I took a spontaneous adventure to Flagstaff, AZ this weekend to attend a plastering workshop with Bill and Athena Steen. Through a series of unexpected events, I found myself sleeping in my truck under the stars on Pine Mountain where Andrew and Celia Frost have been building their straw bale house. Besides being incredibly wonderful people, Andrew and Celia were classmates of mine at the University of Evansville – a very small liberal arts university in Evansville, IN. We didn’t know each other well then, and I am amazed at how life spirals and brings things back to you that you didn’t imagine. Highlights include being rained out of my truck by a monsoon-like lightening storm on top of the mountain my first night – I went and slept on the floor of the house, meeting three bad-ass women from Texas and staying with them the second night at the Nature Conservancy Hart Prairie Preserve among the aspens, elk and ponderosa pine, having nachos and avocado margaritas with the Frosts, their friends and the Steens, and getting a chance to really do some plastering. I am enamored with this work and want to do a lot more! Also – the Steens are great teachers and very warm people. After a ten hour drive home, I am spending this Monday resting a bit and thinking about all that I learned. Life is good.
Nature Conservancy Hart Prairie Preserve
Original Homestead at Hart Prairie - I stayed here with the Texans
Old stuff hangs on the walls
Porch of the lodge - delicious coffee was drunk here
Yarrow lives all over this mountain
Useful stuff
Nice bird perch
Ethereal Aspen
Andrew and Celia's family home - straw bale
Bill demonstrates fine plaster techniques
Clay slipping the bare bales
Everyone gets in there
Base plaster nearly complete
View from the porch - check out my lovely work truck hauling earth
Double rainbow over Chevron on my way back to California
