Hello friends!  Wanted to update you on dome happenings and baby goats as this is my last week here in Rainier (crazy!).  I’ve been riddled with mixed feelings this week as you can perhaps imagine.  I feel myself growing weary as the proverbial ‘finish line’ approaches, fantasizing about the hammock on my apartment balcony back home and dear friends and family that await my return.  Simultaneously, I have trouble envisioning my days without the now familiar props and people that have become family in my day to day existence.  This is part and parcel of any finale or departure, I’m sure.  But when I look back on these last 3 1/2 months, there has been so much Divinity over the course of the entire dome project between Angel helpers showing up at PIVOTAL moments along the way and having those satisfying moments when you realize that what you thought was going to be a disaster ends up being bang on and awesome, (and occasionally the reverse)!

The latest Angel that came on the scene was Dr. Suzan Sealy who showed up last night to check on Rumi, the little goat that could!  Rumi is Opal’s first born and has had quite a challenging introduction to life on Earth.  He has captured the hearts of everyone in this household with his sweet spirit and vulnerability.  His legs are quite weak, one particularly limp and he has developed a case of pneumonia as of late, poor little guy, so Dr. Sealy who, in addition to detecting the pneumonia and doing some healing energy work and connecting with his spirit to see where he’s at, offered to take him home with her to care for him directly for a few days so she could continue the therapy.

I’ve never been so smitten with a goat before, he really is a special little guy and has blown my heart wide open!

I’ll let you see for yourself, he’s amazing.  Look at him!!  🙂

Brother Darwin is pretty damned cute too (but a little too frisky for Rumi at this point, which is great that he’s doing so well)!

And look at them both with their new coats to keep them warm, awwwwwww……………………!!!

The barn became too cold at night for Rumi so we started bringing him in the house where we’d arranged an area in front of the fire.  I happily volunteered to sleep with him for three nights.  I was in animal bliss with little Rumi at my head and my cat Leroy respectfully sleeping at my feet.  They know when another animal needs care, I’m sure of it.  It was really special to cuddle and bond with this little cutie by the fire!  Here we are getting settled:

Leroy watched from afar, trying to figure out this interesting new member of the household:

Meggan and Cyrus had been doing most of the bottle feeding:

And Lori doing her massage magic on Rumi’s gimpy back leg:

We took him outside to see his Mama and bro for visits (until adorable Darwin would want to play with his brother and jump on him and wrestle as baby goats do, bless him, but that wasn’t going to help Rumi’s leg heal!) and sometimes out on the deck to warm up:

We just heard from Dr. Sealy that he’s not out of the woods yet and there could even be more going on than we knew so she will continue to monitor and treat him for a few more days.  As I am leaving on Sunday, I am pretty sure last night was my last time seeing Rumi, whether he ultimately decides to stay on Earth or cross over to other adventures, but I am certain I will never forget him.

I believe animals are our best teachers…for me they certainly seem to be for many an important life lesson anyways. So this week as I’ve been trying to navigate the final stages of the dome project which is not quite finished (still a large chunk of plastering left to do despite a successful and fun plaster party this past Saturday which I’ll tell you about in a minute, and a coating of milk paint on the top inside coils of the dome)  I would look at this sweet little goat and be reminded of why I came out here to Washington in the first place.  I was following my heart.  Logistically, it made no sense to leave a thriving massage practice of 12 years and a simple, peaceful existence back home, but on the other hand, I couldn’t imagine not having followed this push to come out here.  Rumi reminded me that we’re all vulnerable, especially when we are fully in our heart space, and that is a beautiful place to be.  I have been vulnerable this entire time here in Rainier.  I didn’t have answers to a lot of questions being asked of me.  I was never sure of what the outcome of any/every stage of this project would be.  I couldn’t even give an accurate cost estimation coming into this project or the hurdles we’d come up against.  I couldn’t guarantee I wasn’t going to leave Meggan with a big, ugly, half-finished mess at the end of it all.  I had to rely on others to house and feed me.  But I kept reminding myself to surrender to the process and trust that we will find the help we need or it will find us, more accurately, and answers will come exactly when we need them and everything will work out as it always does.  And it has.  And boy, have we had helpers, and Angels, and answers come to us.   As the old adage says, ‘the Divine works in mysterious ways’, we are seeing that over and over again here and it has yet again humbled me and made me so grateful to be a part of this dance we call life.

And now, I would like to tell you about the plaster party we had last Saturday, speaking of Angel helpers!  The rough plastering is a really fun and simple stage of the dome building process in my opinion, just time consuming which I would be totally fine with were it not for this pesky Visa expiration date.  It’s not overly taxing on the body, extremely satisfying in it’s mud-slinging application, and fairly easy to corral people to gather for a fun, social, no pressure day of sunshine and laughter while getting our hands in some mud.  It certainly paints a more enticing picture for people to want to come and help over the dome building bag-laying pitch, “Hey, wanna swing by and fling mud on the dome in a really satisfying huck/upsweep motion at a relaxed pace while visiting with fun and interesting people?” versus,  “Heyyyyyy, wanna come over and climb up and down a 10-foot ladder over and over again clutching coffee cans of Earth between your fingers until they cramp up?”.  If I were ignorant to the joys of laying bag, I know which request I’d respond to…!

We had started the rough plastering while Blake was here.  He and I would use any leftover Earth from the day’s bag-filling and use it on the dome walls to fill in the grooves.  It requires this ultra-satisfying motion of hucking the plaster in the groove and sweeping up in one fluid motion.  I recall the first time I did this at the Cal-Earth workshop in September…I was instantly certain that I’d done it in a past life because it felt so good and natural!   Katherine, Meggan’s neighbor that was on board for the plaster party said the same thing.  Maybe we both worked together on ancient temples of bygone eras, who knows?

Here are some photos from that fun day with our team of amazing and masterful plasterers, thank you to everyone for your time, energy and cheer!

The first to show up were none other than the famous Giselda and Ariel (they really exist, not just random names associated with cement mixers!)

They did most of the plastering on the back of the dome.  We heard a lot of giggling coming from back there so I’m not sure what they were up to, but the plastering looked great!

Neighbor Katherine, a natural plasterer like it ain’t no thang.  Remember when we worked on Solomon’s Temple Katherine?  That was fun, but nothing compared to this goat dome, right?

Diane, an amazing help and a kick ass aromatherapist too.  Keep your eyes peeled for Diane and Lori’s line of therapeutic and decadent Palo Santo body butters coming soon by Higher Healing.  Diane was a sweetheart and stayed late to help me finish and clean up, thank you Diane!

And I’m sure you all recognize the lovely Meggan rockin’ the plaster!  Neither one of us slept much the night before with Rumi in the house needing some care and lovin’ throughout the night but the plaster party must go on!

An action shot of Ariel followed by his mucky farewell

And I took the top of the dome given it’s precarious height sans scaffolding.  We couldn’t very well expect volunteer plasterers to climb 14 feet in the air and hover on a narrow ledge, could we?

Unfortunately the fearless goat plasterer Lori must have gone to sharpen her golden trowel when the camera came out but she was the other person on our amazing crew that day.  We’ll re-post a photo of her from when she helped us tame barbed wire a couple of months ago, just imagine muck on her gloves.

And here is what we were able to accomplish with our dream crew, thank you to everyone for a fun day and for helping out!

There was one more person who stopped  by to check out the dome that day and that was Brett, the lead drummer for the Crow Drummers from Olympia.  The Crow Drummers are a West African drumming group whom I had the pleasure of joining in the Procession of the Species parade through the streets of downtown Olympia back in April.  Check out the Websites for more info: http://www.oly-wa.us/crowdrummers/   and  http://www.procession.org/  He wanted to see the dome before I left as he is interested in alternative structures like this.  Brett knows a lot about portland cement as he is in the tile and linoleum biz.  I was asking him about weather-proofing and he threw out the idea of waiting until the end of summer to potentially coat over it, or NOT.  I’ve heard from a few people now that it would probably do fine to leave as is like he suggested rather than coat over with a rubberized membrane and risk tearing it and having to redo it.  He then suggested I talk with his buddy Joseph who is an Earth plaster expert who is part of an alliance of dedicated individuals at http://www.ionecobuilding.org/.  Hell yeah I’m going to talk to his buddy….what a gift, thank you Brett!  After talking with Joseph the following day, right before the community ‘repair party’ he organized for people to come and have their tools fixed, so cool!  He mentioned he makes his own milk paint or sells kits for people to make it themselves. This is what we are going to paint the inside, upper coils with (actually now the entire inside, explanation to follow) so I was thrilled to have a source from someone who knows!

We also talked about the possibility of having him come down with a pump to expedite the plaster process as it was Monday morning already and only 5ish days to complete everything.

Meanwhile, we’d also left a message for Meggan’s friend August who used to work with shotcrete and spoke to him about the project asking him for his thoughts on weather-proofing and getting it done.  We were also hoping to find an alternative to hand plastering the inside lower half of the dome as we hadn’t found an appropriate recipe/ratio of Earth plaster to get it to hold on the concave corbels.  He explained what shotcrete was and offered to come out and look at the dome to see if he might be able to help in any way.  He warned us that shotcrete was not inexpensive but also had the pump option that Joseph spoke of as another means.  August is an interesting, friendly guy with a warm smile and the inventor of an amazing cross between a rocket stove and masonry heater, check out his Website:  http://www.zaugstoves.com/

Long story short, we’d arranged to have the remainder of the dome shotcreted on Thursday at a steal of a deal (but not inexpensive, he’s right) however, this morning we got the unfortunate news that it would not work out for various reasons in the end so he reluctantly had to cancel the job.

Of course this was a little disappointing because that’s another two days of plastering we’d lost now but in the same breath, seems about right that I finish this baby off by hand.  No short cuts for me on this maiden mud hut adventure.  Three days to go and we still have plastering to do and the entire inside finish.

I marvelled at my reaction to the news of yet another ‘regrouping’ required at this late and final stage in the project.  After our emotional weekend with dear Rumi and lost plastering days due to that and holding off for the shotcrete job, I felt a deep sense of peace about the whole thing, remembering my reason for being here, thank you Rumi.  I think I’d finally let go of all expectation and pressure of having to have a perfectly completed, finished dome in order to consider this endeavor a success.  I’d finally let go of all concern that Meggan would be displeased with me if I left her in the lurch, so to speak, with a few details left undone.  And I let go of the belief that something done from the heart is anything less than Divine.

So what did I do after hanging up the phone with August?  I got my work clothes on, strapped my fully charged IPod on, and set out for a peaceful day of solo plastering with some good tunes and sunshine and had a blast!  I think I covered some ground too!  Check it out for one days work:

Start of the day:

End of the day:

All of the corbels are officially filled in so for all intents and purposes, this dome should be fully leak-proof as of tomorrow.  The goats can technically inhabit this any day now.

Joseph is coming to Rainier with the milk paint for us tomorrow morning and possibly with someone who might want to plaster for a few hours, no guarantees though.  I’m excited to meet him in person and talk more about the work he does.  I also have a helper coming tomorrow, Lori’s friend Lanakila who helped us one day when Blake was here.  He will infuse the plaster with his amazing energy I’m certain.  Also, Lori’s client Gerry may drop by to help for a bit so we will have a mini-plastering crew and inch our way to completion, one handful at a time.  Hopefully we can have the outside plastering done and inside milk paint by the end of the day on Friday (we’ve scrapped the notion of doing any inside plastering for now, milk paint all the way….Joseph said the goats probably won’t mind.  I think he’s right).  This will give me one day of rest and enjoying time spent with my beautiful house mates and comrades before hitting the road home on Sunday.  But if there are final details to take care of, that’s ok too.  I signed up for it and I’ll see it through to the bitter end if need be.  Luckily I really love the work and the product it produces so it’s no real hardship,especially when I’m feeling peaceful about it.

I may be vulnerable, but with the help of so many other generous and beautiful Souls, I’ve built one kick-ass goat mud hut, finished or not.

Thanks for taking the leap with me Meggan!  We did it!

I’ll be sure to let you know how it ends up before I leave, stay tuned!

xoxo