1. Primicias

Las Primicias

El Pesebre - a safe and secure place to sleep, a manger. Our Earthship project nestled in the mountains of Northern New Mexico.

It is built on top of the grounds where grampa and grama had their corral, next to the ditch.  In that corral was a secure, varmint-proof room, that protected livestock and the family the livestock supported, El Pesebre.  As it was then so it is again, an honor, in honor, to the settlers of this foreign frontier land.  We are not owners, we are trustees passing on a culture and a tradition to those genetic time travelers who will do the same in memory of them. 

There is a colloquial saying: "No todos los dias vas a casa de tus abuelos".  In our heart, our memories, and now in our home, our Earthship - El Pesebre, quite regularly we do.  In "la casa de mis abuelos" you will see some stairs we call "The Stairway to Heaven".  Well, I'm sure the heck not religious, but when you walk across that loft and look out the door at the North Gable, you'll know what we mean.  In the foreground, I can still imagine "una guadania con un tiro" and just beyond that is now a beautiful lake along the Rio Costilla and framed by those mountains. "Tu vieras manito, tu vieras".

... and so it was in the beginning, it all started...  It started as an idea, as a vision, as a possibility.  And like many other of my research projects, a cerebral exercise revolving around the 'what-if'.  "Que pasara si..."

And like in the true sense of evolution, it evolved, from one idea to the next to eventually merge people, family, work, money, plans, blueprints, mindprints, and as it progressed, one or two people began to start seeing what I was seeing and then another then when they thought they had figured it out, it had evolved and they/them/those observers said wait... wasn't this going to be...

In life you should be limber and flexible.  Dare to dream and to manage that dream so that you can take the dream, drive it, direct it, influence it, suggest to it, to a place where consciously you may have thought it impossible or may not have imagined it at all.  Let it be, make it be.


Basic tools: To begin the earthship - beyond the vision - you first need the tools and the building blocks.  In this case a backhoe, skidsteer loader, a Semi Truck flatbed to transport material, and in this case tires, lots of them, baled.  The Technical Specs section of this blog talks to the tires.  After that, lots of willing help.

In a time far away (ca 1915), a distant relative - Vicente Bernal from Costilla, while going to a Presbyterian/Methodist university in Dubuque, Iowa (University of Dubuque Theological Seminary), wrote a 72-page book of Poetry titled "Las Primicias".  While he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at a young age and never made it back home, his book title, eventually published by his brother Luis, reminds me of several things.  Following a dream and a vision. Of beginnings and endings.  And of doing - creatively, just to fulfill a passion and of course the more obvious point of 'starting'.  His words speak of Spring and of Home and of Family.