Excavation

The excavator is digging his way to our front door today. The front door is on the second floor, and until today it opened into a void between the house and the hill. Today the house will join the hill and become that much more a part of the earth it came from. I love this house! It is so close to the one I would have built for myself: so natural, so grounded. I always imagined living in a house built into a hillside; the only difference here being that the hillside is today being built into the house. And, of course, the house is built of the hillside.

I too have been doing a lot of digging lately. I have been digging out the floor - wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of thick red earth I have removed from within the house’s walls. Someday the floor will be flat and four inches lower than it originally was. And then we can fill it with eight inches of sand and gravel and earthen floor, with some radiant heat piping thrown in for good measure.

And last week we prepared and planted the season’s first veggie bed with a random collection of seeds I was given in Sonoma 16 months ago.

It seems to be a time for digging: digging floors, digging gardens, and digging deep within in search of treasure. Digging deep, roots sinking through the soil for nourishment and stability. Mining for the gems of truth.

Life is excavation.