazing skills they have and how ineffective I am in this realm.

I think about how skills are relative to context.
Tom and Mike spent hours this week digging, surveying and calculating the structure for the foundation walls of the new bathroom (left below). We’re talkin’ a small room here, four feet by ten, 40 square feet. But I never appreciated the details involved in such construction, like seeing a flower: jacking up the whole corner of the cabin because it’s sinking (right); building the new foundation to the existing foundation; using the rebar bender to get a very specific form for the rebar that lies in the foundation; tying in the rebar; strapping together the foundation boards; and preparing the trench for the plumber and the pit for the concrete gravel. It’s complicated!

When people who do remodels tell you that kitchens and bathrooms are the most expensive and complex, now I see why. I have never understood what construction really involves; at least, I’ve never paid attention before, given that I was paying so much attention to my students’ papers and daily lesson plans. My own work revolved aorund the more abstract nature of ideas, producing academic work, nurturing relationships with students and colleagues.

Of course, when we're wrapped up in our own worlds of expertise and experience, we underestimate the trials and triumphs of others. Today, I am in awe of the way carpenters, electricians, plumbers, loggers, millers, and others in the trades can create beauty amd comfort.
I do help out, more on that soon. Here I am at my Denailification Station, removing nails from pulled out lumber.

I’ll return to some of the specific changes in the weeks to come, and how mastery of language provides access to skill expertise, not to mention how new vocabulary is just plain fun, like watching these guys sling around the “vibrator” without even cracking a smile (I repressed my own) or how I got to use the screed and the mag floater. Yeah, you just can’t wait to find out…

But my computer is running out of juice (the 12-volt solar system was disconnected), so I have to shut down for now. Stay tuned.

#9 Critters and Other Creations

Seeing a flower
Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time -

like to have a friend takes time.

Georgia O'Keefe

I’ve spent a lot of my life observing people: students in classrooms, colleagues in meetings, friends and family in laughter and tears, strangers squeezed onto buses, passing by in city crowds, in lines at train stations and at packed theaters. Now I also get to observe the natural world around me with as much fascination.

Not that everything I get to absorb visually is new, but with this transition in my life, I’m more likely to stop and really look, like bending to this poppy about to pop.

Forest flowers emerging after the snows and rains are especially welcoming, sprites of color. Here, purple forest orchid,

yellow lace, pink clover flower, magenta shooting star, white trillium. (Actually, I don’t know if those names are real ‘cause Urban Girl hasn’t studied flower identification as much as she has identified the tenets of social structural analysis, the use of the subjunctive in English and hip hop spoken word rhythms. Help with flower identification is welcome!)

They really do go “gobble gobble gobble”
Wild turkeys are making a come back; I remember two years ago first hearing with amazement the strange, throaty shrill trill. Now up and down the road several small flocks of turkeys roam freely. The cocks strut their stuff when challenged, turning their phalanx of feathers to the interloper as if to show how tough their beauty makes them. I for one am always impressed.

In Woods Wisdom One, we learn about tracking; here are turkey tracks (right) , along with a set of deer tracks (below) not far away.

Deer themselves are rather too common to share by photo, not to mention too fleet of feet for me to get their picture , as are the spry jack rabbits that scoot across the road, their tall perked ears ever giving them the advantage when I want a closer look.

An alligator lizard was found crouching behind a wall, and I dug a newt out of the woodpile and set it free. The most unusual creature I have seen was a ring-tailed cat spied last summer waddling through the forest followed by four little ones waddling behind, a critter that is a cross between a cat, a raccoon and a weasel; I hope the family will return.

The ability to see diverse creations in nature and to name them holds delight, especially in a world where our eco-diversity is so threatened, and many of us have lived as strangers to and alienated from the natural world. We can name more television shows we know than flora and fauna.

Of course, my favorite critter is my wild dog made companion, here demonstrating the yoga he teaches me: Down Dog.

The sounds of the raven's wings whooshing across the sky, the sight of the green glow of newborn ferns and grasses, the hills alive with the bounty of nature: wherever we are, may we feel this blessing of spring.

#8 Simple Living. No, Seriously Simple!

“Simplify, simplify,” insisted Henry David Thoreau, an important precursor of the simple living movement. He declared in 1854 that our lives had already become “an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and needless expense…and the only cure for it … is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose” (in “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” Walden).

In a contemporary effort to live more simply and reduce stuff, a couple declared they would buy nothing new for a year except for food, shoes, pharmaceuticals and toiletries. Everything recycled--like many people are forced to live anyhow, right? (See article on them: http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/2008/1210/colorado-couple-tries-to-go-a-year-without-buying-anything-new) I found their story inspiring.

Many of us rant about seemingly planned obsolescence of goods—the phone, computer, camera, or microwave--that all too soon break down and require replacement. We become dependent on our stuff, as I am on this laptop and my camera to communicate. In fact, for the first time ever, I actually bought a camera to document my new life. How is that for irony: simple living woman buys more technology to document her simple life style!

I have claimed that life in my cabin is simple: lacking hot water at present, dependent on solar power for very basic electricity (and lacking even that with so much rain), no internet access: forms of technology we have come to depend.

But now I will test myself with even more simple living, moving into the shed while the renovations occur.

First, what are these renovations I keep talking about? Principally, I’m getting an indoor bathroom added onto the cabin, incorporating the current composting toilet.
The renovations also include new energy efficient windows (more efficient than the newspaper currently stuffed into the cracks) and real floors, not the painted plywood with the holes that are really a drag to clean down on my hands and knees (there's the floor with Cholo's dish)..

As for the shed I’ll be moving into, one day it'll be a fabulous guest cottage. Right now, it’s a shed.
When I became a land partner with my friend Sage, I wanted to make the shed into my own little cabin. The bottom half inside already had insulation and rough wood paneling. Above, I added more insulation and sheetrock. A friend Helen, who once lived in the cabin, put in a small propane heater, a rug and rocking chair and called it her studio. The little space was a beautiful retreat, and shall be again one day.

However, in the process of preparing the shed to become a guest cottage this time around, the boards were clearly too rotten, moldy and pest-ridden to merit saving for the long term—but not too decripit a place to stay in for a few weeks while the cabin is being renovated. Eventully I’ll find a design for a cute little guest cottage, one worthy of inspiring rest, writing, and reflection.
For example, here is a wonderful little video about Jay’s wonderful tiny house (a little too tiny for me): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbRvsWuWNUM&feature=player_embedded
Here’s another picture of a very organic little house:
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/hans2463/architecture/2009/06/roundtimber_round_house.html

Thoreau on adhering to simplicity in our shelters:

…. Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen Penobscott Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, which the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind. ....

Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. … Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?

[By the way, great video on "The Story of Stuff" in relation to consumerism: http://www.youtube.com/storyofstuffproject#p/u/22/9GorqroigqM

At present our houses are cluttered and defiled with [belongings] … I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dusts gathers on the grass…

As for my own ultra simple dwelling, here are some pictures of what the shed looked like before I started moving in. Thoreau would have identified with this “airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a traveling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments” (okay, not sure about that goddess part…)
In the photo on the left, you can see the loft (stores boxes now), but it used to be a sweet place to sleep—and will be again, in some form.

I’ll soon set up an outdoor kitchen, reminiscent of camping and the outdoor kitchens so typical of humble homes in Mexico where I lived and traveled for three years.

Humble as this abode will be, it will provide a sweet little view, as even here in the rain and mist.

#7 About the Trees

I never saw a discontented tree. John Muir
You’ve probably guessed I’m a tree hugger. Indeed, when you look at the thick moss like fleece that hugs a tree, especially when moist after winter rains, you too would want to wrap your arms around such a mighty limb and take succor.

That is, if you aren’t afraid of the bugs that might be lurking in the moss. I’m not. Because I love trees so much that I might even hug them, I’ve been reluctant to take down trees in the last 25 years that I have stewarded this earth. Hence, the forest has grown up around the cabin, encroaching on the solar panels’ range, though I never forget that I am she who encroaches. I have resisted cutting down trees in order to preserve the air they help us breathe, the cooling effect of their branches, the beauty of their reach. Even when former caretakers asked if I would bring down a tree or two to let in more light on the cabin, I resisted.

However, at last it is necessary to take down several big trees surrounding the cabin to keep the cabin and its dwellers in better condition. I have also become aware of the need to eradicate easily flamable small trees (tan oaks) 4” in diameter or less, the debris from trees down that nature felled, and fire-hazardous brush not only with 100 yards of “defensible space” around the cabin but in the acres beyond in order to actually see the forest through the overgrown bushes. Here is an example of nearly the same view of a madrone tree before (left) and after the brush came out around it (right):

Clearing the brush

We have “Burn Days” when the county air quality board has declared that the potential from pollution of burning brush piles will not significantly endanger the valley. Often such days occur when it’s raining, of course, also reduing the danger of a huge burn pile spreading. I myself hate to resort to burning, but some of the folks helping clear out two acres of debris from the woods could not get a chipper down the road and so we burned (with a permit from the California Department of Forestry, of course, and guidelines issued by the local fire department).

Mountain Man Dan to left, tending the burn pile


(Right) Here I am cooking a quesadilla over the coals in a cast iron skillet when burning at night. Why? Because I can.

This land was all originally redwood, but I heard that after the old growth was removed, the loggers burned huge swaths and planted tan oak, thinking it would be a useful second growth forest to harvest one day. I have to investigate the reality behind the different stories I’m hearing now, but here are examples of burned out stumps and skeletons dating back many decades before I arrived:

Regardless of origins, tan oak does not make a very beautiful forest, its limbs scraggly and easily broken in windstorms. When a tree is felled, bushes of “scrub oak” rise around the stump and propagate. Much of the acreage closest to the cabin has been this scraggly and bushy for years. The woodsmen Bruce, Dan and their companions have helped opened the vista. (Below is a picture of the forest dominated by scrub oak and lacking visibility.)

Forest reclamation

The idea of clearing the woods by conducting controlled burns was practiced by the Native Americans. I always enjoyed the critic of a mythic image of the early Europeans arriving on the indigenous shores to face impenetrable wilderness. In fact, Native peoples practically manicured many forests across the northeast because the use of controlled burns helped reduce brush and small trees that would block the hunters’ sighting of game or the warriors’ sighting of danger. So in reality, many early European settlers encountered forest gardens. Three hundred years later, we are still learning to manage woodlands with as much wisdom.

I became even more interested in restoring my own little forest here when I passed through an educational exhibition forest within the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park on Highway 101 north of Arcata. Ken Burns’ film series called The National Parks: America’s Best Idea praises the courageous founding and enduring value of so many of these precious resources. The film helped me take better notice of paths carefully built through the old growth redwoods, preserved by many outspoken local citizens and advocates who finally captured the ear of political leaders to protect these lands.

One such path had photos showing how the forest floor once had the ugly gash of a lumber road and lumber-related debris on its canyon hillsides, until the reclamation efforts cleaned up the debris and extraneous brush, allowing a fern dell to thrive where the lumber trucks had ripped through the land. I too plan for such restoration and rejuvenation, with ferns growing plentifully in the hillside where the winter rains come down and along the creek bed, and native plants growing along with some vegetables in the garden belown the house, where now you only see the ruin of felled trees. Imagine this redwood creek bed (left) restored.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. ~Henry David Thoreau

Felling a tree

For someone who does love trees, I amazed myself at my contradictory response to watching a tree come down (we must embrace our contradictions!). I whooped with awe more than joy, but whoop I did. Truly these leviathans of the earth have such power; I begin to understand how some humans feel their own power enhanced by bringing down and overwhelming huge forces (redwoods, dictators?).

The art of felling a tree is one I could learn much more about, though I watched and asked questions. In a video clip (that I can't yet get online), Dan, the mountain man who introduced mushrooms on the land to me, is the lumberjack who brings the tree down. Dan makes cuts with his (extremely loud) chainsaw, continually estimating angles and degree of depth to gage when the tree is ready to topple over. He put himself right into harm’s way to read the tree’s trajectory. Watching him frightened me more than once, though he himself was fully confident of the process. I said thank you to the tree for giving its life. His native-oriented upbringing shows. Dan himself says to the fallen giant, “Thank you, sir.”

Lastly, two other trees that came down closer to the house were the tan oaks leaning precipitously over the cabin itself. I was relieved that these were gone when it meant that I could feel safer in the cabin. Here a tree “climber” went up in a “bucket” (photo, below, right) that allowed him to first cast down huge branches from the top, and then drop chunks of trunk below. Mark, the owner of the tree service and expert after years, assured me that the ten foot square area below the tree but between the shed and cabin was an ample amount of space. In fact, he’s had only three square foot bullseye to hit with a falling chunk in tigher spaces before. These trees will provide valuable firewood and lumber when milled (another adventure ahead). In their absence I will have solar energy and clearer satellite range for my modern life. I too say thanks to them for giving their lives.

May I honor their gift.

#6 The Cabin Tour

The idea of a cabin in the woods might conjure coziness and warmth, lovely seclusion and solitude. For others, it might just sound scary.

“Aren’t you lonely? Don’t you get scared?” As my previous posts indicate, I have lots to be scared about in adjusting to a life in the mountains. As Al said about his own adjustment to life in the hills, friends would freak out about the absolute darkness lurking outside at night through the uncurtained windows. No streetlights, no neighbors’ lights. “How do you know someone isn’t out there looking in?” We don’t know. We have to trust.

Here you'll find a little more of a tour of the cabin and its surroundings, to see what is appealing about life in this small secluded space. Recall the front of the cabin, with the outhouse to the right, and the shed to the left.

Coming in the front door

Why is the tub by the front door? Hell if I know! I bought in on the cabin with a friend in the late 1980s. To be honest, like many cabins in the hills at the time, it had been built quickly to capitalize on the first wave of marijuana production. Thus, little attention was paid to convenience or aesthetics. When the National Guard, as part of the Campaign Against Marijuana Production (CAMP) shut down the harvests in those hills at the time, the cabin was abandoned; that’s when I came in, becoming a part owner with my friend who had moved to San Francisco.

With the upcoming renovations, I now hope at long last to create more comfort and capitalize on the natural beauty of the surroundings from inside the cabin. With the renovations, the tub will be in the new attached bathroom. I will say, however, that the moon coming up through the window to the southeast (left of the tub in the picture) was always pleasant to see from the tub.

How classy to have an indoor bathroom!

The bedroom (left), such as it is....

Below is the view from the bed to the woodstove and the kitchen, out the sliding glass door, with the steps

to the loft, a sweet space for sleeping or writing...

The living room (below) is comprised of a couch across the room from the kitchen, but with a nice place to stretch out and look upon the trees out the sliding glass door to the right.

The side deck (below) from the outside to the right shows the sliding glass door, with the shed (future guest cottage) to the right of the cabin.

The shower and outhouse are around the other side of the deck.

You'll see that the outhouse is not like your grandmother's outhouse (right) , but nicely paneled. It's a composting outhouse. The green tub has a mixture of soil, lime or ash and sawdust. After you use the toilet, you throw in 2-3 cupfuls of the mixture, which not only reduces the smell but helps compost the human manure. You see two toilets: one is composting for a year while the other is in use. By the time the "in-use" toilet is full, the other has become an odorless pile of nutrient rich composted soil. Really! It works! And no water wasted.

The view from the back deck (left) when it isn't snowing. I'll have more pictures soon, especially when the landscaping in the garden below this deck improves. But you can only see one house across the canyon on the mountain opposite. Otherwise, it's an eyeful of redwoods, madrone, tan oaks and fir.

Glorious.