This article was first published in One Earth Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 3, Autumn 1989.

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One Earth’s editors recently opened the Sunday Observer Colour Supplement to find a large full colour picture of a hauntingly familiar figure, sitting in a warm and cosy room with gently curving walls, wooden panelling, charming if idiosyncratic furniture and a dramatic picture window, its shape reflecting the curve of the walls. We were confused at first – the room was so tidy – but it didn’t take too long to recognise our friend Roger Doudna taking his ease in the living room of the house that he built two years ago out of a converted whisky barrel.

The photograph was part of an article about lifestyle. As regular One Earth readers will know, a notion dear to the heart of the Findhorn Foundation is the development of a sustainable lifestyle here, with planet-friendly power sources and architecture harmoniously interacting with the landscape. Roger’s house, a model of recycling, is energy efficient and elfin at the edge of the pinewoods. It took two years to complete and was envisioned as a prototype for a ‘cluster’ of such dwellings.

Work on two more barrel houses is now well under way and a group of architects and carpenters has come together around the project from within and without the Foundation. We asked Roger to write about the experience:

 

Roger's Barrel 1989 photo Findhorn Foundation

Roger’s Barrel

Ever since building the prototype barrel house I have clung to the seeming fantasy of bringing the vision of The Water of Life Fellowship Cluster’ further into physical reality, and mused upon the possibility of erecting the remaining barrels in roughly the same time frame that it took to do the first.

Although this possibility remains to be proved, the clan that has assembled here for the past three months has already erected two more barrels in less time than it took lo bring the first to a comparable
stage.

Rather than tell this story myself, however, I thought it would add to your interest and delight if the cast of characters herein assembled (and an amazingly literate lot they are) introduced themselves and spoke of their own experiences …

MICHAEL ROSE

Most men appear never to have considered what a house really is, and are actually needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbours.

Henry David Thoreau wrote this in 1852.

It sums up for me the need for things like Whisky Barrel houses. They have a touch about them of the converted boilers of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row – something very apt in our present concern for the environment, the need to recycle, and the need of channels for individuality and creativity. Organic shapes enclosed by curves, as opposed to the ‘machine mentality’ of repetitive right angled boxes, reflect the gentleness and interest of Nature and soothe the spirit, making for a more gracefully built environment that talks to us at deeper, more subtle levels of our being.

COURTENAY YOUNG

The project has engaged between six and ten people almost full-time for the last three months. The two barrels stand alongside their completed counterpart which has been an inspiration and a day to day
support. After fiddling about all morning with concrete blocks trying to get the foundations exactly right, we have trooped into Roger’s round home in our coffee breaks to relax and be re-inspired by the finished product.

The project has to be approached as a labour of love. The only reason to fiddle about with all the compound angles, exotic roof designs, curved walls. is because the end result is simply beautiful. The original whisky vats are about 20 ft across, 9 foot high and made of 3 inch thick Douglas fir, well pickled. Each of the 135 staves per barrel had to he stripped, planed, grouted. routed, sanded and drilled for fixing. That took three weeks intense work in the woodwork shop. It took another five weeks of work on site to position the foundation piers on the diagonals and build them up to the exact height for the supports. It took two weeks to frame, position and nail down the floors, assembling all the shaped and numbered pieces like an enormous jigsaw puzzle.

At the end of all this time we were left with what looked like two circular wooden dance floors lifted up off the ground. Then there was an ecstatic week of putting up the walls. Painting the Norwegian boat oil on the outside of the barrel staves was fun. It smelt lovely, blending with the ever-pr sent scent of whisky from the sunsoaked wood.

We are all strong personalities, having to subject ourselves to a form of self-discipline with a common purpose. Some of the men have formed a weekly study group to work through The Road Less Travelled by M Scott Peck. It is fascinating to meet outside the workplace and hear about the other sides of our lives. Here too is a forum for some of the emotional pain and angst that can so easily disturb the work and harmony on the site. It is good for me because I work half-time building and half-time as a psychotherapist and this group helps me to bridge the two places.

The spiritual village is actually, really and truly, beginning to be built here at Findhorn. It is a joy to be part of it. It is like living within a meditation: building a reality out of a fantasy.

Through a magical attunement journey around Pineridge a site was chosen
– some said they heard the nature spirits giggling.
John Talbott

JIM DONOVAN

The people are a mixed bag – an American philosopher and father of the prototype barrel house; a young aspiring British poet; a German architect; an English architect; a carpenter from Ohio; a tall Teutonic beauty from Dusseldorf who is a carpenter and the sole female amongst varying degrees of male energy; an American engineer and ten year Findhorn Foundation veteran with quixotic planetary vision; a
builder/business consultant from London; a psychotherapist from the upper half of the English middle-class; a universal traveller and displaced Scot; and myself, an aspiring journalist and ex-US Army officer.

Ego clashes, control issues, hierarchy versus consensus; money, time, bumming cigarettes; people in and out of balance with the Findhorn ethos at times I sit in awe at the human bonding that transpires in a sharing, or in anger when ‘spiritual’ jargon and ‘Findhornspeak’ are used to cover up smouldering and uncomfortable issues, or to exercise control and expedite the barrel process.

Occasionally I look up from the barrels, beyond the RAF base and even the Universal Hall into the blue depths, and witness a bird hovering joyfully on the air currents. When such moments are all too frequently shattered by the instantaneously explosive screech of a new age fighter jet hurtling in over the runway across the field, I ask myself, will we reach nirvana on the wings of a dove or hell on the wings of death?

PETER TOYNE

The barrel building has been both tiring and inspiring-from the depths of dark trenches up to high sunlit roofs.

Always enjoying the moment by moment experiences that reveal yet another dimension to this fantastical journey of life. The whole process has led to an inner haven of beauty and realisation of my
‘Being’, opening avenues of unexplored imagination.

The relationships woven with fresh experience never cease to flow into more intricate marvels and elaborate patterns – eternally spiralling within the womb of nature’s moods.

As nature, our temporal moods have gradually moulded to nurture and grow this organically sculpted vision.

ALAN ARMSTRONG

What a pity to waste the infinite moment of life as forgotten papers on the

Thoroughfares of the world. I laugh.

I make no reply.

My soul like moonlight suspended in the emptiness inside all things

Lives in another sky; lives in a land that is no man’s.

A land beyond moon and sun.

MARGIT GOTTSCHALK

Working on a round house. surrounded by the spirit-imbued air of the barrels, doesn’t always mean that the same harmonious and spiritual forms are found in the way we work together. I came to Findhorn with the illusion that I would find a way of working based on mutual tolerance and understanding, and in the building crew I now face reality: in Findhorn, too, human beings are at work and they are sometimes harder to bring together than the staves of the barrels.

So sometimes I don’t quite know what our work consists of: Is it building barrel houses or is it dealing with individual characters and their personal work attitudes and identities.

The end remains open, just as the roof of the barrels for the time being. (Just so that one can see the stars with nothing in the way.)

JOHN TALBOTT

I remember well when the whisky barrel project was first born. Roger suffered a form of possession when the idea landed on him of converting these horrible old vats into houses. He more or less forced me to drive out to a cooperage in the Spey valley where they were stored to measure them up and see what the possibilities were.

Our village planning meetings were dominated by the topic for months. The idea did catch other imaginations as well as Roger’s and through a magical attunement journey around Pineridge a site was chosen. Some said they heard the nature spirits giggling.

I also remember when Roger asked if he could move into my bungalow for three months while he built the first barrel to live in. Two years and a few days later he moved out.

The ‘protobarrel’ has been very successful. The gentle wafting smells, lingering sense of well being, the fine wood craftsmanship and detail, the wonderful roundness of it all, has proved that the concept can work. Now. If we can just cut down construction time … !

I am amazed at how easy it has been to build these barrels, how the people have just ·showed up’, the money has come, the group has come together, the right skills seem to be always near if not immediately
present.

I think this article should be called Barrels For Peace because I think that until they’re finished, all six of them, Roger will not give me a moment’s peace.

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All photos: Findhorn Foundation