Rumi’s Dome

Well, here we are….the final blog post to report on the final chapter of the goat mud hut adventure in Rainier, WA, spring of 2014. And what an adventure it has been! I’ve been back in Winnipeg for 6 days now. As I sit here reflecting on these last few months in my quiet little studio apartment, part of me wonders if it really happened at all. It all seems a bit surreal at the moment.

The last few days after the last post was a valiant effort to finish as much of the outside plastering as possible before I had to leave on Sunday, June 8th, and I must say, last minute shotcrete job cancellation notwithstanding, we got pretty damned close!

Let me begin this post with a photo summary of those last 3 days of plastering so you can see where we officially got to by the time I left and what is left for Meggan to do over the next few days/weeks.

Once again, here we were, at the end of the solo plastering day last Wednesday, three days and counting before departure:

And after all was said and done, this is what we had produced by late afternoon on Saturday, June 7th:

Looking pretty round, pretty complete, more mushroom, less beehive….but still a hybrid of the two.

The structure will stand tall and proud like this for another week or so until Joseph, the Eco-building, Earth plaster expert from Olympia will come out for a day with his plaster pump to apply one more thin coat of plaster over the whole dome to smooth it out and finish it off. It will then stand as is to dry out for another week or two at which point there will most likely be a waterproof membrane painted on to protect the dome from rainwater penetrating the porous Superadobe material. Meggan and I will be in communication to confirm and finalize this last step so that we both feel good about this experimental goat dome’s readiness to take on the wet Washington winter. I trust Joseph and Meggan will discuss some good options in this regard when he comes out with the pump next week.

Here are a few photos of the last plastering days and the wonderful helpers we were fortunate to have come out and assist with their great energy!

Lanakila came by on Thursday for a few hours and we had a lovely sunny day to get a few sections mostly done.

Thank you for all of your help Lanakila, you are truly a gem and your positive support and enthusiasm was so very appreciated! I look forward to checking out one of his many books through Amazon (I got a preview of ‘A Journey From Present to Past’ by Lanakila Washington and it looks fascinating, check it on Amazon)!

Friday and Saturday consisted of more of the same, plastering and more plastering. Meggan had hired Roger to come out for the last two days so we could maximize our production while I was still here. Not Roger of foundation plan and carpentry fame from past posts, but Roger who had advertised plastering/painting services in Betty’s newsletter in Yelm. Roger is a down-to-Earth, ex-fellow Canadian from New Brunswick but has been living in Washington for 20 plus years now (still has that hard-to-place Maritime accent though!). He was a great help and on Friday, he also brought another wonderful helper with him, the lovely Anna from Germany, via Edmonton, now also living in Tenino which is a quaint town next to Rainier.

Friday was also the day that Joseph made the trek out to Rainier from Olympia to show us the milk paint/lime paint options he had for painting the inside of the dome. Joseph is an amazing wealth of knowledge of all things eco. He is also very realistic and honest about what can be expected and/or accomplished with this milk/lime paint medium within the context of our project. He was generous enough to stay and mix up a small batch of milk paint to test it on our Earthbag interior and gave us the pros and cons of both the milk paint and lime paint. We may actually go with the lime paint for the upper coils as it gives a nice white white finished look as opposed to the milk paint’s off-white color. I suppose again that he and Meggan may discuss this further next week and reach a decision for the interior finish. Whatever ends up on the inner walls just has to be breathable so the Superadobe has an avenue for water to escape, especially if there ends up being a waterproof membrane on the outside which is not breathable. I am certain an easy, inexpensive and effective solution will arise for the completion of the inside of the dome.

In the end, we accomplished a lot in those last two days. I enjoyed the plastering company, good conversation and learning about the natural paints and plasters. Here are some highlights from the last two work days with Roger and Anna and milk paint visit/consult with Joseph:

Joseph sunning himself on the buttress while Anna plasters:

Anna and Roger in deep plaster focus:

Roger testing the strength of the entry buttress; solid.

Mmmm, velvety!

Entryway is getting plump

And the crowning glory to place above the entrance was the necklace that I had worn almost everyday whilst building this very goat dome…Meggan had gifted this necklace to me shortly after my arrival deciding that it belonged to me. It became my dome-building necklace. This was a necklace that she had made with her own hands so we thought it would perfectly embody both of our combined energies as a symbolic gesture of the blood, sweat, tears and love that went into the building of this inaugural Cal-Earth goat dome structure.

Here is the ceremonial embedding of the necklace above the door:

Gotta admit, I was pretty proud that I got that sucker to stay on a pretty much vertical surface, nevermind that Roger had to coach me through the whole process, thank you Roger! Meggan was appropriately looking after the goats while this was playing out at the end of the day.

Hopefully it survives the final plastering round next week!

And in order to say I was officially finished working on this particular dome project, I had one more thing I had to do:

Oh yeah, MILLER TIME!! A job well done indeed.

The nice thing about those final few days was that the panic potential had passed. No, the dome would not be ABSOLUTELY and COMPLETELY done by the time I left, but it would be ABSOLUTELY FUNCTIONAL with just a few small steps to say it was officially ‘goat ready’. It’s just us humans that like things to look ‘pretty’ or ‘orderly’ and yes, I had to surrender the part of me that was bothered by the mud stains still clinging to some of the upper coils on the inside that I couldn’t get to, or the ‘unclear’ edge of where the plaster would stop in the entryway as you enter the dome, or the glass windows that still needed to be scrubbed of cement plaster residue. Even the Earth plaster crumbs that lay waiting to be swept from the cylindrical trough of the pipe windows. No, I didn’t get my squeaky clean, perfectly finished Smurf hut photo-op before I left….but this ain’t Hollywood either. Perfection is a subjective perception at best (say that 5 times fast). We have to accept things as they are, not as our egos would like them to be. And when I remain in that beautiful heart space that brought me out here in the first place which Rumi so innocently reminded me of, I can’t see anything but the best damn goat mud hut this side of the Milky Way!

And speaking of Rumi and accepting things as they are, guess who came home for my last two nights after hanging with Dr. Sealy for a few days…..yes! I got to see Rumi one more time before heading back to Canada, what a treat! Now, to be sure, Rumi is still on the fence about which way he will ultimately decide to go in this Earthwalk but what an honour to have none other than this Divine goat, named by Meggan after the poet who inspired Nader Khalili, founder of this very style of Earth building in which we built this goat dome, return to this property, if only to be the very first goat to grace this goat dome proper! Now THAT’S perfection if you ask me, at least from my subjective perception!

Please enjoy this short video tour of the goat dome with our beloved Rumi infusing the whole structure and surrounding area with his pure love and awesomeness just by his PRESENCE!

I just heard from Meggan yesterday that Rumi has officially been adopted by Dr. Sealy and her daughter to carry him forth in the direction of his choosing. Bless them both for their love and dedication in caring for this precious goat.

On the morning of my departure, I got up early and went out to the dome with my djembe drum to sit and experience the energy inside the dome (it’s amazing) and play a few beats to feel the vibration of what we co-created together with all of the wonderful helpers, seen and unseen, who contributed some aspect of themSelves to be forever infused into the DNA of this structure. Wow, what a nice feeling that was. I won’t soon forget it. Nor will I soon forget all of the amazing folks I met out in Rainier. I feel as though I have a whole extended family in the Pacific Northwest now. There are some amazing things happening in this little corner of the Earth and I was honored and humbled to be witness to some of it.

Now what would a goat mud hut project conclusion be without having all of the goats check out their new digs? These were my final moments in Rainier, WA. Giselda and Ariel stopped by to say goodbye and we all walked out to the dome together for one last photo shoot. This time we left the gate open for the goats to join us.

Meggan, you’re a Warrior and I’d walk through the fire with you any day….back at ya Girl! WE DID IT!!!

Wayne, who had been a tremendous help in the earlier stages of the dome building stopped by to see the end product and to say goodbye as he will be off on his own adventures to Africa with his Biosand Filter/Friendly Water project soon and he asked me, “Tannis, now that you’ve gone through this process and built one of these, would you do it again?” And without a shadow of hesitation, my response was, “In a heartbeat.”

Dante, Vittoria, Lucy, Lily, Opal, Darwin and Rumi, in the flesh or in essence, we hope you enjoy your new dome.

Nearing completion

Well folks, this is it, we’re 4 rows from closing the dome. Hard to believe, really. And you can imagine how small the rows are at the top of a dome….the top one of course being the ‘capstone’ so to speak so hardly a row at all. It’s an odd and exhilarating feeling to think we are here, so close to this pivotal moment after all we’ve done, all we’ve been through! Take a look, take a good long look at this baby….she’s beautiful, isn’t she?

I want to savour these last moments of laying Earthbag which will complete my very first mud hut and initiate me into the ever-growing Earth builders community at large. Anxious as I am to finish it yesterday as we’ve been all too aware of the time pressure of the last few weeks with so much work to do yet and a looming June 8th departure date, I know there will be a part of me that will feel wrenched away from such a now familiar and sacred daily routine here in Rainier. Other than this last power week while Blake was here, I’ve developed a morning ritual of preparatory tasks that have become my daily meditation. While Meggan would be focused on her morning farming and Motherly chores, I would head out to the dome area and just sit with it, looking at it, thinking about next phases coming up, admiring it, photographing it some days, and then I would slowly and methodically begin to prepare some of the day’s necessities….filling the tractor with Earth from our Earth pile, cutting the next length of bag, chipping the leftover cement off of our shovels that we would continually forget to do the night before, and my all-time favorite, straightening barbed wire….who knew that straightening barbed wire would be such a relaxing and satisfying activity? Certainly not me! That first hour in the morning with just me and my thoughts and the birds chirping became part of my everyday reality.

Now as we are so close to closing, I can say it’s a really special feeling to look at something so big and beautiful and solid and say to yourself, “I was a part of this….from the first dig to the moment of placing the capstone on the 15′ high dome, I was there!” I’m sure I can speak for both Meggan and myself when I say that we will both be forever changed by this experience in our own way. Check it out….we started with an idea and both decided to go for it, in all of our naive glory, jump in with both feet, and see what happened.

Well, so far, this is what happened:

Here’s the start of the project:

From that exciting first dig:

To today, exactly three months and 13 days later:

I’m proud of us! And wouldn’t you know it, Opal, one of her current 5 adorable goats and future inhabitants of this dome, is due to give birth tomorrow, Wednesday, May 28th, if all is on schedule! It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if she gave birth on the same day we actually close the dome. Here she is with her full belly looking healthy and ready to do her thing! How excited am I that I get to see adorable baby goats right before I leave!

The rest of this week will be focusing on these two things….closing the dome and Opal having two (or three?) healthy kids, not necessarily in that order. I am certain both events will go without a hitch!

So now, some details from the last couple of weeks so you can see more specifics of what we’ve been doing at each phase. As you know, Blake, the Angel that swooped in for a week fresh out of the 3 month apprentice program at Cal-Earth, was such a huge help on every level while he was here. He just left Satruday morning and was heading to a Permaculture farm in Montana for a week to help them out and learn some cool things to coincide with a course he’s been taking on the subject before conducting a couple of workshops on Superadobe basics North of here. It was so great having him here, not only for his invaluable help in getting us in a good position to be able to complete this project in time (we laid 13 rows in the week he was here!) but he certainly provided a solid wealth of knowledge about different aspects of building with Superadobe that were a bit cloudy in my mind. He was able to quell some fears about the water element that continues to confound me regarding weather-proofing and the construction process. For one, I learned that it’s not the end of the world if the Superadobe bags get wet, and you can build in the rain after all. If not for the unpleasant factor, you could technically work right through a downpour, but who wants to do that? Wouldn’t be the safest workplace being 12 to 14 feet up off the ground with no proper scaffolding and slippery, not-quite-foot-width Earthbags to stand on, but it could be done. It’s freaky enough being up that high on a sunny day! In fact, here he is in the rain shortly after arriving, ready to dive right in, bless him!

The week before his arrival was a power week in itself with great weather, our new cement mixer from Giselda and Ariel in operation and having two awesome helpers on two separate days, Linda and Johnathan, Giselda and Ariel’s son. The mixer has been life changing! We had to connect no less than three long outdoor extension cords from the shed in order to get power to it but well worth the stretch…it single-handedly eliminated our having to hand mix Earth from that day forward….a HUGE energy saver! I have to say though, there is no on/off switch on this mixer so we have to plug and unplug the extension cords whenever we need to use it. I feel like a mad scientist about to get lit up every time I connect the two ends.

Here is the blessed mixer doing it’s magic!

Meggan finishing off a row of bag laying and I laying barbed wire:

Linda tamping, bless her, as she herself has a tamping machine which does all the hard work for her so I’m sure she was really feeling gratitude for the machine with every effortful hand tamp she did for us on that row.

We also had a new helper in Johnathan, Giselda and Ariel (of cement mixer fame)’s son. He’s a great guy, a rapper (we tried to get him to rap about goat mud huts), and an amazing help who was up for anything and everything. We even had him laying bag the first time he came by! He helped out the following week when Blake was here too so we were able to maximize our production that day…pretty sure that was the first record ‘3 bag day’ that I posted last blog.

And then of course we had the second power week with Blake. Blake’s arrival was at a perfect time as we were just coming up to the crown of the door form and the buttress finale. I had looked back at the photos from the Cal-Earth workshop I’d taken back in September as to how we’d come over the door form and decided I would take the same approach here laying long finger buttresses in an arch over the door, flush with the inside diameter of the dome. This, despite the fact that I had started the door buttresses with a bit of an outward splay to them for esthetic purposes and to create a wider entry for the goats but then realized halfway up that the force would probably be better absorbed if they were straighter and more parallel to each other as is normally done with the Cal-Earth domes, likely with reason. I started angling the buttresses ever so slightly to be more parallel with each other every row from then on which was going to have a bit of a ‘double helix’ effect/look. I thought it would be kind of cool but then worried that I may have created a pseudo ‘pronation’ situation in my door buttresses, oh dear! But after studying my entry arch and buttress options I’d decided that the way we did it in the workshop would work and all would be well even if perhaps the force was not going to be dissipated in perfect resolution with the laws of physics (I never did do well in high school physics). So all that to say, Blake arrived just as we were arching over the door form with these ‘buttress fingers’ and it was perfect because I may not have remembered to brick tamp the Earthbags so tight and flush to the door form as he did to make them as solid and contiguous as possible. I felt very good about the door buttress when all was said and done. After a few days of building and getting a few rows above the door, we took the door form right out to test it for real, and let me tell you, something happened to me the first time I walked into that dome without having to do the sideways limbo under the wooden form….I don’t know if it was the elation from realizing that the dome didn’t collapse in on itself and was standing solid as a rock all on it’s own or what, but it was a pretty special moment!

Meggan trying it on for size….perfect, no?

Some details and an inside view:

With the door completed and no more buttresses, the last milestone other than closing it was to finish laying all of the PVC and glass window inserts in the walls. The biggest day for that was the first day Johnathan was helping us just before Blake arrived and we’d cut 5 PVC ventilation windows into the dome, the two lateral points on both the side wall 5-pointed stars and the center point of the back wall 5-pointed star. .

It was at this level that I realized we had officially gone above our heads, in a good way, and were really starting our inward corbelling, yes!

Next inserts were the two huge glass water jugs Meggan found at Sunbirds camping supply store in Yelm…she was Jonesing for some big light windows all along and when she saw these, she bought three of them to replace the mason jars for the remaining points on the back wall….a good choice I’d say. I decided to do what I had become good and used to and cut them into the dome wall. In hindsight, I would have just set them on the wall without cutting into the bag and laid bag up to them on the next rows as our Earth was semi-crumbly on one of them which created a bit of a droop below the cut, especially since we didn’t have to worry about maintaining any kind of downward slope with these ones. Alas, the dome stands strong regardless of it’s many characterful imperfections, as Superadobe domes will.

This is where we’d gotten to by the time Blake arrived. He arrived late on Thursday and we started working on Friday and literally worked everyday until the following Friday before he left this past Saturday. He was even game to come with me to Linda’s one of the days to help work on her pumphouse Earthbag structure. She was thrilled for the extra help (we got two full rows done for her, a banner day!) and being able to pick his brains about vault construction. Blake was happy to learn from Linda some ingenious ways to make working by oneself easier and more efficient…one of Linda’s specialities is finding the most efficient way to build with Earthbag, especially if you find yourself building solo. So it was an amazingly productive week to say the least. There were a couple of days where it was just he and I when Meggan was working, a couple of days where it was Meggan, Blake and myself and a couple of days we had helpers with us. Johnathan one day, Lori’s friend Lana Kila, a beautiful soul and another former New Yorker who has studied architecture in Hawaii (which is where he was given his Hawaiian name meaning ‘victory or to be victorious’), and finally Linda and her friend Peter, a fine and friendly gentleman who has an interest in potentially building an Earthbag structure himself one day. Additionally, the Weather Gods were gracious the whole week! Here are some highlights:

Early on in the week, mixing up stabilized Earth to start our day.

MixMaster Meggan

Focused barbed wire laying

Top o’ the door form to ye!

5-pointed stars COMPLETE!!

Johnathan and Blake mixing Earth.

Interior of the dome

Our opening is getting smaller and smaller….!

Assembly line production of Blake, myself and Peter, Meggan and Linda keeping the flow of mix coming our way and Cyrus, the tricycle supervisor making his rounds. You’ll notice Blake got us started on some of the exterior rough plastering too!

This was the last day of a wonderfully productive week with Blake to whom we will forever be grateful for his generous assistance, thank you Blake!! 😀

We all took it easy on Saturday to rest our weary bodies. Yesterday, Sunday, Meggan, Cyrus and I went out and laid one more bag in the morning before the rain came in the afternoon and this is where we stand as you saw in the beginning of the post.

Today was supposed to be raining all day and dry tomorrow but it appears Accuweather got their days mixed up, not one day after giving a nod to their relative accuracy, classic. Today has switched to mostly cloudy but dry and tomorrow looks like more of a chance of rain so I am contemplating going out later to lay a bag or two. At any rate, this is an exciting and monumental week as we will close the dome and most likely bear witness to some fresh new baby goats entering into this Earth realm.

I will look forward to sharing both events with you within the week.

Life is a wild ride of awe and wonder isn’t it?

Runners, to your mark….

OK, just wanted to do a mini check-in before we launch into the week because I’ve got a good feeling about it…..a REALLY good feeling about it! The forecast is calling for another hot, sunny week in Rainier and we are going to run with it like you’ve never seen!

We got in two full work days last week and they were very productive, to be sure, but then it rained again for three….THANK YOU WEATHER GODS! We all had colds last week so it really was lovely that the rain provided us an opportunity to rest and recover from the brunt of that, no stress.

Linda came to help us on Wednesday, just before the rain, so we laid a record row and a half with two mason jar windows and both blue centre dots (Skye vodka bottles) on the side walls for the 5-pointed stars. I am really starting to see the corbelling starting now which is thrilling! It is so miniscule at the beginning that you start to wonder if you will just be laying row upon row upon row upon row forever until you reach the heavens. But it’s official, we’ve got some dome action starting FOR SURE now!

Today being Mother’s Day was very relaxed. Although it was the official start of the hot/sunny, we took it easy and I let Mama Meggan set the tone of the day. Didn’t think it would be cool to wake up and say, “Happy Mother’s Day, here’s your shovel, let’s GO!” She works hard enough every other day. So instead we had a lovely mimosa-laced brunch on the back deck and while she enjoyed some beautiful time spent with her beloved little cherub Cyrus and planted lettuce in the garden, I went out and did some prep work for our pivotal week coming up. I straightened barbed wire, cut bag for our next row, re-set the compass chain and filled our trailer of Earth. Yesterday I levelled the Earth around the dome so our scaffolding would be sturdy. We are READY!!

So here we are as of today and I’m going to update again on the weekend so you can see what magic takes place this week. Oh, and by the way, we scored some ladder scaffolding and a cement mixer from Meggan’s awesome friends Giselda and Ariel, woo hoo!

Let us see what magic unfolds….

Foundation Purgatory

Well friends, here we are, March 26th, 2014 and today is a very special day….we finally got to lay the second half of our first foundation bag and close the circle that will grow to be our goat mud hut dome structure, yay!! Here’s the photo….it was lightly/moderately raining for most of our ‘window’ today…window being the 4 hour block that Accuweather told us it would not be raining, so by the time I realized I didn’t even get a photo of our hard won victory after frantically tarping our vulnerable adobe bag, I had to settle for this. But trust us, it’s under there…snug and cozy for the next few days until the rain stops.

If you are curious about my choice of title for this post, do the math….last post was March 6th and I left off telling you that the excavator was coming that Monday and we’d be off and running…it’s now March 26th and I’ve just told you that we finished our first foundation bag today. Yep…..20 days to tamp down the foundation and lay one row of bag (minus the buttress walls, still have to do that to officially say we’ve completed the first row, and two more foundation rows to go after that). But don’t let this lead you to believe we’ve been doing nothing but drinking margaritas on the deck all this time, oh no, no, no. I’ll do my best to give you the short version of the last three weeks….it’s been quite the ride! Fortunately, I am well aware of the fact that I signed up for this and despite the snail-paced progress in getting a groove going and enjoying the satisfaction that comes with seeing our efforts take on real, manifest form, I am still having fun and learning A LOT…check.

Now before I get into the whole foundation saga where I am beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel, I have to say that even before I left Winnipeg I was projecting that the foundation and final weather-proofing membrane would be the biggest challenge for me given my ‘green’ status as a builder and the fact that I’ve decided to build my first ever structure for a dear friend in one of the rainiest regions of the continent, no pressure. Well, it definitely seems that my initial projections regarding the foundation have come to light, as projections are want to do, but I still have time to shift that final weather-proofing membrane scenario into one of cool, calm, relaxed nonchalance; “pfff, 50.8″ of annual precipitation, gimme a challenge!” So the next few paragraphs will be the unfolding of my jaggedy initiation into not only the art of building with Superadobe, but also my readiness and willingness to accept my role as the ‘leader’ of this project and all of the accompanying insecurities that undoubtedly surface when we choose to exit the comfort zones of our lives and place ourselves in a completely unfamiliar role in unfamiliar surroundings doing an unfamiliar activity. I’m starting to realize (with the help of some great mirrors, thank you Meggan) how much I’ve allowed that inner chatter-box that is my doubting ego state it’s opinion and stifle my inner guidance and ‘knowingness’ during this research and planning phase. The aspects of this project that I am confident about, I am very confident about. But the aspects that I am insecure about, ie, the foundation and anything that has the word ‘weather-proofing’ in it, I’ve really been tripping myself up on. I’m working myself back to trusting that I already have all of the knowledge I need for this project to be a success and what I don’t know right now, I have a great handful of people I can call or ask (thank you Ian, Paul and the Cal-Earth forum! And all of the friendly, knowledgeable locals!) or my Guides and Angels will provide me the information when the time is right, thank you Guides and Angels! So all I have to do now is take one step at a time, and know that things are exactly as they need to be and enjoy the feeling and experience of wearing a different hat for a while.

Oh, and before I go on, I know most of you have been waiting with baited breath to find out which soil sample I went with….it was the silty sand from the pit at Teddy Bear Hauling in Yelm. We had one dump truck’s-worth, 12 yds, delivered last week. (That’s cutie Cyrus in front of the dump truck…he’s a big fan of trucks. He got to see a live excavator AND a dump truck within two days, can you imagine?)

Now, on to the foundation goings-on of the last few weeks. The original plan I’d felt we should go with was a french drain set outside the bench-height buttress. This buttress will wrap around the whole dome and the french drain would be laid to the outside of that based on recommendations and detailed drawings from the weather-proofing class of the Cal-Earth workshop itself and further information regarding supplies from the helpful staff at Mountain Lumber here in Yelm, WA. I still had questions about the right approach for the actual foundation bags that lie in the dug out trench and how to protect them from groundwater seepage but I seemed to lack a certain base construction language required to even ask the questions I wanted to ask. I was hoping an answer would magically plop into my lap at some point.

If you’ll remember from the last post, I’d made mention of meeting with a woman who had started building a Superadobe home for herself here in Rainier. We did this as well as organized a round table lunch meeting at the house the following day with Roger the builder, Wayne the plumber and Robin the artist, in-the-know locals of building different types of structures in this particular climate. Bless them all for taking the time. The woman with the dome structure even gave us her extra wide door forms to use for our extra wide goat door, amazing!

Essentially, by the time these two meetings took place, the original foundation plan was derailed completely based on new information we’d gathered from talking with everyone. We rescheduled the excavator and I had a whole new foundation plan in place. And I was happy for it because it meant the pressure was off me….’what if my plan didn’t work? Surely everyone else around here must know more than I do about these things! That french drain was just adding to the overall cost of the project anyways.’

The new plan was this: Builder Roger had the well-intended and sound idea to use 6 mil black plastic sheeting and wrap it around the 3 foundation bag layers and skip the french drain altogether given the superior draining ability of this rocky Washington soil. The suggestion was intended to help us keep it cost-efficient and simple. Everyone around the table agreed this was a good idea which was all I needed to hear to jump on board too even though I could not for the life of me visualize how we were going to neatly wrap straight pieces of big bulky plastic around bags set in a circle…with buttress walls sticking out the front to boot! But even with my reservations, it seemed like a good enough idea for all I knew. I felt that safety in numbers feeling given that we all said ‘yes’ to the plan. I chose to accept that it would be an awkward stage for me regardless and that I would deal with the bunching plastic like the Zen pro I like to think I am. I’m sure poor Roger must have thought my skull was as thick as that roll of 6 mil plastic with all of my questions about how this wrapping was going to work. Roger is quite a straight-up, genuine, why-make-it-more-complicated-than-it-has-to-be New Yorker-type of character, heart of Gold….in fact, I’m surrounded by quite a few (ex) New Yorker-type of characters out here, this whole household for one….I must be calling their confident, natural-born-leader tendencies into my life!

So there we were with a new foundation plan in place and we could move forward and prep for the excavator that we now had coming in a few days. Phew.

Here is some photo footage of the steps we took over the next week or two as we prepared for the impending excitement of finally laying the first Superadobe Earth-filled sandbag!

We hammered in the center compass stake (with help from Roger and Cyrus and Mama Meggan taking the photo), first task on our worksite proper!

Then we attached the compass chain, measured the radius of 7 and a half inches to mark the inside diameter circle with the nail-removing end of Roger’s hammer (not to be confused with Rogers and Hammerstein).

And Voila! Our very own crop circle! (Notice the orb between Roger and Cyrus. Just sayin’…)

We were now ready for Tony the excavator to come and dig the trench for us…..he painted the outline with non-toxic spray paint before he dug so there was no guesswork….kind of like a surgeon will ask their patient to mark an ‘X’ on the knee that is to be operated on with permanent marker. Not a bad idea.

The first dig!

BTW, anyone building one of these domes near Rainier, do yourself a favor and hire an excavator. I was marvelling at the hilarity of the image of Meggan and I digging the trench by hand….these are a few of the boulders he dug up in the 15′ diameter trench (!).

Conversation between me and Tony as he was plucking one of these babies out of the ground:

Tony: You weren’t really thinking of digging this by hand were you?

Me (with eyes bugging out): Yup.

Tony: I just saved you a surgery.

Me: Yup.

Here’s the final pile of boulders that came out of the ground and a simulated demo of what we would have looked like digging the trench by hand.

They now serve as a goat playground. Nothing is ever wasted!

And here is our freshly dug trench, ta daaa!

Next step was to tamp and level the trench…Meggan is a Tamptress to be reckoned with!

Then we used the compass chain to put wooden stakes around the trench marking our 15′ circle to use as a guide when we start laying bags. Tony’s digger savvy notwithstanding, there was no way anyone would have been able to maintain a straight cut here.

Next on the list of course, was laying the plastic for underneath and around our foundation bags. By now, which was this past Sunday, we had exactly 2 more dry, sunny and warm days to get these 3 bag layers laid in the plastic-lined trench and wrapped before a week of rain was predicted. No small feat!

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, suffice it to say that March 24th will forever be touted “My day of reckoning with 6 mil black plastic sheeting”. Now keep in mind that the whole time we were doing all these fun things; making crop circles, choosing our soil, excavating, tamping, etc.; somewhere in my subconscious mind I’m dreading the bunching plastic-wrapping job coming up, the very act of dreading it making it feel all the more dreadful. Not only would we have to figure out this ever-stressful (for me) bunching plastic lay pattern (you know I’m going to have to make ‘bunching plastic’ one of the tags of this post), but then fill and lay 3 rows of 18″ wide Earth bags with barbed wire between them, just the two of us, in two days before the rain threatens to muck up (literally) all of our efforts. I even got Roger to stop by quickly on his way to another job to show me again how I was supposed to wrap the ‘T’ where the buttress meets the dome.

It was then that he realized the buttress walls were not free-standing. I hadn’t told him they have to be integrated with the dome walls….he hadn’t asked….he didn’t know to….I didn’t know to tell him. At any rate, his momentary look of puzzlement in learning that minor detail sent alarm bells blaring in my head. But in his experienced builder nonchalance that I strive to attain one day, he just shrugged and showed me a little folding technique that would probably be fine. Oh no, this would not be fine at all. Roger was my only anchor for this bunching plastic technique…that momentary ‘look’ made the voice in my gut scream and kick even louder! But there we were, with two days to get this done….we’ve got the plastic, we’re here ready to work, may as well just get it done and hope for the best, right? I made a valiant effort to embrace the ‘un-fun’ task ahead with positivity, austerity and the self-projected reward of a celebratory bonfire by the river with a cold beer and some drum jamming when it was all over in 48 hours. Well it was over alright, in less than 48 hours too!

That day with the plastic took me through a crash course in “Learn to be a Leader, 101”. I’ll spare you the details but as I tried my best to outwardly put on a false air of, “Yeah, no problem, this is kinda hard but we can still have fun, it’s all good, right?”, inside I was experiencing a whoosh of overwhelm that included fear, uncertainty, pressure to perform (self-induced of course), confusion as to why I was sensing an increasing air of impatience from my friend as I needed to think through, yet again, this bloody Rubix cube-like plastic puzzle. Finally it was voiced that I needed to sit with it for a minute so Meggan (happily I’m sure) went to go check on her son who was napping inside.

So there I was, alone with 100 yds of black plastic sheeting standing in a 3 foot trench. Irony aside, I resolved that I would complete the laying of the plastic sheeting today come hell or high water, preferably the former in this case.

So that is what I did….I wrestled and laid, dragged and re-laid no less than 9 awkward and, you guessed it, BUNCHING pieces of plastic into that trench as best as I could for the rest of the afternoon. One of the ants from an anthill near the worksite took a moment out of it’s busy day to take this photo with my camera, bless it, so I can always look back and remember what it looks like when I fight my intuition.

But by golly, I did finish laying that 6 mil black plastic sheeting before sundown and even I have to say, it looked not too bad when all was said and done!

But a bitter-sweet victory it was as this still meant we now had only one full day to lay 3 entire layers of Earth-filled sandbags complete with buttress walls, not to mention the ever-dreaded wrapping job itself!

But it would never come to pass as that evening Meggan and I had a good heart to heart about how the day went, vocalized some of our concerns and observations about the process and each other, she mirrored to me how truly anxious this foundation process was making me, and I humbly contemplated those words for the rest of the evening.

In fact, that very night I dreamt that I was looking to purchase something at two different places and was denied until I discovered I had been holding in my own two hands that which I was seeking to purchase from an outside source the whole time.

As I sat up in bed early that morning, I heard my authentic voice loud and clear saying, ‘The plastic has to go’. So I repeated out loud to myself, ‘the plastic has to go’, as if to acknowledge that I’d heard it this time.

I sent off an S.O.S. call to the Cal-Earth forum to confirm my 6 mil gut feeling and that the dome would be sound with a french drain on the outside of the buttress bench (the original plan) and foundation Earthbags laid directly on the well-draining tamped Washington Earth. I didn’t wait for the response before telling Meggan about my dream and that we would not be using the plastic but laying our first bag today directly on the ground. She sensed my shift and immediately was on board with that as well. While she organized for her son to go to school that day so we could lay some serious bag, I went out and undid everything I had done the previous day which was symbolically healing and comforting and gave me a moment to reflect on the last 24 hours with gratitude while making peace with that 6 mil black plastic sheeting. This was so beyond it being about using plastic sheeting or not using plastic sheeting. I swear my lungs expanded with every piece of plastic I removed. It felt good to see Mama Earth again.

We were able to lay one half of the first row that day in 5 or 6 hours, just us two, feeling our spirits renewed at finally being able to start laying down some of the actual goat dome, working with the Earth and feeling the sun on our faces. Here is the result of our work that day. Is it just me, or is it smiling? 🙂

The other half of that ring was laid today (see beginning of post). There was a profound symbolism in completing the first circle. As Meggan mused, ‘The first circle is always the hardest.’

The foundation won’t be perfect as I later discovered the importance of a water vapor barrier via the Cal-Earth forum. But it’s going to be just fine and we will have a sound and solid goat mud hut to be proud of when all is complete. I will use the next few rainy days to my advantage to find the most suitable reinforcement to deal with this water vapor issue. But I learned that it can be dealt with even post first bag and the worst case scenario isn’t all that bad.

I’m looking forward to the next leg of this journey. The learning curve is steep but (and I’ll do my best to leave you with a zinger here) when you can jump into the trenches with both feet, get drenched and muddied and tossed around a bit but come out at the end of the day with a smile on your face, that’s a good day.

And much akin to my understanding of purgatory in the religious sense as being that holding space between heaven and hell, it’s easy to see the parallels here. But I have faith in the direction I’m being pulled now that I can hear the directions loud and clear again.

Goat Mud Hut

Maiden attempt at a Cal-Earth mud hut for goats

Superadobe

Rumi’s Dome

Nearing completion

Runners, to your mark….

Foundation Purgatory