Ramon Sender:
Some people may look at the photos of our shacks and cabins
and think, "Ugh!" But beauty is in the eye of the nest-builder. Building
your own home (be it 'shack,' cabin, tent, treehouse, dome, hollow tree)
with whatever materials you can afford, fulfills some deep nesting instinct
within us -- and is very, very healing. Besides, I believe a structure should
be judged both by cost, by gentleness to the environment, and by the ingenuity displayed
in the use of materials. It's easy to create a masterpiece of wood butchery
on a millionaire's budget. But Ridge homes were built with almost nothing --
that's part of what's so amazing.
Personally, I don't understand why we have to build to European standards,
which were designed for severe climates and an attitude that saw other life
forms merely as food and raw materials. These standards isolate us
from the planet. Every 'convenience' we add wastes energies and separates us
from our nature. Every new home built to existing codes kills more standing trees,
drains more energy from various grids, locks us into a wasteful system. Why
not allow the use of recycled used lumber, straw bales and other building materials?
And in water-scarce areas, why not allow homesteads that don't use flush toilets?
Jerry Brown as governor once took a brave first step in the right direction with
the Cabin Class code option, which some counties I believe have passed.
But it just is not enough. Paraphrasing Maestro Lou Gottlieb, "living on concrete
pads with studs sixteen inches on center and 110 wiring producing god-knows-
what electro-magnetic fields in your head is just not conducive to higher states
of consciousness."
Solar power to the people!
|