I am wondering about something like what railroad tracks do:

• 6″x6″ wood set on leveled crushed stone at about 4′ apart, with crushed stone in between for stability, and to eliminate air space (and thus too many critters) Local earth material could be used if it is “well draining”
• then install 4″x4′ in the opposite direction over these, probably at 24″ on center (because of using 4′ sheets of plywood). The 4×4′s would have some resiliency, but sufficient stiffness, across 4′ span, Though a would be tested  this in some way before building it – we would want to right amount of resiliency.
• I would also acquire some neoprene (easy on the internet) and put a little neoprene pad under the 4×4′s where thet cross the 6×6 for added resiliency – that is easy to do, so I would say why not?
• I think there would be a piece of  wood all the way around the around perimeter (up against the posts of the barn) and thus would be leveled in installation and attached to the 6×6 and 4×4, but likely not attached to the barn posts.  I think there whole floor would want to be integral to itself, but be allowed to move up and down and be able to move relative to the barn post so as to allow for frost movement.
• The floor might work with one layer of ply wood but two would be better.
  

  Dana Bixby

• All timbers and the first layer of plywood would need to be “pressure treated.”
• Plywood can obtained with no formaldehyde and thus no off-gassing – though the average stuff from the local lumberyard may not be this. It typically can be ordered from a good lumberyard.
• The top layer if plywood could work nicely if cut into 4′x4′ sheets and then the pieces should be laid checkerboard at right angles to each other.  I would want to see a very regular screw pattern, with consistent setting of the screws heads just slight more than flush (the regularity creates an expression of our intentionality and care, even if people do not conscious think about it, they still get it.)
• I got so far as thinking that the edges of each panel should be beveled very slightly (this prevents a hard edge if the panels move a little e.g. expand an contract), stained an earth color, sanded, and finished with a clear natural finish (many are available  e.g. beeswax, tung oil. Tung oil can a little involved to use because of the need for several coats and intermediate.
  

Such a floor, if assembled all with screws could be taken apart and used in other ways if that were ever a part of the evolution of things. I think about a layer of insulation as a good idea. Cold on the feet is felt a lot. But all wood would not store the cold as much as masonry, earth or concrete. I think this floor would be pretty well grounded, yet resilient. Like railroad tracks.

top photo: Jennifer Sears by Paul B. Goode

I am so very touched by our Dancemeditation community’s generosity. I know this is a tough time of year to support even the most worthy of projects and feel each person’s love and belief in Dancemeditation. I am also  moved by people sharing the news with their Facebook friends and sending out emails to their personal lists. I am moved by gifts from personal friends and family who think I’m “doing a really good thing though its not their thing.”  And everyone has been so excited. It’s a truly heartwarming time. Thank you!

We may all wish we individually richer, but what I really see is that together we can gather small amounts to make Ravenrock vision manifest. Inspiring!

If you’d like to help out, here’s the link.
http://www.razoo.com/story/Dsa

Under Shiva’s Gaze

Shiva graces our Dancing
As we enter the Great Temple of the Body.

Little do we know what will Unfold.
We just know we will be the Unfolding.

Flowing into Spontaneous Combustion,
I become Whole HOLY from the Dance.

And I taste the Freedom of Pure Bliss
Which is Love Incarnate.

My beautiful Earth Body becomes
Heaven on Earth.

My psychic aches and pains melt away
And there is only the Spaciousness of Becoming.

The Emptiness I have feared all my Life
Is now the Opening.

May I continue the Practice of Drinking
From the Sacred Chalice of my Longing for the Divine.

(c) 2011 Loretta Armer
November 15, 2011, Dancemeditation™ Spiritual Bellydance
at Kripalu Center for Yoga

Why is personal practice so important? A naf would whisper in our heads that it isn’t, that we are fine without our practice. Go ahead, eat that donut, crap out in front of internet TV, FB the evening away…But practice is solace to our pain. In practice, we recall and re-experience crucial learnings from retreat training periods together. We bring the group, the teachings and the teacher into our daily flow.

At Dancemeditation retreat, we learn many teachings. One core teaching is to approach ourself without tyranny. We practice steady, centered, calm self-witnesses. We move and breathe and chant and explore with a generous dose of compassion for our selves and our small human predicaments. We learn to know we are safe, that we can trust. Our training time is the act of taking our young terrified selves by the metaphorical hand and being the good parent, the good guide, the nurturer, healer, loving deity, the Lover. We  work to become not only the person riddled with darkness but also the person who knows that these darknesses will pass and that we will be okay, that we are fine, that we are lovable and Beloved. When we return home and do daily practice, we integrate the depth of experience we’ve initiated during retreat. In daily practice, we continue to knead the compassionate space we have learned into our flesh.

A practitioner of a Path is one who practices the practices of the Path, but it isn’t just practicing that makes the practitioner. It is also knowing, and remembering why practices are being done. A Path is an awakening. A transformation. Blind adherence is not enough. We need also to turn willingly into the awakening.

When you resist practice, you stand on that threshold. Your foot is lifting to step. Will you crossover? Will you wake? Pat the naf on the head and step in.

According to Bill, who knows the formula, our capacious roof should be able to collect 800 gallons of water from one inch of rain or ten inches of snow melt. Terrific!  My goal has been to get the catchment in place before the winter snow in the hope of harvesting enough snow melt and rain to provide for the coming needs of earth floor construction and possibly a portion of summer retreat next year.

Ric and Jamie had two hours to get a large PVC  pipe, mounted below the gutter for the gutter to drain into, as well as the fittings onto the cistern before the sun set. They worked steadily as the light dropped lower and lower.

Tim gathers tools, piling leftover lumber, propanel, and insulation as Steve and Juany measure and mount the slide door track. They all stop and smoke a cigarette around noon.

I walk around, inspecting, asking final questions about the bottom edge of the west wall which doesn’t touch the ground. Steve nods. “See it touches on the east side. The ground slopes ever-so-slightly which is why that side has a gap,” he explains. The barn is level and squared. I’ll have to seal around those edges before winter. I continue to inspect and see nothing to complain about. The barn is clean and sharp and wonderful.
They grind out their cigarette butts, heave up the first slide door, working it onto its track. Then the second. Jauny shoves them together. Thunk! He gestures to the door, like the circus lion tamer, “Fits snug as a glove!” And it does. The barn is done.

They will go now and I feel both sad and relieved. It’s been a consuming five days; I can use a digestion period. We shake hands. I give them the second half of the payment, a small tip each, a box of Chocolate Chip Oatmeal cookies for the ride home, and to Junay for his birthday, a set of antelope antlers I found on a hike. I wave them off and stand in stunned silence. Has this really happened, this thing that six weeks ago was phone calls and internet digging? Did I really find Wilson Pole Barn Company, research them, vet them, put in an order, transfer money from one account to another, send in the first half payment, fly out to the mesa and find the site, locate a jackhammer and a hauling tractor? Me, a dancer, who knows nothing of all this? Yes. I did. I cry as I imagine myself managing to do this, choosing it, learning it, and moving forward instead of thinking I can’t, or getting stuck, or saying that I’ll do it later.
It is a beautiful barn. A perfect barn. I feel such affection for the wonderful crew (Wilson Pole Barn specialists out of Wagoner, OK) who hammered in every nail by hand.

This is for me the first major endeavor where the ideas and actions remain. As a dancer, all my work disappears—a performance that I prepare three months for is over in twenty minutes. The same with dances that I choreograph on others. My memoir was better. It lingers as do videos, but both of these are projects that are consumed rather quickly by others and which once I’ve completed them, I rarely look into afterward. The barn however is there. I will be going in and out. I see it again and again as I walk the winding dusty track between the pinions. I think back to the moment when the ravens revealed that spot and think how in just a few days, the Wilson crew is evolving the insubstantial into substantial. Not six months, or a year or two years. No. It is happening before my eyes. Like a pre-digital photographs in a dark room. The edges sharpening, the form filling, timbers, metal sheets coalescing into a barn!
A seed that has found ground and does not blow away…

I watch them continue steadily on. Very zen-like without any zen to their self-concept. Tim leans intently over the saw horses to trim a piece of 2X4 for a window frame. Every frame he has made fits perfectly. He didn’t finish high school. Never saw the need. None of the three have much use for college—didn’t go themselves and can’t see how it would have made much difference to their lives. If their kids want to go, they shrug, its up to them. On day #4, I hear more detail about their lives and opinions as they chug down orange soda (Tim), 7-Up (Juany), and Coke (Steve).

Steve has been married twice. He is wise. He has gentle sotto voce advice for impetuous young Juany, who, at 29 , knows it all: is so decisive, his wife spends all his money!, she wants him to make more money but she wants him home. Juany wants to get home soon cause he loves his little girl who misses him, she wants her daddy. Yes, he loves his wife BUT… And there is always the “I love my wife, but,” in every break-time effusion. Steve listens, off-hand, dropping a bit of succinct, calm advice here and there which is mostly ignored.

    I was totally enthralled. Smooth, experienced, elegant. they worked quietly, just the sound of hammers striking the wood. No nailguns, no power drills. I felt their energy going into the nails, into the boards, into the large, sturdy poles. This is a human barn made by men who are seasoned artists. Now I understand Steve’s impeccable posture. In perfect balance, he trots around on the roof beams, sure-footed as a high rope walker.

     By the end of the afternoon, the barn’s bones were there. I can now see the entire skeleton and have only to fuss in my dreams over where the doors and windows should be placed.
I couldn’t focus on anything else much today. Excited, I ran back and forth from cabin to barn site, called or emailed a bit here and there. A dream is coming true.

The guys made it up thew mucky road in their 2-wheel drive truck! I’m impressed. They are digging with the auger then jackhammering the limestone in the fog. Inspired by their labor I feel industrious. I make a platform for the blue barrel, get it positioned and, right on cue, the heavens open up with a gushing downpour. Such an orchestra of sounds—thunder booming down the canyon, and once the storm leaves me, the rain pummeling the land fifty miles away. At the end, that barrel is full—60 gallons in a half hour.

Then I slog up, my boots twice their size with heavy clay mud, to see how the crew is doing. They took shelter during the rain but are out again, digging, jackhammering. By the end of the day they have half the poles in.

Late night. So still. The canyon has captured the fog in its stony arms. I remember chatting with Steve, the foreman. He’s my height, lithe, with beautiful posture, terrible teeth, and a twinkle in his eye. He is soft-spoken. He emanates kindness. I like standing beside him, saying little, gazing at the barn site, happy with it, happy with the fog, the day, the men, the project, with my life. I tell Steve about the ravens choosing the site. He nods, but who knows what he thinks.

Delivery Morning
A battery of calls back and forth between me, Wilson Pole Barn Construction trucks, and Jamie, who will help them up the mesa road in a tractor, to coordinate the arrival. Wilson trucks were delayed in Tucumcari at the Weigh Station on the OK/NM border. Wilson Co. is out of Wagoner, OK and I’ve worried faintly for the past two weeks, despite plenty of vetting online and on the phone with their references, with the OK Attorney General, and with lawyer databases that Ric has access to, that they might not be real or might be funky. But I just loved talking to Alberta, who turns out to the sister of Lloyd Wilson, the owner, on the phone. She always picked up. She answered all my questions no matter how dumb or redundant. And I liked their simple, direct website—nothing fancy, but informative enough. It felt the way a barn outfit ought to be putting itself forth.

I drive to the top of Apache Mesa Rd. to await the crew, ready to shoot video. A dark sky hung over us. Maybe rain. I held my breath that it would hold off until they got the massive trucks up the switchbacks and across the mesa to the barn site. Ric was on the phone with me. I kept eyeing the bottom of the road far far below. Did I see them? Vehicles went back and forth but I couldn’t tell if it was the barn crew. I had my truck parked and ready. Suddenly, puffing, grunting engines on the slope just below me! They were almost up.

I jumped in my truck, turning on the camera as Jamie, solid as a rock and cute as a rock star in his yellow tractor, rounded the bend towing a double cab pick-up dragging a 20’ trailer loaded with 26,000 pounds of pre-fab rafters, barn poles, and metal skin. The drivers were pretty smooth around the top hairpin but I heard later from Alberta, who accompanied her husband, Rick, the delivery driver, that it was a hairy business. (Alberta wanted to meet me. How sweet!) A red pick-up with the building crew followed up the caravan rear. Rick and Alberta would drop off the load and head back to OK right away leaving the crew behind to put up the barn.

At the top of the mesa, there was a general palaver about tow chains and now what? It was decided that Jamie should take them all the way to Ravenrock, an extremely wise decision as the large dark clouds menacing us on the horizon began to dump heavy rain and hail about halfway to the the property. The road turned to bacon grease. I followed up the rear of the caravan and got to see the vehicles fishtailing. What a mess! If not for the tractor we would have spent the night mired three miles from our destination. We got to my gate—a downward slope of dirt, now pure mud. Trucks careened this way and that, almost taking out the posts.

Once at the site, the rain abated but the ground was now soft and the trucks were sinking their tire teeth into the grass, making ruts. The crew—Steve, Tim, and Juany—unloaded the trailer truck. Alberta and Rick departed with Jamie. The crew spent time in the fog and damp cold organizing the site, then pulled out the auger to dig the first post hole and see what lay in store. They needed to be able to dig down three feet. After a foot and a half of nice soft dirt they hit limestone shelf. This meant they would need a jackhammer to get deep enough. I texted my neighbor that the crew would need a jackhammer in the morning. At last, they headed down the muddy road to their hotel in Las Vegas.

After everyone left, a second cold soaker dumped rain and hail. And then!!!! A huge full rainbow. And a double rainbow. The coyotes sing riotously. It’s a rock concert! An opera! And it makes me cry with its beauty.  A powerful blessing from the heavens.