Living Deliberately in the 21st Century
Bill and Margot Moomaw
We, like Thoreau, went to live deliberately. He went to the woods and his beloved Walden Pond in the 19th century, so that when he died he would have experienced life to its fullest. There he built a simple cabin for the two-year stay that he carefully compressed into a year-long metaphor of his life. A careful reading of Thoreau demonstrates that he did not go to Walden simply to escape the onslaught of technology immortalized in his description of the train that raced on the tracks near his cabin, and which he followed into Concord Center each Sunday to have dinner with his mother. No, he continued his defiant attitude about injustices such as the Mexican War, and the shallowness he saw in his fellow citizens.
So we too were drawn to a woods and a pond in another part of Massachusetts, to the Berkshire Hills in the western part of the state. Part of the attraction was the many years we had lived there before, and the friends we had made, but when Bill saw the pond, it bought him immediately. It took nearly two years for the deal to be finalized and then two additional years of planning to work out the plan for building of an uncommon house. We discovered it is not as easy to live in the 21st century as in the 10th. The necessities of life are many more, and the choices to be made are far more complex. Still Margot and Bill persevered, and discovered the meaning of “living deliberately in the 21st century.”
The idea for the house evolved gradually, and the multiple motivations took time to evolve. We had found a 14-acre parcel of an old highland hardscrabble farm—the old Sweet place. It was mostly a glacial moraine, a fancy name for a sandy rock pile that supported marginal grazing and a small potato field. A lone crude milking shed stood at the edge of the lower pasture at the edge of some woods. It would not survive the coming of new construction, and was taken apart, galvanized roof salvaged and the rest burned by the nephew of the previous owner, Bob Sweet. It has been a real pleasure working with Bob to prepare the land for construction by taking down the 25 trees that needed to be removed, and to brush hog the open lands to keep the park-like appearance among the 100 year old oaks, maple sand beeches and the much younger crab apples and grey and whit birches. The upper pasture stretched north to a rock wall along the Vermont line, and Jim Turgeon’s house that is built on a small square parcel cut out of this large one. The east side of the property comes just to the 1300 foot contour on the side of East Mountain that is part of the southern spur of the Green Mountains of Vermont that sticks into Massachusetts terminating in Pine Cobble. Along the top of this ridge 1000 feet above us are the Appalachian and Long Trails, the former allowing me to walk from my dooryard to either Maine or Georgia, and the second to head directly for the Canadian border 100 miles to the north.
The relatively level land on this bench that we now “own,” is the former shore of Lake Bascomb, formed during the last ice age by an ice blockage in the mouth of the valley to the north. The heavy clays of the valley floor 600 feet below are the sediments of that time, but up here, it is sand and rocks left by the glacier. It must have been an incredible moment, 10,000 years ago, when the natural global warming of the time melted the plug, and the full contents of the lake rushed north and then west through what is now the Pownal Valley, along the present Route 346 and then plunged into America’s only real fjord, the Hudson River. I suspect that Manhattan Island was inundated by several cubic miles of water, possibly the last time that this part of the world made a real impression there.
We were fortunate. The local zoning law prohibits building above the 1300-foot line on the sides of the mountains. Before I agreed to buy the land, I insisted that the seller have a surveyor certify that it met that criterion. The verdict came back: the highest point of the property was 1287 feet. Ironically, I had been on the planning board nearly 30 years before with the father of the seller to set that criterion in order to avoid building on steep slopes that would become deforested and unstable, and where the underground aquifer is recharged for the town in the valley. We had also specified a fairly strict set of rules for development that made it possible to build only a single dwelling on this particular piece of property. The owner had failed to check that out and when he beat me out in the sale in 2002, he was hoping to subdivide the land to make a large profit. We bailed him out by taking it off his hands one year later following some tense negotiations.
Goals for a 21st Century Hybrid House Design for Bill and Margot Moomaw
Our goal is to build a house that will meet the needs of our current active lifestyle and still be suitable for our later years in retirement, while being environmentally responsible to the local site and to the planet.
We call this a “hybrid house for the 21st century” because we realize that we are limited by current technology and will need to incorporate currently available options in combination with advanced technologies. This is analogous to the exciting developments of the gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles that outperform their conventional counterparts by taking advantage of a combination of conventional and advanced technologies where each has an advantage, yet are simple to drive and highly reliable.
Our vision is driven by a four-fold aesthetic:We are aiming for energy-efficient construction (insulated envelope, foundation, windows and doors) that substantially exceeds Energy Star performance thermal and infiltration standards. We want to minimize the use of fossil fuel. We are interested in passive solar design that incorporates commercially available off-the-shelf proven technology such as solar PV and hot water systems integrated into the building design. We are considering ground heat pumps for heating and cooling in combination with radiant heated floors and/or forced hot air. The abundance of wood on the 14-acre site suggests that some wood heating might be desirable especially if a guest cottage is included in the construction. Natural daylight is a high priority, as is assuring high indoor air quality. We are committed to a lifestyle that is mindful of our impact on the environment, reduces the need for appliances and that uses those that save energy and water, and that recycles and reuses materials to the extent possible.
Achieving these goals has taken us on a journey that we will share with you throughout the website. Explore!