Thirty-Eight Years On

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.            ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

A few years ago as my career jump was informing itself, I came across a yellowing black and white magazine-style book in my local used bookstore. On the cover was a faded lithograph of a Russian yurt with the simple title Shelter. The pages looked as though each article, drawing and photograph had been cut and pasted by hand (it probably was). I felt a childlike attraction to the jumbled content, and poured over the pictures of indigenous buildings from around the world and stories about alternative building techniques and the “eccentric” folks who built them. At the time I did not know I was pouring over an essential work by Lloyd Kahn, the California grandaddy of alternative building.

If the photographs fascinated me, his introduction galvanized me. Again, I can’t help but feel that we’re not paying enough attention to our history lessons. The book was published in 1973 yet Lloyd’s message is fresh forty years on.

In times past, people built their own homes, grew their own food, made their own clothes. Knowledge of the building crafts and other skills of providing life’s basic needs were generally passed along from father to son, mother to daughter, master to apprentice.

Then with industrialization and the population shift from country to cities, this knowledge was put aside and much of it has now been lost. We have seen an era of unprecedented prosperity in America based upon huge amounts of foreign and domestic resources and fueled by finite reserves of stored energy.

And as we have come to realize in recent years, we are running out. Materials are scarce, fuel is in short supply, and prices are escalating. To survive, one is going to have to be either rich or resourceful. Either more dependent upon, or freer from centralized production and controls. The choices are not clear cut, for these are complex times. But it is obvious that the more we can do for ourselves, the greater will our individual freedom and independence be.

This book is not about going off to live in a cave and growing all one’s own food. It is not based on the idea that everyone can find an acre in the country, or upon a sentimental attachment to the past. It is rather about finding a new and necessary balance in our lives between what can be done by hand hat still must be done by machine.

For in times to come, we will have to find a responsive and sensitive balance between the still-usable skills and wisdom of the past and the sustainable products and inventions of the 20th century.

Of necessity or by choice, there may be a revival of hand work in America. We are certainly capable, and these inherent, dormant talents may prove to be some of our most valuable resources in the future.

This book is about simple homes, natural materials, and human resourcefulness. It is about discovery, hard work, the joys of self-sufficiency and freedom. It is about shelter, which is more than a roof overhead.

The singular difference thirty-eight years on is that Mr. Kahn’s 1973 world faced a longer window of opportunity for systemic environmental, economic and social change than we face today.

With that in mind, what is the best possible use of our collective time and resources over the next ten years? How can we affect widespread – not tiny socio-economic pockets of – adoption of more sustainable building and living practices? Will a disaster of some kind become the unfortunate driver?