17th-18th Jan.

Passed two girls on a tandem, cycling from Seattle to San Francisco, stopped for a chat across the road.  Ru and Erin - they were fun, great bike, full of the joys of the open road.  Go women on bikes!

Leisurely 14 miles to Point Arena.  Library for internet, hoping to check out Sun Dog Builders, a hub of cob house building activity.  Cob homes = earth (subsoil, clay/sand), straw, water, mixed, built up bit by bit to creat solid, curved walls on stone foundations, and then a timber frame roof on top.  Turned out, on checking emails since San Francisco that it was closer to where I'd been camped the last night than Point Arena.  Ahh...  Decided I'd come so far, hoping to see cob in California, I'd just cycle back.  Pedalled fast, muddled day, and the sun not so high any more.  Asked to use the phone in a little Thai restaurant, as you have to in these situations, and managed to speak to Kirk, one of the cob builders.  Fifteen minutes later, collected from the side of the road by Kirk in the truck.  Great!

Welcomed to Kirk's home, shown around, and to the little cob house where I could sleep, in the last of the daylight, with Floyd the dog.  Welcomed to dinner as a new friend.  Delicious meal with Kirk, wife Heidi, and daughter Jade, in their cob/straw bale/timber frame, open plan family home.  Heidi is a midwife specialising in rural home births, with two expected to arrive by the end of the month, but she didn't think they'd be tonight.  They have workshops, apprenticeships, and apparently a couple times a year someone passing on a bike who calls in to visit - this time it was me!  Chatted about their composting toilets, sewage and worms, as you do over dinner.  Kirk talked about how few adult humans are willing to, and capable of dealing with their own shit.  Emptying a bucket daily, stirring, worms, maintaining and adjusting a healthy composting system.  The flushing toilet and sewage systems eradicated so much disease, but are also an ecological disaster in terms of water usage.  A letter to the local newspaper proposed dealing with current Californian water shortages by switching to composting toilets.  Great, good thinking, but take care, the consequences of getting your toilet system wrong are pretty dire.  If everyone in San Francisco suddenly stopped using their flushing toilets...I can't see that going well.

Morning coffee, met Bird the pet parrot, Kirk's shoulder companion, and had the tour of the various cob works.  Cob shower house -  with wattle and daub outdoor screens, linseed oil over the exterior cob surfaces, an inside bath with sea view and rocket stove heated water.  Cob metal workshop - homemade charcoal, lit and glowing, fanned by a solar panel-run hairdryer, glowing steel rebar bashed into shape to make latches, hooks and tools.  Exciting!  It's these kind of old skills that allowed humans to really get creative.  Rocket stoves all over the place - metal barrel instant radiators, cob block slow radiators, a little chute for firewood.  In this kind of home landscape lots of things are work in progress, and all the more interesting for it.

It occurs to me that the modern human is the only animal, alongside those which we have domesticated, that has lost the knowledge and expertise to look after itself, and survives without knowing much of the planet we live on. The environments we interact with are man-made...pavement, cars, mortgage paperwork instead of shelter building skills, taps, packaged food on supermarket shelves, flushing toilets, fabric already woven and sewn into clothes, heating switches... And then we have the audacity to have an opinion about, and a huge impact on the habitats around us.  We rarely even realise what kind of extraordinary animal we have become, and the impact we have as a collective.  It's mind-boggling.  We have delegated responsibility and knowledge to such an extent, to maintain our complicated modern systems for billions of humans, that very few people now have the ability to meet our basic needs - water, shelter, warmth, food.  Our cultural idea of success includes career, salary, home and family, but forgets actually providing for ourselves.  It's all taken care of, but at what cost, to the planet, and our physical and mental health...  This isn't a new take on human development, but lots of miles on the bike allows the time to reflect, and find the words for myself.

The permaculture movement, which includes natural building, materials and skills, textiles, metal work, growing produce, building community, composting and water systems, is a practical positive response to our current predicament, first proposed as a collection on skills and ideas, by people who were tired of opposing, fighting and despairing, to no great effect.

I left in the morning feeling so enthused, inspired and grateful for the hospitality, that I forget which side of the road I was meant to be on...oops!