Part 7: Leveling a Mountain, Even if Mini, is a Milestone!

It might be rare, but ain't Nothing better than flat dirt on the way to your dreams… even if you gotta carve it out yourself…

Everything, absolutely Everything that comes next requires a strong foundation. Everything we have dreamed and planned requires that we first do everything we can to start it off on the right foot/footing. You can't rush this part, there are no corners to cut, it had to happen, and even though almost everything we have “dreamed” for this space had yet to manifest, the idea that in this moment we had now realized level land in space that was once a dream suspended in air, beyond the edge, of our mini mountain peak, meant, this dream was possible… 

Step 1: Lift all the material:

 in the last chapter we chronicle, a bit, of what it was like to come to terms with the amount of material we would have to hike up this mountain, the hair-brained ways we conspired to get it done, the laughs we had in the process; and the sweat and tears it took to get it done.

Step 2: Breaking to rebuild, sometimes even rocks gotta leave the nest:

Before we could even start to build UP we had to dig DOWN; we had to dig down into rock that had been happily nestled in the same place since its formation… And we did; pic axes and will-power helped us carve, down into our mountain, the trenches that would hold a foundation, which will, in turn, hold our growing dreams. 

Step 3:  Build up to ground Level

We needed more space, we know, by now, YOU KNOW that, BUT what we really mean, in this instance is, up on this tiny mountain, we needed more FLAT/ LEVEL space to even begin to build the cabins SO that meant, start from below and build up from there until we had a longer surface area to work with, and we knew that, so we measure out as far as we needed, dug those trenches trailing down the mountain side and brick-by-brick brought that foundation up to level!

Step 4: Mountains Lack dirt and that has proven to be an issue

I knew in theory we KNEW that if you build a foundation up to level that you would then have to ALSO fill it up to level, BUT when we started, we were so focused on the materials needed to BUILD the structure we weren't thinking so much about the amount of “fill-dirt” that extending the foundations would require, and that, that dirt was not readily available on top of our mountain. In fact, It would require enough dirt to make us rethink the way we would finish the ground floor. We threw around ideas like utilizing the open space below as storage and not filling it in, which would require we create a door in the walls we had already built up; we thought about not filling it in and pretending WE didn’t leave valuable space underutilized, and building in the structural elements required to leave it open and empty underneath (not sure why this option creeped me out a bit), and after all options evaluated we landed back at the realization that we would be hauling dirt up this mountain and it might not be the most fun but it would have to be done. 

Step 5: Do It!

Only thing left to do was do it, and we did, just: Us, the herculean cousin, A lumberjack savvy with both mules and mountainous terrain, un Maestro, and a few extra hands filled those foundations level.

So now you know why these pics that honestly don’t look like much to celebrate were a huge milestone for us, and the foundation for ALL of our dreams to come. These little foundations represent the very first foundations, and the confidence we needed on the road to opening our family-run retreat center on our little oasis…