"My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you"

Clouds parting over Chirimoyal.

Resilience. Flexibility. Courage. Faith.

Where do the engines of the human soul find their fuel? What is the strange sustenance that will-power and spirit provide? Out of what material does perseverance manifest?

A beautiful, bug-free view.
The fruit of labour on Chirimoyal.

I drew my cup from my family. I aspired toward the dignity of endurance that Hannah Arendt wrote of in "On Revolution." Life is difficult: problems arise like waves on the seashore. Living, one must come to understand, is not in avoiding or worrying about the inevitable problems -- rather, to confront the problem of living is the basis of all human labour. The exertion of labour is the first act of happiness; the rejuvenation that would follow is the second act. Happiness itself is like the theatre crowd: when the show ends it begins to leave. This is the simple nature of happiness that is yet so difficult to enjoy, and impossible to hold in one's hand.

Necessary to build for our necessities.

To be happy I chose to build again: I chose the process, not the product. The great need I felt then to see my work through to its construction was a desire to see a completed process, not a desire to construct a certain structure. This much I had learned from the first attempt.

I might choose to build again, though I could not choose to return to our earlier situation. The tide swelled: our budget dwindled, our visa period had a definite, approaching end and our family beckoned us to a "traditional" life with worried words. Our project had roots in a deeper, older tradition.

The practical points of rebuilding desperately needed our focus.

The next several posts will break these points down and cover them one-by-one. Expect short articles on:

• designing
• siting
• clearing and preparing a site
• levelling a site
• transferring a design to the ground
• digging and filling the foundation trenches
• stacking a stone stem-wall
• pouring an adobe floor
• finding and preparing the right cob mix
• machine mixing large quantities of cob
• the need to adapt a cob work-process to specific climates
• trimming
• collecting materials ahead of time
• what to do when you can't achieve your goal: flexibility & improvisation in natural building
• putting up a roof
• the unforeseen uses of a structure
• natural building and community
• If you build it, they will come...
• ...and more...

The last sun rays
stretch and scatter
the valley night.