Let me introduce the project briefly

Wow, first rule broken: don't make earth houses during monsoon. So, it was a little mud up and down, and back up again. The lime and clay plaster will get up next week, and that should stabilize the beauty.

We made a 9foot 6inch diameter flexible form rammed earth structure for meditation purposes. We call it a meditation kiva, a hut, a dome, a wonder. Most of us who worked on it (what, about 20 in and out?) felt the deep connection to earth and people throughout history as we filled the bags and slapped on the staw and clay plaster. A lot of comments included how peacefully meditative it was to work with this medium, without mechanization or complicated tools and sophisticated know-how. It felt to be a welcomed change of pace for our minds from this fast-paced techno-based culture. We followed our intuition a lot as we learned together how to make a dome that would hold itself up as it was being pulled down by gravity. Shirley Tassencourt, who introduced me to this method 10 years ago, said its like living in a dancing house. Most of us who worked on this agree there's something intangibly magical about this structure.