hill country house designs

3-21-02

5:15 AM. For me, this is late. The guard hardly ever arrived this early morning to open the Pleassanton, CA, group pool. I waited until 6:15 AM and returned property. Now, I am off schedule and being swept into quite a few instructions at as soon as though I decide on up a variety of tasks in random order to make the adjustment to a new timetable.

We purchased the land about 17 months ago. Teri originally grew to become fascinated in it while we appeared for a mountain house with some acreage about it for me to have a significant yard. We held passing it when in the car or truck with the real estate agent (their office environment is in the plaza at the base of the photograph). You can not see the land quite properly from the road due to the fact of trees and an embankment that blocks the see considerably. What Teri appreciated about it was the condition and length. She required to see if she could place an airstrip on it. Personal pilots have the sky working experience all over with them though they are on the ground and routinely see terra firma as basically a launch pad to the exhilaration of traveling. I base this on observations I have designed. I am not a pilot although I do fly with my spouse.

In our search for a house, we observed nothing that suit the dream we shared. In some circumstances the plot of land seemed excellent. In other conditions the check out was excellent. A handful of properties seemed near sufficient to what we wished that we could remodel 1 into a dwelling that would be correct for us. We have been not on the lookout for a large property. The sq. footage on our household now is a little extra than 1,400 sq. ft. Major in our standards was that the property not be crowded by households around by. I crave owning open up, normal place about me. I lived in New Mexico earlier mentioned 7,000 ft. from 1986 to 1996 and cherished being there. That is the sort of expertise I am hunting for below with my wife.

So, we quickly shed curiosity in the dwelling searching. We flew to Sina Lunga, Italy to show up at the wedding day of Teri’s brother in April of 2000. Try to remember the starting of the dot.com bubble bust? Substantially of what we supposed to go toward the new household was lost in the stock tumble. But, “it really is not about the income.” So we returned to the look for with a various priority, investment value.

We checked and uncovered that the home experienced not been sold however. We built a bid and went to in fact wander on the land soon after we had set down the earnest funds. Up to that place we experienced only driven earlier the land. We dropped off the look at with the realtors and went by the gate to explore what we were being buying.

It was extraordinary, so tranquil. We have due to the fact acquired that it is 1 of the healthiest alpine meadow ecosystems of its kind in the region. It sits at 3,000 ft. A 250 12 months old oak tree by the creek had fallen various months before we commenced our lookup and the trunk stands as a testimony to the potent presence it have to have commanded in excess of the little valley. Red tail hawks circled higher than us calling and searching for gophers to try to eat. Golden strands of meadow grass swayed in the tender breeze. Daylight protected each inch of the valley with a twinkling glow that nearly sang to your eyes about the splendor of the organic planet.

It captured my coronary heart. On the springy soil I walked as however it was truly the clouds of an apparition. If there was a digital camera recording our wander around the land, I question it would have an correct aperture placing to encompass the width of the grin throughout my confront.

We had been so blessed. The land was magical and we were being likely to personal it soon. We would have our open space and be close to our mates, Linda and Mick, living in nearby Pine Mountain Lake.

3-22-02 Thank the Lord. Thank you Jesus for each individual breadth I just take and just about every ponder crowding this considerable land you manufactured for us. As Micah explained, (6:8)” He hath shewed thee, O man, what is excellent and what doth the LORD demand of thee, but to do justly, and to really like mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

I only have time for a limited start off on the reference this week to Jefferson and Winthrop. The essential point of my alignment with these good leaders in this situation, despite the fact that I would develop to very a few other agreements with Thomas Jefferson in distinct, is their belief that people and the community would be greatest served if we stored our daily life teams little. That, to me, acknowledges the inherent issues with maintaining the top quality of an person existence when the dimensions of the group results in being gigantic. It relates to a Basic Techniques Principle which accepts the sample of entropy and chaos. Let us take these two ideas and look at them.

Initially, Jefferson considered that the United States would be ideally constituted by compact farmers. This can be expanded up the ranges of government to incorporate regional counties by means of the condition governments controlling the main pursuits of retaining everyone’s rights safeguarded in the course of their day by day interactions. The principal part of the federal federal government would have been to maintain buy concerning the states at the interstate amount and in the protection of the country towards international powers. Governor Winthrop, of the Plymouth colony, stated simply just that no church should to be greater than a congregation. In equally instances the ecology of the family, the group and the land they inhabit are quite near to the challenges and joys that their unique lives will have to offer with.

These days we confront a technique of this kind of outstanding complexity and dimensions that people today are dwarfed by their purpose and romantic relationship to the country. The electricity vital to aid this overarching and overreaching procedure can take up a majority of our times. This can be supported by a straightforward search at the range of times wages in a yr that go to taxes. This is not what our founding fathers envisioned. It is not the eyesight that the initial Pilgrims held for a new Jerusalem when they crossed the Atlantic. It is a perversion in aid of a Satanic affinity for a terrific system, a terrific machine or the “mix” that Kesey and Main Bromden observed pretty evidently.

I’m off to the pool.

3-23-02 Saturday.

5:45 AM. Mornings are typically are overflowing cavalcade of ideas for me. “Will need a dump truck, mama, to unload my mind” (Bob Dylan). Evenings are extra of a slow glide into slumber with out the snap, crackle and pop of awakening to a return to consciousness that will make the early morning these a glorious function.

The purpose of this e-book is to chronicle the holistic encounter of the planning and precise undertaking of the exodus. The tactical components of the exodus include the setting up of our house in the valley that can be witnessed in the experienced photo gallery. We have not designed a home on our individual prior to. When we to begin with resolved to make this happen we had added funds that have disappeared courtesy of the dot.com bubble bursting. We will accomplish the exodus inspite of this new financial hurdle. God has a strategy for us. And, in our prayers, as we listen for His advice, we see this shift as section of the plan.

If almost everything operates out as prepared, other audience will be capable to observe the journey we have taken here and have a guidebook e-book on how they may abide by a very similar exodus out of the confines of our hedonistic society. That is the root induce of this mission. To flee the oppressive, ubiquitous invasion of our internal beings by what has turn out to be a world wide corporate mentality lacking any true determination to what God has shown us is sacred. To flee the continuous and increasingly torrential erosion of morality Morality as God instructed us we should to behave in this world He gave us. To flee the incarceration in a jail of new economic classicism that has turn out to be an epidemic in The us and that we have spawned all over the earth. To flee what has been transmogrified into a decadent descent into this present day variation of Caligula’s rumpus room. To adhere to Moses instance and depart the substance grasp of Pharaoh, our present day company blend. To heed Jesus’ warning to get to the mountains when we see the earth overwhelmed with harbingers of an evil, Satanic rule.

This early morning I am driving to the land to meet up with a possible architect. We will need to stake out the driveway leading to our planned location for the property. In purchase to have the very well drilled for our water, the drilling organization desires to have a highway that will support their rig. It weights 25,000 lbs. and would sink into the comfortable soil close to the residence plot.

We also need to evaluation the material sent to me by PG & E for the dropping of a ability line to the good deal. It has to be reviewed for accuracy in terms of locale and specs of electrical electrical power. At this issue, it is vital to have it position so that the pump for the nicely will have energy. Inevitably, we also hope to put in an inverter to promote again to PG & E the wattage created by the active solar panels we would like to use.

From the commencing the system for the dwelling has been centered on owning our lives and our home have a minimal dependence on ability and money dedication to the phalanx of power grids, transportation grids and food items output networks. We are doing the job to have this be functional rather than serious but the purpose is optimizing independence in supporting ourselves on our land. In pursuit of that goal, the property layout will emphatically reflect the two active and passive photo voltaic.

Present-day excursion will just take me 3 hrs of driving to the residence. It was raining so frantically final night time that it woke us up and I anxiety there may perhaps even be flooding someplace alongside the route.

We also have designed revisions to the sketches the architect proposed. It is south experiencing with greatest glazing ( windows ) to seize passive photo voltaic energy. The watch offered by that orientation is amazing. The valley rolls down from the modest knoll our household will sit on to the creek, pond and rolling meadows of the west financial institution.

3-24-02

If it’s not about the cash, what is it about? God’s eternal adore.

Too substantially of the priceless benefit of our non permanent existence on this planet is put in on the acquisition, intake or anticipation of product resources of intended satisfaction. The focus of our awareness is fixed on the ever multiplying decisions for attaining satisfaction from “factors.” We are drowning beneath the incessant waves of technological development that are engorging us with pictures to tickle our wants. We devote the treasured currency of our genuine lives, that is the non permanent piece of eternity that is allotted us whilst we are beings in this environment, on the devilish pursuit of cars, awards, perceived sexual gratification and untold numbers of satisfaction locations conceived in the minds of the collective company advertising and marketing genius. The jewel of authentic price is misplaced. Staying grateful and cognizant of the blessing God has granted us by making it possible for each individual individual the times our souls can savor in awareness of being company in this wonderland, is forsaken.

If it really is not about the money, it is about acquiring a way to stay that makes it possible for us to honor God’s everlasting presents to us. This exodus seeks a path to living in God’s as He has commanded us. It is about strolling in and staying regularly conscious of our presence in His everlasting adore no issue what our existing product situations seem to be to say about the condition of our latest conditions. To complete this walk demands that our vision be centered on what is illuminated by an everlasting mild not what flashes at centers of sensory reception from the Television, billboards and the raucous parade of temptations we are bombarded with currently. Everlasting enjoy is pretty basic, from the second epistle of John, verses 2-6,

For the truth’s sake, which dwelleth in us, and shall be with us forever.

[3] Grace be with you, mercy, and peace, from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in fact and adore.

[4] I rejoiced enormously that I discovered of thy children strolling in fact, as we have obtained a commandment from the Father.

[5] And now I beseech thee, woman, not as while I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from the commencing, that we love a person one more.

[6] And this is enjoy, that we wander following his commandments.This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the starting, ye must stroll in it.

Leaving at 7:15 yesterday early morning I was equipped to get to the valley by 10. For important stretches of the drive I was pelted by exceptionally significant rain. In advance of I remaining the peninsula I handed into the most wonderful rainbow I have ever noticed. The shade bands ended up broad and vivid. I observed no pot of gold when I arrived at the end of the rainbow. I was carrying the pot of bliss inside of me.

I stopped 1st at the realtor’s workplace. I actually get pleasure from chatting with them about what is heading on up in the hills there. Even though I was there receiving a pair of copies, the architect hopeful arrived. We talked about the holiday voyages on cruise ships, as nicely as the trip Teri and I had taken to Chile. As usually comes about the architect talked about traveling planes.

My spouse, Teri, is a pilot. While Teri was not with me on this vacation we however finished up taking about flying. I listened, yet again, as the architect retold the story of a Groveland pilot who created his past, farewell flight in command of 747 from Hawaii and dropped 8 travellers and 1 flight attendant when the planes hull cracked open up above the Pacific. I remembered when that tale broke. He had to get the airplane back on two engines. I verified that our direct neighbor, Paul Bunt, who lives on the remaining hand side of the valley, utilised to fly C-130’s. I frequently get the sensation I am surrounded by pilots who are completely ready at a times recognize to drop all the things and fly up into the sky in their Cessna’s, Cherokee’s and Lear Jets even as their ft are planted on the ground up coming to me.

I managed to split the dialogue away from the piloting connected tales and we drove the mile up the road to do a web page go to to figure out the area of the driveway. One of the issues of making a household so significantly away is that it can take 6 hours by automobile spherical excursion to be there. By aircraft the excursion final only an hour or so each way. To stake out a driveway location you will need to be there. So, we were being lucky that the rain let up to a comfortable drizzle whilst we agreed on exactly where the driveway ought to come onto the ridge off of the county road. Then we verified how it really should lead to the point where the perfectly will be drilled. Subsequent this twenty minute effort and hard work we went again down the highway a mile to the local cafe, Rosemary’s Café, for lunch and our dialogue about revisions Teri and experienced appear up soon after reviewing Sean’s drawings.

The architect experienced a BLT with cream of potato soup and I had the pastrami on rye particular with Swiss cheese and coleslaw. Promptly immediately after lunch, I disembarked on the a few hour return drive to the East Bay region and our rental household in Livermore.

On the generate back home, I noticed an SUV that moments before rolled off the pavement, down a steep 100 ft. slope and arrived to relaxation upside down in a meadow 50 yards from the facet of the freeway. A law enforcement officer was kneeling beside the overturned motor vehicle peering into the window as an ambulance arrived roaring up the street to be a part of him. So a lot of of us are likely far too speedy these times and much much too a lot of of us are ending up upside down, crippled inside and out.

There is no improved time to consider the first step in your escape strategy than today. It can be depressing and stunning how long it in fact requires to actualize your departure even after you have by now created the selection that you must get away from the concrete jungle.