35 posts tagged with "Letters"

Dude, Of course she is one of my favorite women.  She's a total stud, after her first house burned down she just built another one.  We have her listed as a Paleo Treats hero on our Wisdom page. Stoked about your buddies experience with a Lister.  Talked to Lee about moving to India and setting up a plant there.  So many projects going on right now that this one will probably get put on the back burner, but...it's damnable interesting.  Like all of 'em. I ordered the utterpower.com CD and book that they sell just to bone up on general power generation and electricity stuff.  The guy that runs that site has a hard-on for CHP (combined heat and power) generation right now, so of course I'm looking more into that. Was looking around inside a mini conex box today and thought "You don't need any more space than this.  Maybe 20' x 20'.  Shit, I have GOT to get a little place out in the middle of nowhere where I can fiddle and mess and potter about and hunt and fix stuff and break stuff and just build my own little empire of Nik-dom." Ok for now, NFH

Gents, Sir Albert Howard is the father of the organic gardening movement.  The Soil and Health is worth the read if you ever get into gardening.  Simple and in-depth, this is a man who delved deeply into many subjects to understand the unified concept of growth and life on earth.  Awesome. "The main characteristic of Nature's farming can...be summed up in a few words. Mother earth never attempts to farm without livestock; she always raises mixed crops; great pains are taken to preserve the soil and to prevent erosion; the mixed vegetable and animal wastes are converted in humus; there is no waste; the processes of growth and the processes of decay balance one another; ample provision is made to maintain large reserves of fertility; the greatest care is taken to store the rainfall; both plants and animals are left to protect themselves against disease." -Sir Albert Howard, An Agricultural Testament The same can be said with few substitutions about a good man.  That last phrase, "...both plants and animals are left to protect themselves against disease" really resonates with me.  It's not as if he advocates throwing "plants and animals" out on their own, but instead that he has total faith that if the basics are taken care of then there is no need for band-aid care. This is one of those works that reaffirms to me the many beliefs we share in common, whether you are a soldier, a fire-fighter, or simply living a clean life.  The idea that with enough practice you don't need "tricks" is sublime wisdom.  Drive on! NFH

Just stumbled on this, wish I'd kept writing more.  Some funny stuff, all of it still pretty much true.  Like you guys, I'm a little older and wiser now.  Enjoy. NFH There are three things that let you know you are truly alive.  The opening shock of a parachute, the sound of a sixty firing, and that primal thrill of cold water immersion.  Those are short, sharp experiences.  It is known only to you whether you enjoy each, or any, of those.  For those of us that have, this book was written. I left those experiences on September 13th of 2000.  On that day I walked off the SEAL Team 5 quarterdeck and into the unknown of the civilian world.  I had served as a peacetime SEAL, aping the behavior of more experienced frogmen; fighting in bars, pulling the dumb stunts, ripping dares out of mouths and shredding them with the laughter that comes from ignorant cockiness.  When I walked off that quarterdeck there was no doubt in my mind that I would be a success at anything and everything I tried.  Ten years later, I have learned new meanings of success, I have plumbed depths of despair I didn't know existed, and realized that there is no limit to the things that let you know you are truly alive. Indianapolis, October 2001. I stared down the barrel of my .45.  Safety off.  Finger on the trigger.  I had hit my low point, and it had only taken fourteen months.  I didn't know what I wanted to do.  I thought I had hit the high point of life as a 23 year old SEAL.  I had taken the toughest the U.S. military could dish out, and I had laughed.  I had out run, out swam, out shot, and out thought almost every person I had come up against.  I had competed on a world stage and roared in exhilaration while passing competitors.  I had thought that the hardest boundaries where those of the physical world, and I had conquered them.  I had so much to learn. I started out like most ex-military and took a vacation; Australia for two months.  Living in hostels, spending my savings, as carefree and unattached as it is possible to get.  Moving from place to place, shaking off a schedule that had been with me for 5 years.  Dramatic changes were seen in those first few months, breaking old rules that no longer applied, flaunting the freedom that civilian society takes for granted, answering to no pay grade above my own.  10 years later I'm still an early riser, still working out every day, still scanning the streets, still checking rear security.  10 years later I am more deeply changed than I or any of my closest friends would have thought possible. I returned from Australia ready for the next great adventure.  For me, it was a sailing trip.  Five and a half months, a 22 foot boat, 6,000 miles of open ocean.  I sailed naked, reveling in my freedom.  I sat with port captains, ate fish with locals, drank in foreign bars, surfed empty spots, and swam with dolphins.  I thought I was as far away from the Navy as I could be, and I was, for that time.  I still woke up early, still stood watches, still adventured in the physical realm.  I felt alive during the knockdowns, when the spreaders kissed the wave tops and we scrambled to the high side to right the boat.  When the cold water blasted across my face on the night watch with the wind up and the spinnaker billowing in front, dragging us to the outside edge of control over the crest of a wave and into the next trough, I remembered the three things that let you know you're truly alive, and I laughed to be living. Not realizing yet that there are no goals that give ever-lasting satisfaction, and trained to believe that there were, I raced from one goal to the next.  From port to port, from record day distance to record time away from land, I pushed myself towards goals, each one a painting of life.  I thought I could live in those paintings.  I thought at that point that I knew what I was doing, that I knew where I was going, that I had it planned out.  I was going to Stanford, I was going to swim on their team, then on to the Olympics.  I would find a wife, find enough money to pay for everything and anything I wanted, start a family, and travel around the world.  I would look like a vagabond and be rich as a king.  I would travel rough for months, then lounge in luxury recuperating.  I would work for the CIA on the side, and tell no one.  Then I would go back to my wife and family and perfect house and perfect life and no one would know what I had done but me, and it would be enough.  But it never happened. I sold the boat in Jamaica, and after 10 days of partaking of all the pleasures that country offers, I was back to the U.S. to meet my future wife.  I still had the SEAL persona, it was still how I defined myself.  I realize now, at almost 30, that being a SEAL will always have a place in my definition of self that is out of proportion to the amount of time I spent doing it.  Perhaps that is because I was impressionable.  Perhaps it was because the experiences were so intense.  Maybe it is because I haven't found a core definition I like more.  It was late summer 2001, and when I moved into a house my father owned in Indianapolis, I had my life plotted out.  Almost completely wrong, but that's what life, and exploration, and new experiences are all about. I started with a map in my head of where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do.  By the time I stopped to check where I was 5 minutes down the trail, I was irrevocably off course.  It happened in both little and big steps.  The first few are little; I got out and smoked a joint; hey, look at me, I'm not in the Navy anymore, I can do anything.  Being high was fun, there's a reason so many people like it.  But I couldn't keep it up.  Every time I got high I'd get about an hour into it and start thinking about all the productive things I should have been doing.  So I ping-ponged to the ultra-healthy side, and tried a raw food diet because, hell, it's something that most people can't do, and I knew I could do anything.  I was still defining who I was by what I could do that others couldn't, a classic SEAL trait.  After a week of raw food, carrot and garlic juice, and shots of wheatgrass I realized that living on raw food is unusual for a reason, but I can do it if I have to.  Still, there was something to it, so I kept exploring.  By now I was so far off my original map that I couldn't even begin to get a bearing on where I had been, so I started drawing a new map for myself. I didn't know it, but drawing and redrawing your own maps is a disorienting process.  After I let go of the old one, I thought it would be easy and fun to write a new one.  Bits of it are, but there are some parts that give you real insight on just how easy the "hard" training was.  I had so many more choices the second time that they occasionally overwhelmed me.  I looked for new friends and they constantly let me down as I held them to a standard they couldn't, wouldn't, and didn't want to understand.  I reached out to old friends, and they helped, but I was exploring territory that was years ahead of them, and I couldn't make them understand what the hell I was going through.  What I was doing was what we'd all talked about doing, and how could it be anything but fun?  This isn't to say that my buddies from the Teams weren't helpful, they saved my life.  Of course, they didn't know they'd done it, and they didn't know how, and they probably didn't mean to. Searching for a new identity was not only not on their map, it wasn't on their radar.  Once a SEAL always a SEAL.  Except when I was working for minimum wage teaching little kids how to swim.  Then you're just that weird guy with a bunch of tattoos and more foul language than most mothers want to hear.  Let me give you a hot tip; no mother likes to hear their kid being told to "put the fuck out" as

Gents, Some on-again off-again writing for a book.  Thought you'd dig it so far.  Comments or edits always welcome. NFH The story starts long before the early morning landfall smell of smoke rises off the Jamaican coast line.  Inky black nights, alone in God's creation, feeling that the world is something more than just bits and bones, that there's a hell-spark in all of us that roars into wild blaze every so often, experiencing Nature in all her naked glory, when raw lust for that pure and hard and clean spirit rushes through the heart, and belief in immortality leads down devilish roads. There's canyoneering, campfires, a mountain stream, fresh meat, drifting and moving and wondering and loving.  Long road trips across the west, tires singing, windows radiating the heat of a place unwelcome to each of us bags of water.  A circle of friends and heroes, cool headed, hard working, laughing, confident. There's that spirit that grabs hold when it shouldn't, when the world is right but it ought to be wrong, when the world isn't delivering enough pain to remind you that life is too rich for misery and scrabbling after the values of a dirty humanity. Maybe it's a good enough reason to forget all the rules we struggle to abide by.  When that little piece of metal and rubber takes off and the world falls away in the roar of a thousand factories brought through 180 horses ripping away at a single prop dragging the whole contraption up past the smog to a clean and windy blue.  Flying off the coast, instant flatness, development stops, and the vastness of a loving and bountiful and pitiless mother begins.  Blue water, two whales, largest creatures ever to have lived, nostrils huge and smooth and clamping shut before the water rushes over, smooth movement, timeless and unstoppable.  The blue white of flesh underwater, the incommunicability across species.  Why do you swim?  Why do we fly?  Why do I go back to work when I should just jump out of this plane and return to what we evolved away from.  Can a mistake be fixed in a short free fall that took 400 million years of evolution to fuck up? Dropping back into another reality, purple curtains, Joan Jett, that rolling ripping heavy music in my own head drowning out the easy hippie music from tinny speakers, the deep blue bruising streaks of heavy pressure from a thick and low bass riff, all the toxins coming up out of the skin, a hard massage, roll me off the table limp and weak. The unfolding of my lungs through repeated runs, overexertion, through the jerking of heavy weights, the cold stink of an early morning gym, the clean scent of morning mist, the cracked and grey sidewalks and the black shadows of night running up the sides of buildings. This is a story about running into overdrive too early in a race, of recovering only through sheer willpower, of crying and broken hearts and crooked noses, of the stink of piss under a bar, the satisfying crack of slate as you flip a pool table.  This life is equal parts warm puppies and heavy fists, love, and life, the juxtaposition of a modern warrior and an old soul. This story is poetry and fresh baked bread made with my own hands, of old trucks and long unmowed grass, dogs rescued from a cold winter and cats shot dead in the street.  My story is of life and growing and all varied and weird and wonderful mistakes that go along with doing the right thing, even too late. Here I stand, alone and in the best of company at 32 years old.  146 pounds, ripped and hard, running faster, lifting heavier, loving more with more anger and angst and understanding and compassion than ever before.  This place here, filled with friends and foes, with sudden bursts of understanding blended with the goddamn blind incomprehension of hate and emotional release is where I am.  The story begins. I grew up a lost Indian in a suburban white body.  Always reaching for something different, always feeling a long and ancient connection with nature and natural things.  That connection fought with some kind of inherent evil, a knowledge of lack of consequences, killing cats and lizards  and squirrels through wanton abuse of all the gifts given. Squirming and squirelling, wriggling through that tunnel that is too tight, of love and doing the right thing even when no one is looking, or trying too hard for too long with no reward only to see it open up before up before you big and bright and scary as your wife sliding down a rock water fall.  The whole world out there, full of no safety nets, of black holes of the wrong thing, of occasional flashes of brilliance and love when the heart explodes into its own case, held together solely by the power of right and good and pure rushing energy.  That is my life. When, through countless tries and errors and victories, I come on serendipity in one moment, on the edge of a cliff, the urge to jump off, to see what's on that other side, breathing too hard.  Stopped on gravel, hands and knees, red digging craters in my hands, pebbles and dirt and grass and stains that don't come out. Every one of my pants is stained.  I don't have a t-shirt that I'm proud to wear that is unsulllied.  This life I'm living is one of experience, of hard won victories, of easy defeats, of the constant realization, over and over again, that I am the sole power in my world, the only creator, completely and terribly responsible for all I experience.  The warring souls in me, the rushing thoughts of blood and violence, the deep love for humans and animals and clouds and every single soul on the highway crash together daily, churning out actions incomprehensible in their singularity, only understood through a wide lens. Driving on the highway I feel the sudden heavy and unstoppable guilt that comes from killing, without warning or reason other than curiosity or the mild excitable rush that comes with meaningless power.  This mixes and blends with those moments of remorse acted out, of saving a lost dog, helping a stranded lady,  changing irrevocably the lives of hundreds of young men through faith in self acted out in a myriad of blessed and holy ways.

CR, Hmmm, I'll get to the car when I'm 50 and have some good experience to draw on. Friends of mine who I'd met sailing just came through town.  Cool couple, Charlie is 50, Stephanie in her mid 40's.  Two kids, boy & girl somewhere around 13 & 15.  I met the kids when they were 3 and 5. Charlie is English and grew up on an apple orchard.  Working at a junkyard, racing cars, and fixing stuff were his hobbies.  He's had all kinds of jobs, from digging a hole in a backyard that couldn't be dug with a Bobcat (think about that:  Couldn't Be Dug with a Bobcat.  Yes, he's a do-er) to teaching skiing, and on a 3 year whim (yep, he sticks shit out) he went to law school.  Graduated and decided he actually didn't want to be a lawyer, but the training he got makes him bloody difficult to argue with and win.  At some point he got into paragliding and ended up doing some ballooning in a one man balloon in France. Stephanie is one of those rad and beautiful women (like Lee) who has a constant happy and bright outlook on life, can find the best in everything, is a model for self-reliance, and is willing constantly to get her hands dirty to do whatever it is she needs to do, whether teaching her kids how to carve up rubber stamps for Christmas cards or running the landscaping and plumbing at their new homestead.  She taught skiing for a while, and if she's anywhere near as competent as she is at everything else I've watched her do, she's pretty damn good at that.  She's also unstoppable once she gets started on a project; an unusual trait that many think they have but very few people actually follow through on.  Tenacious and bright, a great human. Both of them, along with their kids are so well read it's almost obnoxious, and they're boat is stuffed to the brim with books.  It seems like on the whole they've decided to spend their time on earth doing the things that make them joyful and competent instead of miserable and greedy.  It seems so easy when put that way, but from my observations of lots of people it's a difficult thing to do... Anyway, they have a home up in BC which they rented out 10 years ago to start their sailing journey, which was about when I met them. When we parted ways in Ft. Lauderdale in 2000, they sailed up to Annapolis where they sold the boat and (while working on renovating some million dollar house for a guy he met on the dock) Charlie bought an old Mercedes 300D for $1 from an investment banker who was amazed to watch Charlie get it running right in front of his eyes.  Charlie fixed it up and drove his family across America and back to BC, where he sold the car. From BC they moved to the side of a mountain near a ski town in France where they bought a ruin of a house.  I visited them there in the winter of '03 (I think) and the view, location, and work to be done on the house can safely be described as stunning. Steph taught English and Charlie worked translating stuff for the IOC.  He ended up getting a job working on software for the Olympic timing systems, which he still holds today.  Working from an Iridium connection on his boat, he keeps the family financially afloat to live a pretty kick ass life, but that's skipping ahead. Over the course of 6 years in France they fixed up the ruin.  The kids learned to speak French fluently as well as learned how to ski.  Well. Charlie, with Steph's help, remodeled the house.  With 50 years of experience in fixing stuff and making shit work he is PHENOMENALLY crafty.  While he was visiting me just now I watched him build some brackets out of aluminum with a vice, hammer and drill that I would have paid good money for.   He's one of those guys that figures out how to do stuff and in the process is a joy to watch.  Anyway, they fixed it up mega-rad, sold the house at the top of the market and moved back to BC. There they bought a house on a little island called Taxada, and they got to work again, building a kick ass workshop and remodeling the house. While doing this, they bought another, slightly larger boat and kitted it out for another long sailing voyage, then took off. I saw them when they came through SD on their way to parts unknown (to them, they're just not sure where they're going.) While here Charlie built a platform for the substantial Iridium antenna on his boat, helped me work on my car (by help me I mean I got the hell out of the way while he tore my engine apart and put it back together with no need for directions), showed me how to sweat a joint, helped me re-wire a light and outlet in my garage workshop, advised me on installing my greywater system and did the thousand and one things that need to get done on a boat every time you pull into a port. Lee hung out with Stephanie during their stay and gave Stephanie the rare appellation of "a strong woman" which may sound pretty tame, but Lee has the highest standards for her friends and in the 10 years I've known her has only called 3 or 4 other (mega-ultra-kickass) women "strong." Anyway, they took off after 4 glorious weeks of Lee and I basking in the company of competent, self-reliant people who have a positive outlook on life and are doing their damnedest to make their time on the planet a good one. Inspirational. Would really like to have you meet them at some point, they're almost always open to kick-ass folks helping them sail.  Anyway, it was great being around them and I wanted to pass their awesome story on.  Keep charging and hope you get half as lucky as these guys have made their life.  It ain't luck, and thank sweet Jeebus we all know it. I've cc'd them in so they can correct any errors I've made in the telling and in the hopes that you guys go direct with each other and figure out a way to meet up.  I think you'd all enjoy the company. NFH

Gents, HVRT general concept: Access for companies to a team of capable and quiet professionals who specialize in global recovery of high value items, whether materials, persons, or even intellectual property.  (Not sure about the last one, but the rough sketch is we'd convince people not to use whatever it was that they'd stolen, or maybe to work for different employers...I dunno.) Examples include stolen diamonds or minerals, cargo tankers full of oil or merchandise taken over by pirates or environmental events (disaster recovery), high value personnel etc.  I'd like to focus much more on "stuff" recovery vs. people because it's much easier to value "stuff". We could emphasize the discreetness of the operation as well as it's full legality in the global environment, and then deliver ultra-professional results.   Fast and hard and competent, leave no trace other than the performance. No recovery no payment, just like the salvage folks.  Essentially the company would release the claim to us, we'd recover the item, and the company would then purchase it back at a discounted rate.  It'd be ideal it if was stolen diamonds or a proprietary oil drilling bit or a truckload of, hell, I don't know, rubberanium; small enough stuff that a team of 5-10 thinking pipe-hitters could go in and get it done quickly. This could be advertised by ** as the capability for business to have their own Tier 1 asset recovery team.  I can write this up a little prettier, but wanted to see if this is a good direction? NFH

***, Greywater took about 3 days + prior thinking and planning time (for me that took about 2 years to figure out what I wanted and how to do it.) 1 day to gather materials, do set up and layout. 2 days to trench, lay pipe, and function check. Lots of good learning, but it boils down to a few simple lessons: 1. Water flows downhill. 2. Buying material and doing it yourself is the cheapest way to do the best job. 3. Thinking about doing it takes much longer than doing it, so it's worth it to think for a long time. 3. Reading about this was good for inspiration, but learning by doing is the one of the best ways I can pick up a skill, and it opens lots of other creative doors for me:  Plumbing the back yard for an outdoor shower, wanting to learn more about plumbing and the high pressure side of it, being stoked to work with my hands on other projects like wiring a new room, and just in general more self-confidence in my trades work. Brings to mind a great Aristotle quote I saw in Shop Class as Soul Craft: "Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts.  Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and its phenomena are more able to lay down principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development; while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations." NFH

CR, Stoked for you! The tires I'm using came with the truck; Cooper Discover S/T.  I haven't noticed any problems at all, but haven't really paid attention to them. Regarding building the back platform, the first thing that **** did was to ask me what I want to use if for, so, what do you want to use it for? My guess is you'll be doing the same things you're doing with your current truck, (hunting, fishing, skiing, Norris hot springs) with a little less emphasis on long term comfort and a little more emphasis on gas mileage and nimbleness.  The following recommendations are based on that assumption. If I were single, or planned on sleeping singly most of the time and wanted constant "work/head" space, I'd divide the bed on the long axis, not the short.  Not sure if I'd divide it exactly in half; check how much space to sleep you want/need, but it'd be nice to always be able to sleep and to throw in a deer carcass or ski poles etc without messing up the bed. I like the aluminum legs, even if they are a bit more expensive.   I'd try and find something a little thinner (and lighter) than the 3/4" I used.  If you use angled metal you can probably put a couple slats across it and get away with 3/8" wood.  Not super sure about that, I just always want to build with the minimum amount of material possible both for cost and aesthetics. For taking it in and out and fastening the wood to the metal I like the wing nuts, but if you're not going to pull it out once you put it in, go with a locking nut and loc-tite combo or something comparable.  ****'s idea of making sure if you roll nothing knocks about is a good one; everything should be securely fastened. I love the pull-out boxes underneath, they make it very easy to stay organized.  Maybe get three smaller instead of two larger and have a dry clothes box, a kitchen box, and a wet box.  Make sure they're secured underneath the platform. 5" is too thick for a mattress, I'd probably cut it down to 3", check with your local foam dealer.  If you come through SD on your way back there's one right down the street from our place and they did ours in about 3 days.  Mine is super comfortable but a little thicker (and more expensive) than necessary.  For hold downs I'd see about extending the metal frame to form a lip on the center side of the platform to hold the mattress in. As far as a cap, if you can, get the one with the fold out screen windows and seal it up against leaks...mission critical in your neck of the woods.  I'd also look into one with a slightly raised back end for the extra head space, although that'll affect gas mileage.  Check for lights in there. Cheers, NFH

Dude, I could have sworn I sent this to you already, but I can't find it in any of my "sent" emails, so.. "Whom then, do I call educated, since I exclude the arts and sciences and specialties? First, those who manage well the circumstances which they encounter day by day, and who possess a judgment which is accurate in meeting occasions as they arise and rarely misses the expedient course of action; Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all with whom they associate, tolerating easily and good-naturedly what is unpleasant or offensive in others and being themselves as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as it is possible to be; Furthermore, those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not unduly overcome by their misfortunes, bearing up under them bravely and in a manner worthy of our common nature; Finally, and most important of all, those who are not spoiled by successes and do not desert their true selves and become arrogant, but hold their ground steadfastly as intelligent men, not rejoicing in the good things which have come to them through chance rather than in those which through their own nature and intelligence are theirs from birth.  Those who have a character which is in accord, not with one of these things, but with all of them--these, I contend, are wise and complete men, possessed of all the virtues." -Isocrates, from the Panathenaicus In addition to those I count a strong curiosity for goodness in all its forms and the will and action to perfect an athletic and capable body. -NFH

****, Lee and I just sat down and enjoyed our first meal of Nik-shot Montana venison; grilled backstrap and salad.  ****, it was delicious.  I'd like to thank you for helping me create this meal, for making the hunting experience awesome in the truest sense of that word.  I'd like to get more flowery but I don't think it appropriate or really necessary to spice up a heartfelt thanks.  Thank you. I've looked around for the plans I drew up when I got back from the last trip but haven't found them.  I'm beginning to think I confused those with my current house remodel plans...but I did make some notes on the way home about the kind of house I'd like to build. Straw bale for insulation and rammed earth for thermal mass.  Both are local materials, both appropriate to the climate, and both help give the house the wall-thickness and solidity I like in my architecture.  I like open beams in the ceiling/roof, and I'd see how much scavenging/salvaging I could do to get good, high quality used materials (beams, windows, doors, floors, fixtures etc.)  Loved your pull up bar between beams, even if I couldn't reach it. As far as design, it always seems so site dependent.  I'd look for a site with good southerly views of mountains and some bottom land, with a line of willows showing where the water flows and the deer live.  Near a road but out of site and blocked by geographical features. After only a few days of winter living I was reminded of how important the interface between indoors and outdoors is in a cold and wet climate.  I'd have a long entry way (10-25') with plenty of southern exposure, maybe take the green house idea from earth ships and place it so the entry way is the heater for the house during winter. In the entryway I'd put in a specific number of boxes (one for each permanent resident plus two more) for shoes/boots etc as well as plenty of hooks and more boxes or shelves for jackets, hats, and hand coverings.  I've developed the idea for a solar boot dryer/heater, so I'd put one of those in each "box". Because I've got dogs and I'm into them, I'd plan for an airlock double dog door with mats and body brushes for the dogs on the way in.  I like to give my dogs free reign, so it's only appropriate that I make sure they're not a pest about it. An open floor plan has always been a favorite of mine, but along with solar hot water, solar panels, rainwater catchment/storage and general energy/water efficiency I just take all that as a given; no need to go over the basics more than a few times. Some key points: -run plumbing so there are no joints in the walls, so there's the shortest run possible between heater and faucet, and insulate all lines.  Make it so access is very easy (maintenance room on the north side seems the best way to do this.  Easy access and free insulation.) -I like the industrial look of exposed utilities, it also makes working on them easier. -radiant heat floors (for constant heat so fixtures don't freeze during away time.) -I like a soft floor, but every time I've lived with carpet it just gets fucking disgusting after a while.  I'd go with throw rugs, pillows, etc. for easy cleaning and comfortable living. -wood stove for fast and pleasant heat, ideally a soapstone heater. -bathrooms should be well ventilated, warm, and have plenty of daylight, as well as being private parts of the house. -I don't like guests to stay more than a week, so I'd keep a pretty open arrangement as far as their living/sleeping quarters.  Maybe a shoji screen at the max, although I'd probably invest in a good natural mattress (latex or foam rubber, whatever) so they get a great nights sleep.  That is not at all a reflection on your guest sleeping arrangement, I slept like a baby at your place.  I just really like the idea of giving guests the highest quality quarters that are obviously (in a way that says "move on" after a few days) not permanent.  Along with that idea there needs to be a private place where one can get away from everyone else.  Usually the bedroom works for this, although I've read about specially designed reading nooks protected by a heavy curtain that sound interesting. -the living space itself does not need to be large; the kitchen and living/dining/whatever room don't need to be more than 400 sq ft. -All that "living" space should be really functional; stove, countertop, table, a "desking" space or two (depending on how many folks will live there, and enough electrical outlets to plug in all the bits and bobs of modern day life. -living areas well lit with as much daylight as possible while staying within the confines of passive heating/cooling -plenty of storage space (cubbies or cabinets under stairs, as many places to put things in as you'd find in a small boat.  Out of sight but well organized, plenty of book shelves. -get the fridge and freezer up against the north wall, running the coils outside to take advantage of outdoor "coolth."  Good design on the sunfrost.com site. -Total bed/living/bath area shouldn't need to be more than 900 sq ft.  It's the gear and the workshop that really need the space. -give gear it's designated place, with room enough to plan outings, lay out clothes and equipment, drip dry areas, and specific cubby holes for "families" of gear (i.e. hunting, skiing, riding, whatever.)  The gear room should be fully a part of the home climate control, warm enough to change clothes in, with an easy drain floor system for wet boots/rain jackets etc.  I'd put the laundry in here if I could, making sure to follow my plumbing rules (above) and if necessary install an additional tankless water heater for it. -a workshop is essential.  This should be large enough to work on "winter" projects, with passive and renewable powered heating/cooling an integral part of design.  I think 800 sq ft is plenty (includes indoor and covered outdoor)   Roughly equal indoor and covered outdoor space.  Woodshop, metal work, mechanic stuff...all important parts of a good shop.  The shop roof should be dedicated to the usual rainwater catchment and solar energy production, and should ideally be powered by a combination of wind/solar and hydro energy, backed up by a generator and battery bank. -if I could get away with it I'd put up at least a covered area for vehicles, if I had space and I could hide it well I'd put in a small garage to allow me to keep up my vehicles for much longer. That's all for now, until I find a site I don't know how much more detail I could get into and not be a total daydream waste of time. Great to see you, looking forward to our next meeting. Take care, NFH