💾 Archived View for gemini.onedimension.net › thought › a-place.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 16:17:00. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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When I was 9 or 10 years old, my dad and I worked on a project in the backyard we called the forthouse. The idea was to make a treehouse, but not in a tree. There was this nice spot in the back of the yard, up on a bit of a hill under these big old coast live oaks. The perfect secret little spot for a forthouse.
This thing took ages to build, as we only worked on it every now and then on the weekends (my dad was really building it, of course, I was assisting.) The forthouse was about 10 by 12 feet, with a nice little deck where the floor intersected with the slope. Inside there was a big window that was up in the canopy of the trees, so looking down you could see through the branches out across the whole yard. It was a fantastic spot.
When we finally finished the forthouse we had an inaugural dinner where I, my dad, and my brother all sat around a table by the big window. We looked out at the oak branches moving in the early evening light, with lots of little songbirds and scrubjays fluttering in and out. I think I commented on how nice it was, and my dad observed: "yes, we made a real place here."
There's something about that comment that stuck with me. We made a place. It's such a human[1] thing to do, to form materials into a structure, a shelter[2]. Before the structure was there, it wasn't a specific place. But by building the structure we made a place: the interaction between our effort and the natural world[3].
I'd like to make more places.
Last updated Sun Aug 14 2022 in Berkeley, CA
2: /thought/building-a-house.gmi
3: /thought/abstracting-nature.gmi