The driveway slopes upward, and is covered in slick granular snow. I walk with my feet splayed; stupid LLbean duck boots and their warn-down soles. Two steps forward, one slide back.
And then I look up. Trees drip in the sunlight, stacks of fresh 2by4s and large concrete plumbing apparatuses are topped with white, and the barren exterior of a three story house greets my entrance. Harden caulk seeps from the seams of the concrete foundation; only the third floor has had the comfort of wood siding. A heart designed is nestled into the apex of the roof.
I knock, and a voice calls me in. I am still unsure of what I want to ask...
The house is barren inside, with sawdust littering the floor. But its potential is radiant; you can almost smell the rewards of hard work. One man. One year. One (incompletely gorgeous) house.
Scott Van Graasbeck, is a soft spoken potter, whose strong forearms, caked in dried clay, and scruffy beard somehow suggest his disposition before he says a word. I've know Scott as our neighbor since I was a squirt, hunting deer with my bear hands on his land behind our house. Little has changed since, except that one year ago Scott began clearing a plot of land, across the street from us, for the site of his new home.
I took a seat in a room so warmed by the richness of its personality, and the fire of a small wood stove, that to give a description would not do it justice. For me to recreate the discussion that followed feels the same way.
A handshake and a seat
Talk of pottery turned into a earth science lesson on silicon, which morphed into a discussion over the feasibility of solar panels as a sustainable source of energy that tumbled into talk of the coal fired power plant. As the sun melted through the windows, conversations melted into one another, and dirt became art. Scott worked on a batch of mugs, delicately shaping long tubes of clay into handles. Frog Hill Pottery, the label of Scott's work, produces over 1100 mugs annually, and they are all given individual life by the methodical pumps of a foot powered throwing wheel, the tender guidance of calloused hands, and the laps of fire from a handmade wood fired kiln. Scott has lived off the land more than anyone I have ever encountered. He lives voluntarily in simplicity. Often 50% of the food he eats comes from a home-garden, a loyal cow, chickens and various other animals on his land; however, at the moment most of his time has been consumed by building the house and raising tree busy kids. He had lived off the grid, at one point with a few solar panels, although his new house now has electricity. Scott hopes to put a small scale hydroelectric system into the nearby stream. When I asked him how it'll work he responded, "Well no one I know has done it around here" then proceed to list the constraints, and how he believed he could overcome them. "I have people coming to me, they want to see how I am going to do it."
Scott's house uses a meager 40 kilowatt hours of electricity per month, compared to the whopping 938 kilowatt hours used by the average American household, However he expects that number to increase throughout the process of construction, but not by much. He drives into town about once a week for farmers markets and shopping.
Our topics of discussion were based on whims, and it made listening that much more enjoyable. Like watching The Office--
I had no idea about the massive scale of the coal fired power plant, which uses about a train car full of coal every hour to power Ithaca and surrounding areas. Oh ya, and a third of the power produced goes into running the plant itself.
I hadn't really thought about how ridiculous it is to extract coal, transport it 100s of miles, inefficiently burn it to turn water to steam, to turn turbines, to produce electricity, to be transferred into homes, to be used to heat homes. Why so many energy transfers? Why go one stop shopping with wood? Then again if everyone burned wood there wouldn't be enough Scott acknowledged. You cant have cake and eat it.
Solar panels are so costly both environmentally and economically because the silicon has to be heated to intense temperatures and cooled at a very slow rate. Because of this the kilns they are made in have to be made of very costly heat resistant material, and must consume copious quantities of energy to reach such temperatures. As a rough estimate, it takes around 5 years for a set of panels to pay back just their environmental cost of production. We live in Ithaca, so make that 100. And because battery technology has progressed so slowly, most small scale projects use led acid batteries, like those used for golf carts, which need to be replaced every seven years because of corrosion. The batteries are around 150 each. There are 6 batteries.
Make that payback time1 million years.
Hydroelectric does not need batteries, a stream always runs; it doesn't stop for the night.
As the lunch approached , Scott began to pan out from the trees to the forest.
A thoughtful gaze followed a question of his satisfaction in his anomalous way of life.
"I'm not cut out for that [contemporary] lifestyle....My biggest regret is not taking a year off after high school, maybe I would have discovered my connection to pottery, maybe I could have apprenticed and learned more or have gone to China, where pottery first began. I went to school simply because that is what I thought I should do; I got good grades in the sciences."" Coming from a man who got into every Ivy League he applied to, I was surprised but at the same time it made complete sense.
I was curious after Scott had described many of the freedoms and restrictions of living on a modern homestead. Would be possible for someone working a 9-5 job to do what he does? His quite response as he pinched the last handle on, "No it would be nearly impossible. just to have a cow takes 20 hours out of a week. I mean there are other options, I know people who have steady jobs who have large gardens. They may not get as much of their total food from it but it is something."
and a little later...
" I can remember the energy shortages, when Jimmy Carter came on television one day with a sweater on.
He looked out at America and said, 'I have turned the heat down in the White House and put on a sweater. And you should do the same. What we must do is conserve.' And what did everyone do? They laughed their butts off. But he was completely serious. And then what happened to the poor guy? He lost the election by a landslide to Reagan. The solar panels he had installed on the White House roof were torn down. America and Reagan said ' No God damn it, we're American, we'll drive big cars, we'll turn our thermostats up to 80 if we so feel like it'."
" And that's what it is. No one wants to tell people that what they really need to do is buy a smaller house, less stuff, and turn down the heat..... I see companies profiting off of the "green" fad. They make some of us feel comfortable with our consumption by buying recycled toilet paper. We've been recycling toilet paper since the 1930's from the waste of paper mills. I think a lot of people think that they can buy their way to sustainability, that more solar panels are the answer. But I just don't think that doing so lowers ones environmental impact. It may support companies with better motives.... but I don't think that's the answer"
and we both sensed closure
"I've kind of come to terms that my impact on changing it all is going to be quite small.... I'm not a cynic.
When I was younger I was an activist, trying to convince people to live a certain way.
I am concentrating on my own journey now. I've learned that it works better to lead by example; a lot of people are curious about what it is I am doing. And isn't that how it works? You get older and the younger generation has the movers and shakers. I am in my 40's now"
And so by the end of two hours of conversation I felt very honored to be in
the presence of a quite potter, barely scrapping by financial, but appreciating his life and his freedom. He may not have a t.v or a treadmill, but he seems more alive, happy, sane, and healthy then most of us.
Scott has lived with an earshot of me for over 10 years and yet I knew nearly nothing about him. To me, he is a humble warrior; he questions the system every time he pumps the wheel.
I wished we had talked years ago.
"I want my pottery to be a connection: between me and my land when I dig the clay I use for my glazes, between you and your food, between you and me as you support my livelihood and a tradition of fine craftsmanship. All of this, I think, is much too important to leave to machines." ~Frog Hill Pottery
