A trail of nails

In one of Rainer Maria Rilke‘s poems, he asks of us: “Whoever you are: some evening take a step out of your house, which you know so well.” “Your eyes find it hard to tear themselves from the sloping threshold…”

Well, Rilke is correct in one sense: I never fail to find joy in looking at the timber details of this house where I dwell.

Nearly every morning where I sit to have coffee and toast, I look up and see this juncture of beam and post and brace and am forever gazing at what seems both complex, yet simple.

Like a poem, like a visual mantra, they lull and pull me into a cathedral of trees.

Only now, after many readlings, am I am slowly beginning to decipher their lofty language.

Someone once described the design of the house as “lumberjack zen”; another, “Buddhist ski lodge”.

The point I would like to make is that, in designing this house, nothing happened by accident, yet it was only by accident that it came into being.

After seven years teaching design and over thirty years as a practicing designer/sculptor, I am convinced that the best outcomes are arrived at slowly, with patience and in stages.

In the above photo, there was a five year wait between the first timber post going into the ground and the last rafter notched into place.

There was no way to foresee this final outcome of a steep pitched roof giving way to a narrow slit of windows over a very shallow roof all in the one room.

No blank piece of paper could have completely sketched out these timber details. One section had to exist before the other could be fathomed.

What I am trying to draw out is an analogy of sorts in how to live our lives: “To try and plan out the perfect life, to try and wait until it is all figured out before embarking on one’s path, is fruitless, stalls us from finding purpose and dooms us to do nothing.”

Comments I hear a lot are: “As soon as I find myself, I’ll become an environmental activist.” Or, “I can’t love someone/something else until I love myself first”. Or, “I reallly am passionate about writing poetry, but I can’t find the time.”

“Ha!”, I say. “Start defending the trees and you will be guided, step by step, to understanding who you are. By helping others, you will help yourself. Forget your fear of writing, just write.”