I’ve lived in many different houses in my life but they all share one thing in common - they were built by somebody else. I’ve adapted myself and my lifestyle to the somewhat limited vision of architects, designers and builders who were more interested in selling a house and making a profit than building a home.
Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category
I’m taking another departure from the process of housebuilding to throw out an idea that came to me the other night. While lying in bed pondering various things on my “To Do” list my thoughts wandered into the area of property taxes.
One of the things we noticed as we were digging in the soil was the quantity of heavy, black, pock-marked stones in each shovel full. They range in size from peas to boulders, some of them well over 50 kilograms. We began collecting them for later use and stacked them in several piles around the building site. The small to medium stones will make excellent filler for a rubble trench.
With the boundaries of our house and garden set, we commenced with the task of clearing the cordoned area of it’s sage brush and grasses. Traditional house-building would say that this is the point where we hire a bulldozer or grader to come in and prepare the site. In fact, one of our neighbors strongly suggested that we hire someone with a tractor to come in and clear the entire 20 acres.
I thought it might be a good idea to stop here and explain why we chose the title of this blog. What exactly is a “Hogan” and why are we building one?
First, a bit of background. The term “Hogan” comes from the Native American Navajo word “hooghan” and it was their traditional dwelling place. When you research the Navajo Hogan, you’ll find that the structure was much more than just a house. It was also a sacred ceremonial place. The earliest Hogans were circular in shape, came in a variety of sizes and were built of logs, sticks and mud. The door was always placed on the east side of the house to welcome the rising sun, for good health and fortune.
There is nothing quite like starting something new. The blank slate, the endless possibilities that go along with taking that first step. It can be exciting, exhilarating, life-affirming and can bring us to the highest of high places. It can also be a curse. It can become a compulsive pattern that endlessly repeats. Like a drug that once taken grabs a hold of us and never lets go. An addiction that can’t be beaten no matter how hard we try because the high is unlike any other we experience.