Natural Building in Santa Cruz County

From toddlerhood, my eldest son, Kita, showed an interest in building and fixing things. At preschool he made a mother’s day card for his “other” mother, Mardi, who is a fine woodworker. (note: each of us, his many mother-types, is the “other” mother, depending on who’s speaking about whom.) When the teacher asked him what she should write on the card he said, “I love Mama Mardi, She teaches me hammering and nailering.” Around the same time, one of my closest friends, Michele, a general contractor and natural builder, gave him a real leather tool belt scaled to his size, replete with an authentic toddler-sized hammer, for his birthday.

Any time I got him a new pair of shoes, he’d run around the store announcing, “They make me run fast!” Similarly, whenever he donned his tool belt he’d inform me, “It makes me a hard-worker.” It held all the power of a cape.

Only glancing back over the sweep of decades can I see the full, inexorable arc toward Kita’s life work: building simple, beautiful, heartfelt dwellings that ensconce his values of treading more gently upon the earth, creating supportive community and being immersed in efforts to ensure that all people have access to at least the most basic human needs of love, food and shelter.

I’m a bit ashamed (though trying to be self-forgiving too) to admit that when Kita was a young adult, I heavily imposed my belief on him that he should get a BA degree right out of high school, that he should live in more traditional places (rather than mud huts, partitioned garages, and warehouses) and that in the meantime, he should find full time work.

Attending college was not a remote consideration for me as a kid and I wanted Kita’s road to self-sufficiency to be smoother than mine. I had lived in a box van, a neglected pump house, sectioned-off areas of a few different living rooms and a parade of shared housing arrangements as I tried to make my way as a young adult. I’d cleaned toilets in public parks and lived off public assistance. It added to my life story and my world view and I value all the experiences and all the places. But, I thought it was my job as his parent to guide him toward a smoother path and that if his early adulthood wasn't better or easier than mine, I was failing as a parent.

As long as I’m narking on my younger self, I might as well admit that I also forewent following my own intuition about what my son needed in favor of being perceived as acceptable to others. I like to blame this on the fact that I had no model for how to walk with a new adult through this transition period. My father died before I reached the age of majority and my mother had long since turned in her mom badge. It’s good to have a couple extra sets of shoulders upon which to rest the weight of the guilt. Regardless of blame, fault, or responsibility, though, instead of being a loving witness and a steady resource to him during his emergence into adulthood, I inadvertently made an obstacle of myself. I nervously, stubbornly, myopically saw what I wanted for him, what I believed was best for him, and what I thought was expected of me as a parent, but I did not see him. I desperately wanted to be part of a postive generational trajectory. And I was. I am. It just took me so long to see it.

Eventually, I resolved to the fact that Kita was going to do life on his terms (which did, incidentally, ultimately include getting a degree) and I slowly learned to mind my business while not totally disengaging. I started to see Kita’s values more clearly. I loved the concepts of simpler living, not always getting drawn into the world’s crazy pace, and paying better attention to our impact on the planet. In time, I moved past wanting to sculpt him into something he wasn’t and instead, hung back and watched in awe as he created himself, as every one of us must do. I moved past simply tolerating all the ways he was doing life differently than I’d envisioned for him, and into a growing appreciation of his choices, his pace, his creativity.

I began to more fully see and admire his adult self. When he was in his early thirties, I talked with him about my process of working through his transition from childhood to adulthood and he said, “I am a perfect reflection of all the values you taught me and the ways we lived when I was young, but then you changed.” It was an arresting moment. He was spot on. Somewhere along the line I’d started striving so hard to be more “normal”, to float along in the mainstream, that I didn’t notice what I was losing along the way. I’d unrooted myself from the wild, wonderful, complicated outer edges of life and narrowed my vision and my scope. My goals had became more material and success-oriented. His comment helped me loosen up my self-imposed blinders even as I continued to claim and embrace the comfortable life I’d worked hard to create for myself.

But it was during my walking project, when I started incorporating visits to Kita’s worksites into my walks around the county that I began to fully see the thriving, incandescent man my chubby-cheeked little boy had become. I’d driven to various sites before to watch the progress of a building, bring lunch to him and his crew or drop something off. I’d even taken off my shoes and stomped in the mixtures of straw, sand, dirt, and water used to make cob, an ancient building material similar in content to adobe, that dates back thousands of years, that he uses to build pizza ovens, benches, and dwellings. A literal manifestation and representation of his own self-sculpting

But there’s something that happens when you arrive at a place at the pace of walking, when a particular location is not a destinations but part of a larger story and can be experienced within it’s greater context. At a job site in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where Michele, Kita, and a large crew were working on a two-story straw bale house, I arrived after walking several miles.

I’d stopped for a break along the way. Beside a small pond I’d watched waterskeeters performing their timeless ballet. I lay on my side in the mud and rocks and schooched right up to the water’s edge so I could get a shot of the subtle ripples their delicate feet make on the skin of the water. When I’d had my fill, I stood up, brushed off my canvas pants, and continued up the road. By the time I reached the site and trudged up the vertiginous driveway, I was a moving meditation. This is saying something. I am not a meditator.

The scene was one of laden wheelbarrows, whirring mixing machines, buckets of mud and people working together in buzzing, harmonious industry. It was a kind of orchestra. And smack in the middle of it all, getting some tamping tools out of the back of his truck was Kita, covered in stray bits of straw from his straw-colored hair to his muddy feet, with a beaming, welcoming smile. My heart threatened to combust in pride. No one needs a teary mother at their place of employment, so I looped slowly around the less populated backside of the building before making my way over to greet him.

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Kita Glass is a general contractor with a focus on natural building using materials like straw bales, slip straw, cob, and hempcrete. He and his friends are growing not only a community-minded business but an expansive social network with shared goals for the environment. A common practice in natural building is to hold “work-days” where people of all skill levels and ages can help with construction while getting hands-on experience in natural building processes. Work-days bustle with camaraderie, productivity and good hardy food. If you’re interested in a natural building project, participating in a work-day, or a attending a workshop on natural building, feel free to visit Kita (Buckeye Natural Builder) and/or Michele’s (Boa Constructor-Green Building and Design) websites.

A cob office with a rocket stove that provides radiant heat throughout the sitting area. The colored glass (re-used bottles) is a common touch in this type of building, adding character and dazzling color in late afternoon light. Working with cob can be likened to hand building a clay pot on a huge scale.

A slip straw project in the Santa Cruz mountains. Over the course of the this daylong work party about twenty-five people, ages 3 to 70 pitched in to build a little office as a prototype for a larger project.

Part of an outdoor cob kitchen and a sweet dog practicing for winter.