#areturntoland

[areturntoland]

The Difficulties of Living the Dream

The difficulties of living the dream.

When I started on this path, long before I had found and bought our land, I was aware that the effort involved would be great and the struggle to make it happen often difficult. At times over the past 18 or so months I have wondered if it is possible for us to make this dream a reality. When the land was razed by fire last autumn, when I took out my hand in a saw accident in the spring, as I stood freezing my ass off the night before finally getting the wood stove installed I hesitated, worried that maybe this journey was quixotic. Tilting toward windmills that I only imagined were giants to be defeated.

I knew that I would never have a lump sum of money that would easily let me get to work and do everything that needed done in one go. I am not from money, do not have the ability to borrow from family, do not own an inherited property I can let out as a form of income, nor any of the other cushions that seem to support the majority of those seeking this life off grid and out of the boundaries of urban living. But also I knew that my art work and other side projects alway bring in a small amount of funds and that if we were to continue to live in London, struggling as we have for a decade to make ends meet with no hope of escape, we wouldn't survive.

So this path is our hope, even in the grimmest of times. This phase of building, with the cabin more or less habitable and the foundation story of the house slowly coming together, is so far the bleakest. It's the December chill and rain as much as anything that drags the soul over the rocks of reality. Mice that need to be killed, leaks that need to be fixed, powerful winter storms that shake you from your warm dreams and let you know you are small and tired and easily defeated.

I have relied much on the assistance of friends, both in financial and emotional support. While I toil on the mountain trying to build a home for us free of debt and negative environmental impact I have thought long about those who seem to have always been with me, in spirit and in heart. Those friends who urge me onward, happy to see my successes, empathetic to my losses. What I have long lacked in financial stability I have more than made up for in good friendships.

But there is just me in the cabin trying to figure out how to go from here to the finish line. I am alone here, with the hawks crying each morning and the crows saying goodbye to the sun each evening. I listen to the waterfall and stare into the ancient oak trees and feel my stresses leave me. What is needed here is labour as much as capital, and that I can still do with my two hands.

Why leave London? Why struggle so much to build such an abstract way of living? As I look out into the world I see the shambles of the UK and US, governments that have long forgotten the people they are intended to serve. I see the decline of the environment and the disregard that those who hold power have for their destruction of habitat and species alike - all in the name of profit and power. The world is not dying of its own accord, humanity is killing it and I want no part in the death of this earth.

I have always been an artist, always sought to make new things, see old things in new ways, and to live for experiences that teach and expand the life I live. I have long craved the process of building my own home. Nest building really, a primordial habit that lingers in the deep brain of humanity since we left the caves. The satisfaction of building one's own home is great and yet no small task.

I see myself less as owner of this plot of land and more as its steward. I find it my responsibility to reforest the land with native species, root out the invading plants and return the land to its natural self. A forest of cork oak, a valley of crows, owls, and boars. With a home built around my library in the middle.

December is bleak and January likely even more so. I will survive these cold months somehow and hope to make progress on the house. London is soon ending, the politics of fear and betrayal haunt its streets and its increasingly starving people. It is here on this mountain that I intend to find a way, a path, that leads our lives out of the concrete jungle and back to the land.

[areturntoland]

The Season’s End

Autumn came and we managed to get the concrete under the placa poured and ready. It was a hard few weeks of work as we hauled stone and sand, mixed and poured the slabs in sections. We did the main kitchen floor with help, two sections with just the two of us operating and pouring concrete and I poured the final upper section solo on a rainy day and was beat down by all of the work.

The cabin has been winterized against the wind if not properly insulated. After our run in with a hurricane and losing some plastic exterior tarp in early October I decided to cap the building in a temporary shell of corrugated galvanized steel. Its an inexpensive material and reusable on other projects in the future.

Despite our best efforts we ran out of summer and autumn before we could get past the stone and concrete portions of the house. There are still things to do to the lower kitchen, including excavating the land more and adding the slab and walls for the bathroom addition that sits next to the foundation.

All in all it was a great year and we accomplished a lot. The cabin is slowly becoming a more comfortable place to stay while working on the house. On rainy days we tend to stick around the cabin and work on little things, slowly improving it as we go. Its temporary metal siding does give it a rather apocalyptic look but inside it's cosy as can be.

Beyond the continued work on the lower portion of the house I hope to begin a solid round of fruit tree planting on my next, year end, trip down. We lost all of our fruit and olive trees in last year's fire and we have been so busy over the year building we haven't gotten to replanting. But December is a perfect time as its mild and rainy and will let them root in by spring with plenty to drink. There is a legend of a fantastic place to get inexpensive mature (2-3 year old) full trees. Hoping to explore that possibility upon my return.

[areturntoland]

Late Summer on the Land

I have been here one month since my late summer return. M has joined me for a month more and we have made considerable progress in digging out the kitchen of the house and clearing the land. Bush cutting is physically exhausting but kind of addictive at the same time. You just keep going that little bit further and eventually the tank runs out of petrol.

Using a pickaxe on stone is not as satisfying as bush cutting, in my opinion. Hard work and progress only where the stone is soft, though eventually it all gives. The next phase is building the forms for the concrete slabs of the flooring and ordering the concrete. Unlike my desire for concrete experimentation on a smaller scale the work involved in pouring the floor ourselves is daunting. Doable, but still only something I want to get done so we can move on to the next phase, building the wood house frame.

For whatever reason this publishing platform, Tumblr, is hard to deal with from my phone, and charging the laptop requires the generator, which I try to avoid. I do find myself posting much more often on instagram.com/areturntoland, and hope to sort out a way to auto post to tumblr from there as the insta app seems more receptive to the spotty internet I have had up here.

The summer heat continues here where it fades across the north, both east and west. While autumn is coming to my friends across the globe we still have 90˚ days for the next week or so. It tends to stay warm through October here, something that will help my time schedule in building as I am over a month behind schedule to to my hand accident earlier this year.

The world someplace far from this mountain seems to be going mad again, madmen running the world to ruin, idiots and sycophants abetting crimes against humanity on scales micro and macro. Warned by those who know of our impending defenestration on this planet we wring our hands and hope someone will come to save us from the bad men we have ourselves given power.

But here on the mountain, in the villages and terraces, the world exists much as it had in previous decades, only petrol vehicles and mobile phones have changed this place, but without them the people here would survive as easily as they always have. Growing what they eat, working for and with each other to accomplish the very act of existing.

In the cafe the owner gives us eggs from her "biological" (organic) chickens. She just has them, and wants others to have them as well. The neighbor gives us cabbage, and with it we make a meal. Life here isn't lacking in the moderninities of society, nor is it a utopia, it is simply the rural part of a socialist European nation that knows the dangers of political conservatism and has no taste for it.

As we bare down into the hard work of housebuilding I am already beginning to plan and plot our garden and growing spaces. There are two upper terraces that face well into the sun and have open area with the few small trees having died in the fires. I am planning a tarp greenhouse along one area and a set of garden beds outdoors nearby. At some point I will need to deal with the water situation on the upper portion of the land, for both irrigation and water for the Crow's Nest.

The church bells in the town below chimes that I should start making dinner. The day, though hot, is cooling now and ideal for making a meal. The Portuguese generally eat late in the day for a reason - It's too hot to do so otherwise.

[areturntoland]

River Alva afternoon

Sitting by the river Alva to a soundtrack of cawing crows and bleating sheep. Portugal is challenging and inspirational in turns. Life here an adventure with much to learn and do.

[areturntoland]

Cabin Work Continues Despite

With the support of friends and patrons we were able to raise the funds to hire an extra pair of hands to continue work on the cabin after my accident.

We have managed to get about half of the wall frames in place with more work scheduled for later in the week. It is exciting to see the shape of the cabin taking form, and my ideas becoming reality after spending many months as a pdf.

The timber we are using is green fresh cut pine, 50x100mm in thickness. A genuine "2x4" like one sees in older homes. Structurally much more solid than the commercial dimensional timber available at bigbox retailers.

The weather has been kind to us, not too hot nor wet. I am hoping our luck holds out. It looks increasingly that I will be doing the interior walls out of osb panels, not my first choice but locally an affordable alternative to plywood, which runs €40 a sheet here.

My hand is healing well, after a lecture on taking care of myself by the local doctor his gruff attitude melted away when he discovered I am a painter. Soon enough he was showing me his paintings, proud of the figurative (and not too bad really) images on his phone.

With a bit of luck and care my finger will be on its way to full health in a matter of a couple of weeks. In the meantime we are still raising the funding to continue with our hired hands, hoping to bring back Adam later this week.

Please consider supporting our efforts in light of my damaged hand by contributing to us directly at a paypal.me/rsharmon

[areturntoland]

The Pace of Things

Even when the sun shines the pace of life in Portugal is slow as chilled honey. People sort of drift in and out of whatever is happening, and though very slow, things do eventually get done.

I have managed to get a pile of wood delivered as far as the highroad of my mountainside ridge. There is still another 200 meters to go of hauling to the site. I hear the guy with the tractor will be here "end of the day" but have no idea when that will be.

Its an incredibly beautiful day today, the sun is only too hot if you are directly under it and not moving. The air is chilly, the shade perfect. But I am antsy to get moving on the cabin. The weather will be sunny and hot for a few days but rain could return anytime and working with green lumber is conducive to rainy and wet.

M is on the train having flown in this morning. With some luck we may be able to get to work in the next day. It will be interesting to see how she handles construction.

The land is already starting to look overgrown again despite the charred hills of ash just a few months ago. Nature thrives in destruction, and its ability to rethink and regroup the environment is astounding.

For now the hillside is covered in beautiful tiny flowers of yellow, cream and violet. The fern is already returning though and the first shoots of bramble can be seen here and there, an enemy I will be doing much battle with over the coming years.

For now I sit in a tent at the top of the land, overlooking the town of Coja in the distance, its like living in a dream really. The lay of the landscape makes the world seem unreal compared to flat and geometric London. I have come to live in the land of unrealism.