Raven and Sparrow

Snowy woods

We thought spring was on its way, but instead we are having snow. Its nothing like what so many parts of the country get, but we whine about it as much as possible. We can never get the cars up our driveway when it snows, so we have to be foresighted enough to leave them at the top. This is a picture of our snowy driveway when we first bought our property, about ten years ago. Since the construction of the new house began, the passage of trucks and massive machinery has knocked the interlaced branches that used to overhang the road to bits. It doesn't look as pretty in the snow today.

Good news! My unfortunately bashed camera body has returned from the repair shop. Now I must see what can be done about the lens. New pictures soon.

And the trees come down

To make room for the new house, some trees had to go. It was painful. The trees on our property have had hard lives, as the soil is shallow and the wind is fierce. Still, many of them have grown large. It isn't uncommon for these (mostly) Douglas firs to have double trunks, since the wind often knocks the tops out and they grow on from what were side branches . That unfortunately makes them prone to rot and disease and they become dangerous. We tried to limit the tree removal to only the ones in the proposed house space, but a few others had to go just for safety's sake, and one beauty was just going to be killed slowly by the machinery that would be working over its roots. The whunk noise they make as they hit the ground is as unmistakeable as the sound of a car crash. Wherever you are you know what has happened.

 

 

The Way We Were

These are pictures of the site of our new house before it was begun. It is a ridge of rock; only these huge but shallow rooted fir trees could think of establishing themselves in such thin soil. Well, the trees and the grasses and the ever invasive scotch broom. In a little depression on this knoll there were also three fawn lilies. A shy and graceful wildflower, they never increased, but each March I would find them bowing their pretty faces to the earth, ready to return after a very brief visit to the sun.

This is not the most beautiful part of our property. It is close to the old house and the driveway. Still, it was pretty and the only place that fawn lilies grew. Now it is completely different. The devastation that home construction has visited on this site is the hardest part of the process. The clearing was especially tough, and more recently the ditching, but more of that later. As the house has taken shape I have realized that it will eventually add to the life here and allow everyone who visits it to participate in the beauty of the land. That is consolation.

The Power of Place

I have been thinking about places. My parents recently celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary and at the party I gave an overview of those years, since I'm the oldest and have been around for most of them. I found that the best way to organize my memories was around the town we come from and the houses we lived in. So I've been revisiting the places of my past in my mind and have wondered at the power of a place to influence perceptions and feelings...or do perceptions and feelings create that power? It's got to be both of course, since its so hard to separate one's inner life and outward actions, but I have always been susceptible to my surroundings and I do think every place projects itself on the events that happen there. Locations seem to me to have their own sensibility, formed from their physical attributes like topography and weather, and from the things that have happened there on scales large and small. When I review all the places I have lived, some have had much more impact than others, and it isn't necessarily related to how long I was there. I could talk about the spirit of a place and make sense to myself because everything participates in the energy of existence. I have been fortunate to live in regions with strong spirit and great beauty, and in some houses and neighborhoods with character and charm. I have also occupied some spiritless spaces, and I always find I am less myself in them. I feel a strong need to make changes in my surroundings if I don't find them congenial. I'm sure I'm not alone in this; the home decor business must be based on the common need to draw one's space close about. In fact, I think many people want to interact with their surroundings and can indeed take action to increase the spirit of their place.

New House, Old House

When I started this blog we were planning a new house to be built alongside the old one that we live in now. I originally thought we would just remodel the old house, but it is as unique as it is uncomfortable and when I realized that it would have to be changed completely if we brought it up to the building code, I embraced the idea of new construction. We decided we would keep the old house as studio and workshop and so the new house would not need to be very large. It should harmonize with the old house and most importantly, respect and enhance it's setting. This was over three years ago. I imagined using the blog to document the construction process, but found from the very beginning that it was just too scary to talk about. I love this place so much that no decision can be taken lightly. Also, I feel like I might be pushing my luck, reaching too far beyond the already amazing circumstance of living here at all. Still, spending the foreseeable future in the old house as it is wasn't going to fly, so we took a deep breath and began. Now that the new house is almost done I can finally talk about it.

We placed it on a ridge of rock facing south to the semi-open meadow out front and the wooded ravine in back. It is V shaped, with two rectangles set at an angle to each other, each with part shed, part gable roofs. The shed roofs have clerestory windows to scoop as much sunlight as possible into the interiors. Also, they mirror the roofline of the old house, so that both structures are related. The new house looks big and complicated in the drawings, but in life it is fairly straightforward. It is about 2000 square feet.

Mike slipped on a rock at the beach this fall, smashing his glasses, chipping a tooth and completely obliterating my beautiful camera, so I am reaching back for old photos of the house and other things until I can take new ones again. These are the sketches the architect drew when we were in the initial planning stages.