BE-COMING HOME: on the level

蔵焼けて 障るものなき 月見哉

Barn’s burnt down.  Now I can see the moon.
[a haiku by Mizuta Masahide, 17th C. poet and samurai]

From the look of her, you’d have thought The Ruin would have gone down on her own the first time a strong wind hit the hill.  She was a life-threatening public hazard in the eyes of the authorities.  The insurance company deemed her a total loss; meaning the structure could no longer be defined as “a house.”  Yet, despite her hazardous and unlivable condition, the gutted hulk of our home stood haggard, lonely and patient on the hillside while weather, holidays and assorted other issues delayed demolition.

When the demo did get going, it didn’t go quickly.  It took powerful men and powerful equipment many days to tear The Ruin down.  The crew took her apart piece by piece, continually expecting that every hunk of wall or charred beam they removed would trigger her final collapse.  Like a giant Jenga® puzzle, she  endured every extrication until the entire Ruin was teetering on the intersection of two beams – the formidable central post and its cross-bar.

The beams did not yield easy, but succumbed at last to repeated ramming by heavy machinery.  The demo guys scooped up the gobs of rubble and carted it away.  No longer sporting a Ruin, the slope now sported a scar.

The rocky patch of dust wasn’t exactly beautiful…

… but with the house gone, the natural beauty of our little piece of land was revealed as never before.

Our good neighbors, our great town, our deep roots in Sonoma certainly contributed to our decision to rebuild.  But the clincher, I think, was the loveliness of the site itself, and this unfamiliar, unobstructed, undeniably gorgeous view from our very own backyard.