Earthships in New Mexico

       I’ve just done two blog posts about Universal Studios, and I am happy to move on to something much more recent. I think Mama and Daddy do a great job choosing surprises, because this is... what, my third, fourth blog post on a surprise? I liked this surprise even more than hobbit houses! Actually, I wish I could live I a place like the one we stayed in.

       We drove through Taos, New Mexico, where our surprise was located. Earlier that day we had been to Tent Rocks, an interesting rock formation, and been on a nice hike. Everybody was the kind of tired you are when you’ve just had a long drive, and we were glad that we would get to sleep in beds that night. (Miriam and I at least knew that much about the surprise.)

       Miriam and I weren’t concentrating on the view outside when we arrived in the place we were staying- we were playing a game in which we made weird faces at each other and tried not to laugh. Then Mama said:

       “You girls obviously aren’t looking.” This, of course, made us immediately look out our windows. Through the front window we could see a low wall of sorts with old glass bottles stuck in it, and more that were like that in the distance. Right in front of the car was an unusual building with only windows on the wall that was facing us and more glass bottles stuck in the other walls. Miriam and I looked around in amazement as Mama and Daddy led us into the building, which was the Visitor’s Center. The ends of the bottles stuck in the wall were really nice to look at, with several different colours arranged in pretty patterns around the doorway. I thought about how pretty this would look from the outside in the night, with the light from the  inside glowing through. Actually, we ended up seeing a picture of this very thing later. What a cool place.

       I didn’t know the half of it.

       When we walked inside, I saw that the glass wall served a sort of greenhousey purpose. Along that wall grew several plants. Stumps were suspended with ropes and had mushrooms growing on them. Banana trees shaded herbs with their big, green leaves. I asked Mama:

       “Are we the only living things in the place we’re staying?”

Mama said no. We were going to live in a home with plants!

       “There’s not only plants,” Mama told me. Were there animals too?

       A man working in the Visitor’s Center told us to come with him outside. He drove his red truck and we followed in our car. He was taking us to where we were staying. (Along the way we saw a Hawaii licence plate. We were playing the licence plate game in which you try to find a car from each state. We didn’t yet have Hawaii, so this was quite a celebration. Miriam, who is playing her own separate licence plate game, somehow missed our celebrations, and still doesn’t have Hawaii.) The man in the red truck drove up to a beautiful home, which, much like the Visitor’s Center, had glass bottles in the walls. He gave us a tour of the place (which had fish in it- that’s what Mama meant by more living things other than plants) and a key, then left us to admire our two-day home.

       Miriam and I couldn’t believe the place. Flowers and herbs and banana trees grew everywhere. Many walls had patterns of glass bottles. We had a random plot of dirt in our bathroom with plants in it, and if a room was without a plot of dirt it had a vase instead. If you looked in the toilet (don’t worry- I’m not in the habit of checking out my toilet water or anything) you could see that the water was tinted slightly yellowish brown because of the water system.

1. Clean water goes to showers, baths, and the sink.
2. This water is then used to water the plants.
3. The water is then used to flush the toilet- don’t need clean water for that.
4. The toilet water goes to the septic system.
5. After water goes through there, it is used for the garden outside.

       This place was called an Earthship, and there are Earthships all around the world and in all kinds of climates. Do you know what this means? There are Earthships in Canada.

       My entire future is now planned out.

       They are off the grid- they produce their own electricity by solar panels. Their walls are made by stacking old tires and covering them in a mixture of dirt and straw and stuff, which hardens into a strong wall. The can grow their own food. The houses are completely sustainable.

       In the afternoon, I played with Miriam in the garage, where we acted out a fake advertisement we invented about something called History Garages. We play some weird games, Miriam and I.

       I had a very relaxing evening, enjoying my actual bed as I read until I got tired. When I put aside my book and turned off the lights, I fell asleep immediately.

       The next morning, we went for a hike in a nearby gorge. It was a gorge with the Rio Grande river down at the bottom, and we hiked all the way down and back up. I was ahead most of the way, which gave me a good bit of thinking time. The views were amazing, and at the bottom there were these carvings by humans in the rocks called Petroglyphs. The hike up was a bit tiring, but we had to train for the Grand Canyon! We ate two sandwiches by way of lunch along the hike and thoroughly enjoyed them.

       When we returned to Earthshipland (there are several Earthships in the place we were staying) we went back to the Visitor’s Center and took ourselves on a self-guided tour of the place. This is where we learned about the interesting build of the walls (from watching a short film on Earthships) and Daddy asked several questions about the way the Earthships worked so that he can tell his students about them when he teaches science again next year. (I think that seems a pretty long way away.) We went back to our Earthship when we were finished to spend the rest of the day there. Daddy showed me how to take HDR pictures, and Miriam and I took regular pictures of just about everything in and outside the Earthship. I will include them all at the bottom.

       My evening was much the same as the last one, thought this time I was sad that we’d have to leave the place the next day. And go back to sleeping in a tent. *Dramatic sigh*. In the morning, we had a delicious breakfast and we took a last few pictures before leaving the Earthship behind. Goodbye, future house.

       I keep saying that I’m going to have to go back to a place one day. I need to make a list or something.


Outside wall with bottles

Inside wall with bottles

My favourite flower

Window seat

The best bottle wall

Kitchen

Purple Bear's favourite spot

The hike

Greenhouse

       I’ll post again soon!