Aching Muscles, Balanced Life

This will be a short entry, partially because I am between meetings: namely, Frugal Soup and School of Thought, both of which are both with Soleri himself.

I will save the entry about my reactions to meeting and talking with Soleri personally for the following, as the day is not entirely done yet and it would take too much time at the moment. So instead, I will simply recount what's happened the past two days thus far.

It's been a whirlwind. The first half of the day yesterday was made of construction—literally working on-site with a pick and shovel, tearing away at dirt on the east side of the pool. It was quite a shock to me, as these are the hands of an artist, not a construction worker. I don't know exactly how much I weigh, but it is no more than the 120-130 pound range, likely. We were moving boulders that were easily twice my weight, probably more, out of the hillside so that we could excavate to bedrock and finally get them out by crane.

Even though the work was hard, I enjoyed it. It was good to have some physical exertion, and we made great progress. The excavation was for the main project of the community recently—the Heat Duct Tunnel, which is a heat channeling tunnel that runs along the entire East Crescent. In the future, a greenhouse will be built at the base of Arcosanti, and the excess will be channeled through the duct to heat the apartments in the Crescent, and maybe beyond.

After that, it was seminar time. Roger taught us for a good three hours about the geography and prehistory of the land around Arcosanti. He described himself as being one of the "last of the first," having been at Arcosanti since its inception. He is one of those people who has an encyclopediac knowledge, and has a tendency to go off on rabbit trails and then forget what the original question was that he was trying to answer. Still, he is an incredible resource, and we will have him again tomorrow on an extended hike through the grounds of Arcosanti. The area of Arizona I am in is prehistoric country. Mountains dating back to the Pre-Cambrian era are readily visible. The old fossilhunter in me, an interest long dormant and dating to my childhood, woke up and wanted to go fossil combing as he described the local finds, including a prehistoric sloth that was found almost completely intact, down to the very skin. It had in fact been mummified.

Human prehistory is here too. Roger has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to how the natives lived, and I steadily realized that there is truth behind the more sustainable lifestyle native peoples lived by—an area much romanticized by ignorant moderns that guts it of its factual truth, and instead ops for a childlike, but naive notion that "they lived better than us." Better oversimplifies it. While there are lessons to learn from them, it is obvious that Roger knows his facts, and I will be looking forward to hearing the truth on these matters.

To end, my muscles ache, but that is probably a good thing. Wednesday has been cold and windy here, some saying that it will hit freezing during the night. But the food is good, in terms of it being extremely healthy, and I am eating heartily and sleeping like a rock. The lifestyle is very balanced here. I had hoped that being here would kickstart my daily routine into something that was more… well, sustainable. But not just on an urban scale, but on a personal scale. I have had a salad almost every day, and am probably eating a much larger quantity of vegetables that meat. There is yoga three times a week, and I have attended it thus far (when I could). And there has been even time for leisure, the odd beer with Stephan, the French documentarian (who is a trip and a great fun to be around), editing my manuscript, and having deep conversations in budding friendships.

And it is only the third or fourth day. And what more, I have not even recounted my reactions to Soleri.