We Keep Making a Place

For several months, much of what I wrote here began with a fairly clear idea of what Oak Hollow Cabins was supposed to become.

Two small cabins.

Quiet woods.

One-person stays.

A place to step away from ordinary demands for a few days and reset.

I still believe in the value of quiet.

I still believe there are times when a person needs somewhere to go where fewer things are asking for attention.

But one of the advantages of building things yourself is that the work has a way of correcting your theories.

You can make a plan on paper.

The land gets a vote.

So does experience.

And, eventually, so do other people.

Oak Hollow continues to teach us that.

A clearing in the woods

Lately, much of our attention has gone to another part of the property.

We call it The Clearing.

That name describes it better than anything more elaborate could.

It is a place among the trees where we have been building an outdoor kitchen.

Not a commercial kitchen.

Not a restaurant.

Not a resort amenity designed from a brochure.

Just a place where people can cook and sit and spend time outdoors.

The work has developed a piece at a time.

A deck.

A roof.

Walls where walls are useful and openness where they are not.

Electrical work.

A stove.

Places for ordinary kitchen equipment.

And, nearby rather than directly beneath the roof, the wood-fired cooking area we have been thinking through carefully.

Some decisions have been made.

Others have been made and then reconsidered.

That is construction.

It is also life.

The temptation to know what something is for

We like to know the purpose of a thing.

Before we build it, preferably.

What is this going to be?

Who will use it?

How will it make money?

What is the return?

Those are reasonable questions.

I have spent a good portion of my life asking them.

But places do not always reveal their best use before they exist.

Sometimes you have to make the porch before you understand what it feels like to sit there.

Sometimes you have to open a view before realizing that nobody needs to put anything in front of it.

Sometimes you have to cook one meal in a place before understanding what the place wants to become.

The Clearing is still teaching us.

Not everything has gone according to plan

Oak Hollow itself has done the same thing.

We built cabins.

We imagined different uses for them.

Some ideas have seemed promising.

Others have produced less response than we hoped.

That can be frustrating.

There is always the temptation to look at something that has not become what you expected and declare the effort wasted.

I am trying not to do that too quickly.

A cabin is still a cabin.

A trail is still a trail.

A meadow remains a place to walk.

A covered deck in the woods remains somewhere worth sitting.

And a kitchen does not lose its usefulness because we have not yet written the final sentence explaining what it is for.

Maybe that is one of the quieter lessons of this place.

Usefulness can precede certainty.

The work itself

There is something satisfying about making a physical place.

You measure.

Cut.

Carry.

Fasten.

Wire.

Move something three inches because three inches turns out to matter.

You discover that the idea you had yesterday will not work quite as well as the idea that occurred to you while standing there this morning.

At the end of the day, you can usually point to something that was not there when the day began.

That kind of work has its own honesty.

The board either fits or it does not.

The door either swings properly or it does not.

The stove either has the power it requires or it does not.

The rain either stays outside or reveals where your theory about the roof was wrong.

There is less room for pretending.

I like that.

What The Clearing may become

I could give you a polished answer about what The Clearing will eventually be.

I do not think I should.

We know some things.

We want it to be useful.

We want cooking to be part of it.

We want people to be able to sit together.

We want the woods to remain more important than the structure.

We want it to feel like it belongs where it is.

Beyond that, I would rather let experience have some say.

Maybe The Clearing becomes closely connected to Oak Hollow.

Maybe it connects someday to some of our other work.

Maybe family and friends use it more than anyone else.

Maybe an idea we have not had yet will turn out to be the obvious one.

For now, we keep building.

A pencil mark in lumber

That may sound indecisive.

I have come to see it differently.

Not every unfinished thing is a mistake.

Sometimes it is simply unfinished.

There is a difference.

One of the reasons I have always liked pencils is that a pencil allows a mark to be real without insisting that it be permanent.

Building can work that way too.

You make the best mark you can see from where you are standing.

Then you live with it.

Notice.

Question.

Revise.

The Clearing is full of those marks.

So is Oak Hollow.

So am I.

Enough for now

I do not know exactly what Oak Hollow Cabins will look like two years from now.

That statement would have bothered me more once than it does today.

I know what is here now.

Trees.

Two cabins.

The Meadow.

The Hub.

Paths through the property.

And now a new place gradually taking shape in the woods.

The Clearing.

Maybe the task is not always to decide immediately what everything must become.

Maybe sometimes the task is simpler.

Pay attention to what is in front of you.

Make it useful.

Make it well.

Leave enough room for experience to teach you something.

Then make the next mark.

That is what we are doing at The Clearing.

We keep making a place.

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