Dwelling: On Making Your Own

This book traces the sometimes courageous, sometimes frightening steps of a former suburban-matron-come-country woman and her friends as they cast off their culture's expectations of what their houses 'ought' to look like and begin experimenting with their own fantasies for dwelling places. They are people with the courage to trust their own judgments, conceiving of living space as something which must reflect their personal uniqueness, even to the point of working as a sacred mandala for energy, a place for achieving an integration with a larger harmony. Although there is much practical information here, especially with regard to planning and getting ready to build, and on building codes, this book is more about the personal odysseys of these 'space people' as interviewed and studied by this woman who calls herself 'River.'Reading her notes as she pulled this book together, hearing her interview and collect and wonder, sharing her anger and anguish and through it all knowing some of her joy at the rightness and adventure inherent in this form of reclaiming control over her life has fully convinced me that, for some at least, 'breaking free' or 'dropping out' or 'going to the country' is anything but an escape. Rather it is an energetic, searching, experimental joining of the central issue of our time: the incredibly difficult task of learning to 'choose' a culture, a new pattern of living to emerge among us, that does not rip off the planet or any of her inhabitants. This, at base, is what these strange, sometimes rather bizarre houses and their builders are all about. This book is their story.