Howl

We’ve got wood now. All the structural pieces (see yesterday’s post for the exact count and sizes) have been delivered and are out on a concrete pad next to the workshop under a tarp. They’re under a tarp because it’s been raining pretty steadily since the middle of the night last night (or at least I’m guessing the middle of the night; it was still dark when I was woken up by it), and we’ve got to keep the wood dry of course.

We’ve got the structural model finished and ready for referencing, and this afternoon we’re going to start building the trusses. Yesterday we built the jig since all the trusses are the same, and with the chalk lines and blocking in place we’re ready to cut the boards to the right length, lay them down, and build the truss. From what the teachers are saying, it looks like we’ll build all the structure here, transport it to the site in pieces, and then bolt it all together and attach the decking/wall slatting there. I think it’s going to be a good experience to do construction on-site, since we’ll be able to see things that need changing and will be able to change them on the fly without much trouble.

A few words about the instructors: two of them are founding partners of Jersey Devil, a design/build firm that started in the 70s and is still going today with just the three original guys. It’s a small firm and they don’t do a lot of work, but what they do is intelligent, appropriate, and fun. They also do public art every now and then, one example being the iconic Freemont Troll in Seattle. The third instructor runs his own firms in New York and Cleveland; his name is Bill Bialosky and you can google his firms. His work is good stuff too, but not too outrageous. Some of it, in fact, is really beautiful and peaceful. From what I can tell through this first week, all three are kind of the example I’d like to aspire to by the time I’m their age (mid-60s). They work, they teach at Universities, they do good architecture, they have fun, and they don’t take themselves too seriously.

So that’s what’s happening in the class. My cabin is still dry through all the rain, but we have a mouse friend who has a nest of leaves up in one corner where the rafters meet the wall. I saw him run out when the door slammed today, and Paul (my UNCC classmate and cabinmate here) has a couple bites in a loaf of bread he brought, but as long as the mouse doesn’t bother me, I won’t bother it. I believe in a future where mice and humans can coexist peacefully.

We have our design nailed down now and we’re ready to order the lumber and start actual construction of the project. I think we’ve got a really nice design and hopefully when it’s all built we’ll have something good (maybe even capital G good). This morning was spent largely on doing the material count so we know what to order. Doing the business end of things is kind of nice too because there’s no chance to do that in school, and it seems like something a student might need to know how to do.

Yesterday it rained from about three in the afternoon until we went to sleep around eleven, which weighed down the trees, slicked the grass, and cooled down the air. The summer soaking we got during daylight turned into a kind of light foggy mist by the time it got dark, and I walked back to my cabin enveloped in a kind of wet hush. This morning it was cool and the fog was coming down off the mountains creating the valley we’re in, and it hardly seemed like July at all. More and more I’m struck by the beauty and peace of this place.

Here are the figures for our lumber order, sourced from local mills:

structural pieces:
10 count of 2x6x14 feet
10 count of 2x6x10 feet
10 count of 2x6x8 feet
6 count of 2x4x12 feet
2 count of 2x6x12 feet
15 count of 2x4x8 feet
16 count of 2x10x10 feet
2 count of 2x10x16 feet
2 count of 6x6x16 feet, pressure treated
roof deck:
60 count of 2x4x12 feet
side wall slatting:
8 count of 1x4x12 feet
8 count of 1x4x10 feet
8 count of 1x4x8 feet
back wall slatting:
32 count of 1x4x8 feet
floor and bench decking:
120 count of 1x4x8 feet, cedar

Halfway through the first of two weeks things are going well, I think. We’re working with an affordable apartment complex to design them a community shelter. It’s going to be a small structure, about sixteen feet by 11 feet at the widest, and it will be placed in a grassy common area between the buildings near the edge of the lot. It’s going to be made out of wood and a bit of translucent fiberglass on the roof, and we’re going to try to start the beginning stages of construction tomorrow. Because of size constraints on the road to the complex, we’re going to build the whole thing here at the school, take it apart, transport it, and then reassemble it on-site.

We’ve been doing all group work so far, which is always hard for me because I can tend to get pretty set on an idea I think is good at the expense of considering other ideas. But the groups have been working smoothly, and this is a really valuable experience for me. It’s also incredibly nice to have a real client, an actual budget, and be designing for the reality of what we can build in a week-and-a-half. Plus I think the fact that I’ll actually have some design/build experience when I graduate from architecture school is a pretty great thing. It only makes sense, right?

With regards to the weather and the scenery, it couldn’t really be any more perfect. Being here is absolutely a continuation of the beauty and sense of peace I felt during my two months going out to California, being there, and coming back. I can’t believe what I’ve seen in the past two-and-a-half months when I stop and think about it.

Last night I left the studio around 10:30, completely in the dark. We’re out in the middle of Vermont, with no real towns around, so there’s not the electric light haze I get at home. I didn’t have my flashlight, so I thought I’d wait for a few minutes outside and let my eyes adjust to the darkness and see if I could get back to my cabin in the woods without any light.

There were clouds that rolled in about 8, and I thought there would be a thunderstorm like there was the night before. But as my eyes adjusted to the darkness like I thought they would, I realized the clouds had moved away and the sky was completely and totally clear. After only five minutes I could see more stars than I’d ever seen in my life, and by the time I finally walked back to my cabin, after another ten minutes of just looking up into the sky, I could hardly believe what I was seeing. Every star twinkling, shooting stars, different constellations than I see in the South, and the cloudy band of the edge of the Milky Way. I’d always heard you could see the Milky Way, but I never had before. Not even when I was at the monastery in South Carolina, which was pretty out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere. But here… man, the stars are unbelievable.

I’m in Vermont now, sitting on the front porch of a little cabin in the woods as I write this. It’s beautiful here. Peaceful, green, quiet, primitive. There is a stream behind me, and there are waterfalls which we might go swim at next Sunday when we have the day off. There’s also a swimming hole across the street, which we were told is “usually nude, and more guys than girls.” I don’t think we’ll be hitting that up, I don’t really want to see a bunch of naked dudes swimming around.

After dinner we rode bikes down to the gas station nearby and bought beer. Then we played bocce ball out in the grass, and talked and laughed in perfect weather until it got dark.

So far it seems like these next two weeks will be a continuation of what’s been a really good and valuable summer for me. While I was in California, and especially on the long drives there and back, I had a lot of time to think about what kind of architect, and even really what kind of person, I wanted to be. I think being out here in the middle of Vermont will let me have more of that kind of time.

But for now I am here, I am calm, and I am content.

I’m now in Nashville, my home for the best five years of my life and still home to many of my college friends. We went and played trivia at our old bar tonight, just like we used to every week, and it was like I’d never left. It’s like that whenever I’m back here, and just seeing these people again adds to much to my life. If I’m ever in a rough place emotionally (which I’m not now at all, but if I ever am…), these people are the ones who get me through.

I forgot to write about this last night: on my way through Kansas, I got pulled over for driving in the left lane. Apparently there’s a new law in the state which says you can only drive in the left lane if you’re passing someone, and I wasn’t. The policeman said the law is so new they’re not ticketing anyone yet, just reminding people, but he asked if he could search my car. I just figured it was like the other day, they’re searching random cars in hopes of catching one or two. So I got out and he proceeded to check my car piece by piece, really thoroughly. Another car pulled up and the policeman in that one came over to me and asked if I’d ever been arrested for anything before. I said no, I hadn’t. He said okay and then went over to help the first officer search the car. By this time it had been about twenty minutes and they’re looking through everything. The second policeman then comes back over to me and says, “The reason we’re checking so thoroughly is because the dispatcher says you’ve been arrested for dope and you say you haven’t.” I kind of laughed in surprise and said, “Really? That’s…weird.” He then asked for my social security number to make sure they had the right guy. After they finally finished checking the first officer came over and asked for my social security number again, and he called the dispatcher back. Things were quickly cleared up because apparently the dispatcher had looked up the wrong person. The policemen all had a nice laugh about that while I kind of stood there and waited for them to let me go. When I got back to my car all my stuff was in different places and kind of thrown around, and my computer bag was now sitting on top of my limited-edition Wilco poster from the concert in L.A. Said poster now has a good crease in it. So thanks, Topeka Police Department!

As a more serious topic, the big news around people I know in Rock Hill today was that my old high school was closing after forty years. This wasn’t a surprise for me, since my mom taught there. People connected with the school knew the trouble it had been in the last couple years especially, and I was just waiting for them to finally close it down. The school had been slowly losing students since I went there eight years ago, and in the coming year they were down into the mid-eighties. Even at a tiny Christian school which barely pays its teachers a living wage, this wasn’t enough students to pay the bills.

A few months ago, as I talked with my parents about the trouble the school was having, they asked me if I would send my kids there if I had kids old enough to go. I said I wouldn’t send them there now with the way the school was. By this time they’d cut out all extracurricular activities and weren’t even really offering a full schedule of academic classes. I think, especially for a parent of a high schooler, it would be irresponsible to send your kid to a school like that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the time I spent there and think it was valuable. I was able to play any and all sports I wanted, was able to sing in the choir and act in school plays, was able to take art classes, and had smalled classes and personal teacher-student relationships throughout my whole education. I think these kinds of things are incredibly valuable, and my English teacher in particular awakened a love of reading and writing that’s served me well in my life. I feel like, with that class especially, I got the kind of education I wouldn’t have gotten in a public school. In my other classes…maybe not so much. Many times the teachers were only teaching a class because the school couldn’t find anyone else, so you might have history, math, or science teachers who weren’t so qualified in the subject. Sometimes you’d get a good one, but the only consistently great teacher I had was my English/Literature teacher. But I feel like that class, plus the sports and arts opportunities I got, made going to the school worthwhile.

But once the school got rid of those extra opportunities, and the English teacher had to leave because of a tragic family issue…I didn’t see what the point was to send a kid to the school. The main selling point was that it was a conservative Christian school, which in the Bible Belt isn’t as much of a selling point as in other areas of the country. The public schools in my town are decent, and supposedly everyone in town is a Christian anyway, so why spend the extra to send your kid to a specifically Christian school, and one with no opportunities for student enrichment, especially in this economy? And that’s what the school closing was blamed on: the economy. And I get that, I understand that the economy was surely a factor.

But I don’t think that’s the only reason. The main reason, I think, was that the school had become irrelevant, unnecessary, and obsolete. The teachers who were still there were the ones who were the ones who really believed in what they were doing and were good at it, so it’s sad for me to see them have to go (especially my mom, who is now very possibly done teaching after more than thirty years of being a really brilliant and caring elementary school educator), but the school wasn’t something people needed or wanted anymore. There were no opportunities for kids to excel at anything, the education level had been passed by the public schools, and the non-essential Christian values the school was holding onto were conservative ones which had been rendered ineffective and in many cases hurtful years ago.

So it’s not surprising. It had been coming for a while, and while my time there was valuable and I feel awful for the teachers who have to try to find a job now, I’m not so sad to see the school close. I was never as enamored with it as some people were.

Right now I’m in Little Rock, Arkansas after driving through the rest of Kansas, into and through Oklahoma, and into Arkansas so I could see a Thorncrown Chapel. I decided to skip St. Louis. Tonight I’m in a hotel because last night was a pretty awful night’s sleep folded up in my car at a rest stop.

Thorncrown is spectacularly great. As I was sitting inside the building I had time to think about how it relates to the Cathedral of Our Lady of The Angels, which I was able to see in Los Angeles. Both are stunning works of architecture and spirituality, and I found it impossible to say which one was better. They are both brilliant in their setting, and trying to switch the buildings with each other would be a horrible mistake. Thorncrown would not work in Los Angeles, and Moneo’s cathedral wouldn’t work wrapped up in the Ozarks. Each one fits comfortably and naturally in its place, and each one is able to bring an overriding sense of spirituality because of this. While the Cathedral is large, dark, solid, and imposing, Thorncrown is tiny, light-filled, transparent, and ethereal. Each is what is needed for its function and in its setting, and both are inspiring works.

I’d never driven through the Ozarks until today; they reminded me a lot of the Piedmont are I’ve gotten used to living in South Carolina. Lush, green, dark, and, as I drove through today, damp. I hadn’t really seen any rain since driving through Dallas two months ago, but as I made my way up the winding roads to Thorncrown today the skies opened in one of those beautiful southern summer storms. The kind where it’s still sunny out and everything gets a really good drenching for an hour or so. Next stop is Nashville for a couple days, and then home for two days before going to Vermont for a couple weeks, but as of today, with the scenery and summer rain, I’m back in the South and that’s a great feeling.

I drove through most of the state of Kansas today and found it to not be too different from driving through most of Indiana and Illinois. Corn fields everywhere, and they’re all a really nice deep green now because they’re still growing. One thing I was surprised about was the abundance of Jesus signs on the roadside. I never knew Kansas was such a religious state, but from the Colorado border to about Manhattan, Kansas, there’s signs about trusting in Jesus and Jesus saving all over the place. All the ones with pictures had Jesus as a white American man with blue eyes, of course. This is middle America, what else would you want?

Another thing I thought was strange was this little town called Victoria. I saw a sign for “The Famous Cathedral of the Plains” and of course had to pull off. You don’t just pass up something with a name as grandiose as “Cathedral of the Plains,” you know? So I get off the highway and it’s this tiny little town (Wikipedia says population of 1,208) with one big Catholic cathedral and a graveyard. It’s seriously out in the middle of absolutely nowhere and there’s a few house, a big church, and a graveyard with tons of graves and a lot of really interesting wrought-iron crosses obviously all made by the same person or company. It was really surreal. The more I’m reading about it right now online, the more I’m realizing it’s pretty much exactly middle White America. It’s half a mile square, 99.5% white, age demographics are split almost evenly across all ages (except only 9% from 18-24), almost 50/50 male and female, average family size of 2.86 persons, median income of 30k, and it’s in the middle of Kansas and has a church and a graveyard. I don’t think you can get more exactly middle-of-the-road than that. Seeing little places like that, places I’d never heard of and never would have except I drove through it on a whim, help make all this driving worthwhile.

Somehow I also completely missed the Rocky Mountains. I was in Greely, and I drove into Denver, and I always sort of expected Denver to be in the mountains. But it wasn’t, so I thought maybe I’d drive through them after I left Denver, but I got on I-70 east and all of a sudden they were behind me. I honestly have no idea what happened, unless going through Wyoming from Salt Lake City made me miss them. But I was really looking forward to driving through them, and somehow I totally didn’t at all. I really don’t understand what happened. (EDIT: after looking at a map, since I drove through Wyoming and Greely is almost directly north of Denver, I completely drove around the big parts of the mountains on the west side of Denver. I was north of them, and then I got was east of them as I was driving south to Denver. I did drive through parts of the Rockies (I passed the Continental Divide at 7000 feet) but missed all the big snow-covered peaks, unfortunately. Maybe on another trip sometime.

And now I’m just outside of Topeka at a rest stop getting free wi-fi. Thanks Kansas Highway System! This is also where I’m sleeping tonight because hotels are too expensive and there aren’t any hostels in the entire state of Kansas. Tomorrow I’m driving to Fay Jones’ Thorncrown Chapel, which will be both an architectural and a spiritual pilgrimage since it’s been called the best American building built since 1980, and it’s also a functioning church building. I’m really excited.

I’m in Denver right now, having driven through the whole state of Wyoming yesterday and slept on a couch in a small town outside Denver last night. Next is Kansas City, then St. Louis, Nashville, and home. Wyoming is a really beautiful state, and expansive in a way that New Mexico and Arizona weren’t for me. If you live near “rolling hills” take that kind of topography and expand it outward in all directions by about a million, and you’ll get an idea of the openness of Wyoming. The landforms are mostly buttes for part of the state, but then that transforms into hills the closer you get to Colorado. But it’s really beautiful, and the drive is the kind that is sort of calm and easy and smooth. Those kinds of drives are nice as the sun sets behind you.

My biggest wish on these drives, really my only wish, is that I had someone in the car to share it with. Not so that I’d have someone to talk to, or someone to share the driving with, but just so that someone else would be seeing the things I’m seeing. These kinds of things are better experienced by more than one person, I think, and it’s been hard for me to deal with being alone as I’m driving through all this strange and wonderful landscape. But I do think about people as I’m driving, and whether or not I think they’d enjoy the things I see, and I wrote this last night about one of them. I know it’s not very good, but I was tired since I’d driven for about 9 hours straight. There’s a reason I never write love poems and it’s because I don’t think I can write good ones. This one definitely isn’t good, but it’s honest, and I think sometimes with writing that’s all you can be.

This Really Isn’t About Kirsten Dunst

I drove east through Wyoming today
by myself.
As the sun was setting behind me
I put on music to fill my car
and wished I had someone to share it with.
I thought about you.

I’ve thought about you this whole trip, actually,
whenever I’ve seen something new.
I’ve thought about your dark hair and your secret-keeping smile
and how I wished I could share these things with you
because I think you would have liked them.

I thought about the first time we met
at your house.
I liked you as soon as you opened the door
and later I kind of thought I might
have caught you staring at me for a second.
I hoped I caught you.

I know these kinds of poems can be cliche
and this probably isn’t even a love poem at all.
But I’m interested in and attracted by everything about you.
You don’t know any of this because I haven’t told you,
but to play off the last line of the previous stanza,
I hope I catch you.

Last night I was in Reno, which is sort of a trashier, smaller Las Vegas (which itself is sort of a trashier, smaller planet Earth). This morning flung myself across the northern Nevada desert and landed in Salt Lake City, home to the Mormon Temple and thousands of Mormons filling the streets in front of my car as they get out of their Friday night service and I’m trying to see the Temple as a purely tourist endeavor. So I’ll have to go back tomorrow; I also might check out the genealogy library there and see how many of my ancestors have been posthumously baptized into the Mormon church. Salt Lake City seems like a nice enough city. The downtown area is fairly compact, and pretty upscale. Some decent architecture. I didn’t realize how small of a city it is overall though. It seems like the whole place is almost literally nothing besides the Mormon church and people who attend there.

I got to the Great Salt Lake at sunset but wasn’t able to go wade into it because of an outdoor concert about to start. My drive in from Reno did take me around one side of the rim, and I was awed by the sheer size and flatness of it. No waves, no wind, just a purely still expanse of salt water. It was starkly beautiful, and was only added to with the fading sun.

Most of the drive from Reno wasn’t anything to write home about. For some reason the Nevada Department of Transportation likes to put construction barrels out and close off lanes for miles for no reason at all. This just caused me to get stuck behind slow semi trucks and extended my already long enough time by myself in the car. No big deal. I did get pulled over by the police though. I had both a headlight and a brake light out, so they pulled me over and once they told me they’d let me go with a warning they asked me if I had any of a list of illegal items. I said no but they wanted to check anyway so I got out and went and stood with the second officer. He told me they were just looking for any reason to pull cars over so they could check them all for drugs. He said it was like a slot machine, the more cars you check the better chance you have of catching someone. I was sort of disappointed at this; I kind of hoped something in my demeanor suggested that I was enough of a rebel to possibly have drugs in my car. Apparently not; I seem like a perfect law-abiding citizen (except for the expired license plate I’ve been driving around with for seven months, which the officer today said checked out okay anyway).

The scenery wasn’t too much through the Nevada mountains, especially after all the stuff I’ve seen so far on this trip. But the mountains stop almost exactly at the Nevada/Utah border, and there’s no way to see what’s on the other side of those mountains until you come up on it. When I came over the summit and all of a sudden the endless salt flats appeared out of nowhere below me, I literally gasped.