NATURE'S WORST NIGHTMARE

On September 16, 2017, Hurricane María hit Puerto Rico with sustained winds up to one hundred seventy-five miles per hour. It is considered by many to be the island’s worst natural disaster in recorded history. More than three thousand islanders died as a result.

I knew nothing about hurricanes.

It was late August, 1968. Nancy and I took our four kids to Puerto Rico, hoping we could create the life we had dreamed about, a sort of Camelot. We were naïve about the risks. We settled first in Playa Naguabo, a tiny fishing village that lay in the shadow of one of the island’s tallest mountains, El Yunque. The house we rented was located about eight miles from the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station where I had been hired to teach. Across the street from us lived Linn and Julie, a couple of teachers. They had purchased five acres of mountainside in the lower reaches of the rainforest above Barrio El Duque. With the help of men from the barrio, they had begun the construction of a concrete house.

As soon as we got unpacked, Linn trotted across the street and over to our place to invite me to accompany him on a jaunt up the mountainside. He shouted to me to come out of my house and stand in the middle of the street with him. As I did so, he grabbed me by the shoulders and twisted my frame around until I was facing El Yunque’s anvil shape. With one hand on my shoulder and a finger of the other pointing towards the mountain, he said, “That’s it, Jim. That’s where we are building our home! That’s where I want to take you.”

He set Saturday as the day to show off his place. I was as excited to see it as he seemed to be to show it. At school that first week, I struggled to stay focused on teaching. My brain clogged with imaginary snapshots of Linn’s rainforest place. Every time my thoughts skipped to what I might see, my skin heated up. Crawly feelings played games up and down my arms and taunted me with shivers of expectation. I couldn’t relax. Any attempt to concentrate on other things was short lived. I yearned to see Linn’s construction site but feared it might disappoint me. In the evenings before the trip, I talked incessantly to Nancy about our dreams of the long-sought-after place of our own. I was already thirty-one years old. I hoped seeing Linn’s project would start Nancy and me on the way to finding our Camelot.

Saturday at last! Linn and I took off early in the morning in his Toyota Land Cruiser. It was one of those blue-sky, puffy-white-cloud days common on the island. We left the narrow seaside roadway and turned off onto the country lane that led upward toward Barrio El Duque. As we climbed, a gentle rain of red blossoms dropped from a canopy of chartreuse Flamboyan trees. The petals carpeted the black asphalt that lined our way. As we entered the village, rows of concrete homes coated in sullen sun-bleached paint emerged. After a turn or two, we were surrounded by them.

Most properties were set apart with sagging chain link fences interwoven with untrimmed trees and shrubs. Rogue chickens and meandering dogs crisscrossed our path as we drove through the housing area and dipped downward off the asphalt to cross a wide shallow stream. On the opposite bank, the tires gripped the pebbly surface of an unpaved access road. We crept onward at a snail’s pace over the ragged roadway, avoiding occasional ruts and the protrusions of flint-edged rock. The Land Cruiser meandered upward about half a mile toward El Yunque’s imposing anvil.

We bounced across a dribbling streamlet and passed beneath towering yellow-green palo de vaca trees. Like beaded bar room curtains, sinuous vines and dangling greenery draped from overhead branches. Suddenly, without warning, the hood of the Land Cruiser rose in the air. The lower edge of its metal headliner topped my view. With one foot on the brake, Linn shifted into climbing gear. We crept onto a strip of rocky clay and continued. The engine whined as it strained to keep the 4x4 on the newly-bulldozed strip of clay that rose skyward in front of us. It labored at a crawl. I felt the tires grip and spin, grip and spin, grip and spin.

Linn fixed his gaze on the smooth brown surface ahead. His fingers squeezed the steering wheel. His right foot held firm against the accelerator. I pressed my body into the back of the seat. One hand clenched its leather edge, the other held tight the arm rest. The curve of the hood dominated my view as we continued upward. I was afraid of stalling, of sliding backward, of slipping over the edge, of careening off the road and tumbling down. The expanse of water we had driven across at the start of the climb was but the tranquil part of what was now a rushing mountain stream two-hundred feet below us. We crept upward until the Land Cruiser at last lurched to a standstill in front of a somber unfinished concrete box-like structure. Its footings were imbedded in a newly-cut plateau of grayish volcanic rock, eight-hundred feet above the valley floor.

I escaped the car and leaned against it to catch my breath, my pulse raced inside me like a frenzied bird. I stood motionless and numb on the bulldozed shelf, waiting to recover. Then I turned to look at where we had been. The vastness of the valley spread out below me. Never had I seen a view like that. The expanse of limitless green was unlike the tarnished flatlands of home, Chino Valley, with its familiar worn and parched rolling hills. Beneath me lay a pastel matrix of El Duque houses. Beyond, vast fields of milk-white sugar cane plumes undulated in the breeze. Their whiteness lay surrounded by a horseshoe of moss-green hillsides. In the farther distance, the Caribbean Sea shimmered, sequin-like in the late-morning sun. A ruler-straight horizon line marked the end of the world.

Smiling in deserved satisfaction, Linn stood in the openness of the building site and rotated his body in slow motion. With the fingers of an stretched-out arm, he pointed to the limits of his five cuerdas (acres). “Have you ever seen a view like that?” he asked. I shook my head from side to side in answer. A motion of his body signaled me to follow him through the construction materials and into the shell of his flat-roofed home. Chalky cement dust coated my shoes as I entered. Its musty nose-itching smell hung in the air, a reminder of work in progress. Linn led me through two bedrooms that paralleled the mountainside and a bathroom with an unfettered view of the mountain slope. The kitchen we had entered, opened onto a spacious pavilion that would one day serve as a living room. The view from there was unlike the view from the parking area. I stood at the edge of the flooring where a railing would eventually be. Air escaped my lungs in the longest exhale of my life as I tried to believe the magnificence of the landscape.

On my left, next to the kitchen window, a yellow-green mango tree towered over the roof and dominated the valley side of the structure. From the end of each leaf-covered canopy branch, shinny copper-tinted magenta growth sought sunlight. On the slope below the tree, a sprinkling of slender palo de vaca and coconut palm trees protruded into view. A lush mixture of white ginger, flaming heliconias, and wild grasses flourished in the mulch-covered shade of the hillside soil. My center view from the pavilion was unobstructed. Like a funnel, it channeled my vision to the Caribbean and the distant horizon line.

On the slope nearest the house, a myriad of greens in a patchwork quilt spread down the hillside and across the valley floor. Dabs of unmatched color punctuated the landscape and marked the presence of farms, roadways, and buildings. It faded away against faint images of coastal hills and a stretch of deep-blue sea beyond. On my right, the hillside was blocked by a dense stand of trees, banana plants, and lush undergrowth. I turned away and craned my neck to see what lay on the mountainside above the house. On high, a patch of towering bamboo clung to the mountain ridge. It’s lime-green fibrous hollow trunks clacked and groaned in the fresh breeze.

Linn beckoned me to follow. He led me out of the house and across the parking spot to the rock-strewn hillside northeast of the building. Sunlight filtered through the canopy as we descended a hundred feet through scattered tree trunks. We emerged in the sunlight at a patch of rain-dampened knee-high blades of hillside grass. Slipping and sliding our way downward, we crossed over fallen strands of rusted barbed-wire fencing and made our way through scraggly low-growing bushes. I heard the sound of tumbling water as we picked our way another hundred feet in that direction.

At the bottom of the slope, Linn waved his hand to follow and led across a streamlet and onto a miniature island encrusted with chunks of volcanic rock. It was speckled with willowy green-leafed coffee plants. They were still holding on to last season’s berries, now deep red. We changed direction and followed a well-worn path as it made its way upstream toward a patch of sunlight coming through the scraggly needle-like leaves of scabby-barked Australian Pines. Cinnamon-colored debris from seasons past lay in brown heaps in the semi-shade and covered the protruding tree roots that grasped the spit of land. We continued along that twisted rocky pathway, mindful of the thorn-rimmed gray-green pineapple plants scattered here and there amid the rubble of rock that protected their territory.

Droplets of moisture clung to nearby shrubbery. When touched, they fell against my face and dripped onto my arms. Linn warned me to watch out for ants and wasps. I was careful as I walked to avoid stepping on the cutting edges of rocks that protruded along the narrow path. High above us, celery-green fruit the size of bowling balls hung through leather-like green leaves on thick stems from breadfruit trees. They blocked the clouds. Their musty odor filled the air. Milky-white sap oozed from the green skins and dripped to the forest floor where it speckled the ground like bird droppings.

Linn and I traversed the islet and headed toward the rousing sound of cascading water. Within seconds, the canopy parted and we entered a clearing in which the lemony-green surface of a sun-drenched pool rippled as it slid away from the base of a fifteen-foot waterfall. The land rose upwards from the pool at different heights. One embankment protruded six-feet and tapered off onto acres of grass-covered flatland. The other hillside rose hundreds of feet into the rainforest at an angle that would challenge a mountain goat. I stood there gawking. “What a paradise! THIS is Camelot!” Or so I said to myself.

I was wildly impatient to return home to Nancy that day. I rushed in to tell her all about Linn’s remarkable place. I wanted her to see it. The details of my trip to El Duque bubbled out of me as I rushed the minutia of that adventure. She sat there in our Spartan living room and smiled. I sensed her excitement. I didn’t have to sell the idea of looking for property like Linn’s. Nancy knew such a place was what we also wanted even though she hadn’t seen it. We had talked about living a Swiss Family Robinson adventure for years. Within days, Linn, Julie, Nancy and I returned to El Duque to show Nancy what three of us already knew. At first sight, she beamed her approval and her desire to look for a similar plot of land on which to create our own world.

During the days that followed, we shared instant conversational replays of our rainforest adventure--and our possibilities. The ideas robbed me of sanity. I could hardly think or talk of anything else. Remarkably, Fate intervened. Not long after, Linn let me know the property next to theirs was for sale. It was the mountainside adjoining the pool with the cascading waterfall! If I wanted to buy it, Linn said he would take me to talk with the owner. Nancy and I were jubilant!

At the end of the following week, we loaded our four children (Kim, the oldest, who was eleven, Ty, Todd, and Brad) into our Ford Falcon station wagon. We drove out of the playa for our first family trip to Barrio El Duque. Nancy and I were anxious to show the kids the property we wanted to buy. I was nervous, fearing they wouldn’t like the place. As I drove, I glanced in the rear-view mirror to watch the expressions on the children’s faces. Even though the barrio was only a couple of miles away from downtown Naguabo, a town of twenty thousand, El Duque seemed like another world. The drive from town to the barrio was through vast sugar cane fields and grazing land for cattle. As I drove our Ford Falcon toward the barrio, we entered a place completely isolated from the rest of the world. Like a setting for the play, Brigadoon, El Duque was hidden at the foot of El Yunque in a maze of mountain ridges and rolling hills.

The kids squeezed together on the rear seat and leaned their faces against the side windows. They peered out in silence as the road took us alongside the towering sugar cane. Even though our ride lasted only fifteen minutes from Playa Naguabo to the crossing at the stream, it led us to the entrance of a hidden world.

At the crossing, the streambed widened to thirty feet allowing the water level to drop to only six inches, most days. At those times, vehicles could ford. Linn told me that during storms, the stream became a raging torrent, too deep to cross. Unconcerned about his disclosure, I splashed us through the water and headed up the primitive roadway. We passed two flat-roofed concrete homes on our left. The mountain stream gushed through a concrete spillway on our right. Our access road petered out at the third house. I parked there. Beyond, was four-wheel drive territory.

“Dad, is this the place?” came from the back seat in a mournful voice.

“No, not quite. This is as far as the Falcon can make it. We’ll walk the rest of the way.”

Like tour leaders, Nancy and I led the pack of wide-eyed “tourists” upward over the rocky four-wheel-drive access that lay ahead. We still had half a kilometer to climb before reaching Linn’s and Julie’s house site.

“Dad, why don’t they pave this road?”

“Does anybody live up here?”

“I’m getting hot.”

“How much farther do we have to go?”

“Wow! What a place!”

We crossed an open area where trees had been cut down in a long-ago attempt to create a planting area or a house site. We could hear the nearby stream rushing over rocks as we climbed. At the next curve in the roadway, shade from towering trees welcomed us. I heard sighs of relief from my band of tourists as we entered the patch of cool air. Dense growth shot up on both sides of the road. It blocked the sunlight. Gray-green vines dangled from high above like thick yarn.

Nancy pointed to the stream, “Look what happens when the water flows over the rocks. See how it creates caverns of color as it splashes.”

A voice from the pack cried out, “Hey, look up in that tree. Dad, is that green thing a lizard?”

“It sure looks like it. Let’s ask Linn what it is.”

The angle of the new road rose like a staircase. Unaccustomed to hiking, the kids bent their torsos forward like old people to compensate for the slant. The most difficult part of the climb came next as we stepped onto the newly-bulldozed clay that led up the mountainside to the house site. Noses to the ground, they huffed and puffed and struggled on the climb. A brief unified sigh of relief came when Linn’s and Julie’s place finally appeared through the trees.

We arrived at the doorstep panting, draped in wet shirts and sweat-stained hiking shorts. The children seemed too exhausted to complain. Despite this, as they sprawled out on the entrance platform, I detected faint smiles of accomplishment on their faces. They had just finished a challenge none of them had faced before. Too tired to walk into the shell of the new house, we sat together on the rough-concrete steps to recover. After resting awhile, I showed them inside the house and the view from the living room. They stared over the valley, wide eyed and silent. We walked outside and around the parking area. I pointed to the northeast and explained that the place we came to show them bordered the spot where we were standing.

Then I turned and pointed a finger upward to the waving clump of bamboo on the northwest, which they could see on the ridge beyond the house. Turning, I pointed southeast and downward toward the rushing stream, which they could hear. I told them the property included a thirty-foot wide pool with a waterfall. There were no paths onto the property, so I tried to make a joke of not being able to walk them to it. I said, “In order for you to see the finca that is for sale, we have to bulldoze a driveway and create a house site.” Shoulders slumped. Chins dropped. But the moment wasn’t lost. Linn had hung a hefty knotted rope from a tree limb that stretched over the hillside near his open-air living room. For the next half hour, the four tourists played Tarzan. They took turns swinging on the rope over the mulch-covered hillside, piercing the air with “AAAEEEEE, AAAEEEEE.”

That night, we sat around the dinner table at home and talked about the day. Nancy asked the kids to tell their thoughts about our trip to the rainforest. “What did you like best about today?” “Would you like to live there? Would you like us to build a house there?”

“I liked the rope!”

“Where would we get the money?”

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“Yeah, why not?”

No one said, “No way.” or “I hated it!”

Neither did anyone shout, “Yes. Yes. Yes!”

To make the purchase of the property happen, I withdrew the money on deposit in my California teacher retirement account. Within weeks, we had purchased the mountain triangle that rose hundreds of feet from the Hawaii-look-a-like pool to the wind-swept bamboo clump on the ridge.

Drawing up plans for the house was the essential next step. Rural housing on five acres or more didn’t need approval from the local government, just evidence of final electrical-system hook up by a licensed electrician. To get started, I set out to learn all I could about concrete construction from the men in the barrio. The guys who had built their own homes were eager to share their knowledge with me. I visited places under construction and measured the footings and column bases. The basics of how to install electrical conduit inside concrete columns became clear to me. I got advice on how to construct cement block walls. From my teenage rabbit business I knew how to cut galvanized pipe and install water systems. Dad had taught me basic wood cutting skills. That information helped me draw simple plans for our house. From the barrio men, I learned what precautions to take when cutting into the mountain:

1. The house needed to be long and narrow. The wider the lot, the greater the risk of landslides.

2. Concrete culverts were needed to carry runoff water away from the house and off the roadway during storms. Uncontrolled runoff lifted rocks and carved holes. It gouged ravines and flushed away embankments.

I limited the width of the cut in the mountainside to twenty feet of disturbed earth. Lengthwise, there was plenty of hillside to build a long narrow structure and provide space on one end for parking and a turn-around. The cut was to be one-hundred and twenty-feet long. Two design concerns held my thoughts captive for several weeks. One was my desire to provide private space for each of our four children but keep the house as small as possible to lower the construction cost. Later, I could add a living room on the valley end and a side porch overlooking the mountain stream.

My other concern was our limited building fund. We didn’t have any savings. Nancy and I didn’t want to create a loan payment by borrowing money for construction. The funds in my retirement account were enough for the basic startup costs: land, bulldozer, concrete blocks for a gravity-flow water tank, and a power pole to run a refrigerator and one light bulb until we could afford to install electricity in the house.

My design divided the house into three distinct areas:

1. A sleeping area with a master bedroom and a cubicle for each child.

2. A great room with conversation pit, dining area, and kitchen.

3. A laundry area, bathroom, and outdoor shower.

The plan totaled 840 square feet of living area (15X 56 feet inside measurements).

I decided to place the sixteen by fifty-seven foot house (outside measurements) on a concrete pad twenty feet wide to allow for a walkway on the stream side. The torta (flat roof) was also to be twenty-feet wide so as to overhang the walkway. I expected this roof extension to help keep rain from coming in through the many screens. The roof was to be slanted six-inches from front to back to allow for runoff and to keep water from puddling.

The master bedroom was on the valley-view end. In my mind, when but my back to the view, I could see straight down the central hallway past the four open-fronted cubicles, past the conversation pit/dining area, to the far wall of the kitchen. Behind that wall was the laundry area/ bathroom. A doorway from the bathroom led outside to a shower.

Nancy and I had come from arid California and knew very little about weather patterns in the tropics. But during the months we rented a house in Playa Naguabo, we had experienced the heavy rainfall and high winds of tropical depressions. Talking with Linn had provided ideas about how to build to minimize the effects of weather and keep water out of our home during tropical storms. The design that evolved for our new house, which we began to call The Farm (English for la finca), designated six-foot by eight-foot screened openings in the exterior walls to let in tropical breezes and plenty of sunlight. On the valley-view wall in the master bedroom, the plan called for a matrix of two-foot-square glass window panes to maximize the view. It was to be framed in mahogany for strength to resist the wind. The prevailing winds and torrential rains came from that direction, so we expected storms would blow against the view-end of the house.

On the stream and mountain sides, four-foot wide overhangs were planned to shield the screens and discourage rain from blowing through. For esthetic purposes, the plans included arched glass windows in the bathroom and dining area, and arched doorway openings in the walls that crossed the center of the house between the children’s cubicles. The wood-plank exterior doors were also arched.

At the time I finished the plans, a barrio man flagged me down as I was driving past his house. When he approached, he lowered his head and shifted his glance to the right along the street, then to the left before pausing his slender frame at my Bronco’s window. I thought he looked sixty-five. The morning breeze blew his white hair over one eye as he spoke. He had an alcoholic redness to his cheeks and a drug-induced glaze to his deep-set eyes. His lips trembled as he whispered, “Mira, Mister, El Alcaide tiene una máquina. Pidela. Es gratis. (Hey, Mister, the Mayor has a bulldozer. Ask him for it. It’s free.)

I realized that if granted, the municipality’s bulldozer could extend the roadway from Linn’s and Julie’s over to our place and make the cut in the hillside for our house-to-be for little cost to us. That sounded great! I had been unaware a service like that was actually available to us. The thought of not having to pay hundreds of dollars to hire a private dozer was a relief. Citizens who were granted use of the earth mover paid only for the driver and the fuel. That saved individuals a lot of money, and became a political bonus for the mayor.

Finding him in his office was impossible. I also faced language and political challenges in my search, things I hadn’t thought of. Not only was my ability to speak Spanish primitive, but white people like me were considered rich and not needy enough to qualify for the use of the free municipal machine.

I tried three times and failed to find the mayor in his office. That obstacle stood in my way of starting construction of the house during my Christmas vacation. I had planned to pour the column bases and subfloor during the holidays. It didn’t take long for me to find out that my failed attempts to find the mayor had become a major source of entertainment with barrio friends who gathered most evenings at Bar Flores near the stream crossing.

On one of my visits there, I was drawn into conversation with an elderly man I hadn’t met before. He worked as a “walker” for the bulldozer driver, the person who moves ahead of the machine to advise of danger when the dozer is being used in precarious terrain. He took me by the shoulder to one corner of Don Flor’s bar and whispered, “ Búscalo los domingos en la pelea de gallos.” (Look for him on Sundays at the cock fights.) I said to myself, “If I made my request for the dozer at the fights, it might be more difficult for the mayor to refuse my request. He wouldn’t want to lose face in front of his constituents who probably surrounded him at such events. On the other hand, he just might want to show his cojones (balls) by denying me use of the machine.”

The following Saturday, I was at the cock fights--looking for the mayor. The man at the ticket window knew exactly where he was and directed me toward a knot of men gathered at the entrance to the ring. I had all the self-doubt symptoms: nervousness, fear, and goose bumps. I had never trusted the behavior of a group of socializing males--not ever: not in elementary school, not in junior-high school, not in high school and not in adult life. Individual males in a group always sought approval from the leader in their midst and would do almost anything to earn it.

When I walked up to the pod, I knew it was the mayor’s domain. Surrounding him was his drone entourage. Fear was a dogfight inside me, but it was determination that shoved me toward him—and need.

As I approached, heads turned my way. Boisterous voices became whispers: “¡Mira! Un gringo está aquí,”(Look, a white guy is here!) Intrigue showed in the sparkle of brown eyes. Ridicule waited on curved lips. In my most respectful manner, I approached the closest male and asked, ¿Quien es el alcaide? (Who is the mayor?) I was still unaware of what he looked like. I had seen his smiling hand-shaking image on political posters around town. In his office, he was the face in the dark suit on an official photo grinning down at me. At my question, bodies moved aside like the Red Sea parting and allowed me passage to the “great man.” My presence gave the spectators an opportunity to watch a gringo perform.

I entered the gauntlet and made my way to the obvious focus of attention. In my broken Spanish, I introduced myself and described my need for the bulldozer. The mayor’s first response was to tell me: “Todo lleva tiempo.” (Everything takes time.) He went on to say the bulldozer might be available after it finished some other projects. I was desperate. I couldn’t wait for a nebulous time table. I changed my tactic and began to describe how I had spent the past few weeks trying to find him in his office and how I kept getting the run-a-round. Wonderfully, the tactic worked. The mayor softened:

Mayor: La semana que viene. (Next week.)

Me: I pressed, ¿Qué día? (What day?)

Mayor: La semana que viene. (Next week.)

Me: ¿Qué día? (What day?)

Mayor: Martes. (Tuesday.)

Me: Muchas gracias. Aprecio mucho su ayuda. (Thank you. I appreciate your help.)

I left the hive with optimism on my face, but doubt resided in my stomach. I was all too aware of the tarnished reputation of mayoral commitments.

Early that next Tuesday morning, Nancy and I stood waiting at Linn’s and Julie’s house site. I paced around and listened for the sound of a bulldozer making its way toward the hillside below us where I hoped it would begin to carve out an entranceway to our home-to-be. At ten in the morning, I heard it. At first it was only a distant rumble. The sound grew louder as it imposed its way across the backroads of the countryside. By eleven o’clock, it was an ant on a distant farm road. It crept toward the barrio. At noon, the crunch of breaking rock entered the airwaves while rolling plates of steel crunched ever nearer. By twelve-thirty, the lumbering giant had clanked its way through the opposing farm and barged across the mountain stream below us. In its wake, it left brushed-aside boulders and broken rocks. It baroomed up the hillside to the dirt access road that lead to where we waited. The earth vibrated. The rumble from the mammoth machine increased to a roar as it approached us.

During the previous week, I had strung a white cotton cord along the mountainside from the proposed turnoff to where our new house site would be cut into the terrain. Because the slope was steep and the planned roadway possessed sharp curves and corners, the challenge for the driver was visibility. He would not be able to see ahead of the dozer to know where he was going. The white cord was the only guidance the driver would have to indicate his direction.

Soon the massive beast sank into the soft soil in front of us, rumbling softly like a my stomach in distress. I explained as best I could the role the white cotton cord played in identifying the proposed roadway. With a smile, a flippant “Okay,” and a quick hand wave, the driver heaved his well-fed body onto the worn Naugahyde seat, revved the engine a few times, lowered the blade, and swung it sideways into the dirt bank. He sank it deep into the mountainside. Methodically, the machine cut into the soil, backed up slowly, pirouetted, worked its load to the outside slope, and repositioned for the subsequent cut. In that way, an inside bank and a new road surface were created simultaneously. The operator maneuvered the excess dirt and rock to form an outer barrier edge that served as a curb for the new driveway.

By day’s end, the operator had carved out half the entry road from Linn’s and Julie’s to our building site. On the second day, he continued work until he had made the surgical slice on the mountainside that became our plateau for building. Our new homesite would be bathed in early-morning cool and sheltered from the intense heat of the afternoon by the mountain’s ridge. It seemed to be an ideal location--at first. Excitement choked me. I could hardly catch my breath. As I walked the new flatland, a knot of fulfillment formed in my belly. Standing where our home was to be, made me dizzy with disbelief. From some primitive place within, a feeling told me I had made the right decision to build.

As I had hoped, I was able to catch glimpses of La Charca Encantada (the enchanted pool), hear the splashing waterfall, and gaze across the valley. I meandered aimlessly back and forth across the new tableland. I imagined Nancy’s artist eye capturing on canvas the view from the master bedroom: endless fields of sugar cane, white with bloom; smoky-gray seagulls, lazing in the air currents; gray-green coastal hills, gateway to the azure Caribbean. I couldn’t suck in enough air. My chest heaved. Hot tears stained my cheeks.

I had fears about living in a tropical rainforest. We all did. Some turned out to be foolish--a few turned out to be justified. During our frequent trips to the construction site, our fears entered and re-entered our conversations. One of the most terrifying topics to occupy our family discussions was the fear of snakes. We had been told (and had read) that there were no snakes in Puerto Rico. However, a man from the barrio had showed me a small jar of lard-like salve he said was made from the fat of snakes captured in the mountains surrounding the village. He used the salve to relieve muscle aches and pains. Even without having seen a snake, his sincerity and the details he provided about the ointment made it hard for me not to become a believer. However, I was a biology major and needed more than a greasy salve to convince me.

My skepticism was short lived. Within days, as Nancy and I were walking along our newly dozed roadway near the house site, I glanced off to the side and locked my gaze on a coil of iridescent black snake skin basking in the sun’s warmth on the stump of a long-gone tree. Its scales shimmered purple and blue against its black covering. I cried out for Nancy’s attention and pointed to the resting spiral. At my shout, the coil of muscle began to ripple in slow motion like mirrored traction plates on a toy bulldozer; its head raised inquiringly. A black tongue shot in and out of its mouth as it tested the air.

Expanding and contracting muscles moved the rippling scales on its skin together and apart, together and apart, together and apart--like a cobalt concertina. The animal rolled leisurely to one side of the stump exerting its right to remain, contemptuous of our gawking. We gaped in silence until the ebony coils tightened and disappeared from view off the far side of the rotting platform, not to be seen again. “Oh.” Nancy whispered, a hand to her mouth, “Look at those iridescent colors race along its black scales as it moves. How beautiful!”

Some money from my paycheck each month was available for building materials. It was enough to keep me working non-stop at The Farm. I knew we would have four hundred dollars of former rent money to spend on construction materials each month, just as soon as we moved into the shell of our house. The faster we built the walls and poured the roof, the sooner we could move in and use the previous rent money for further construction. Thinking about living as full-time “campers” in the house I had designed and built flushed me with excitement.

The primitive roadway that led to the new site was too steep and narrow for commercial trucks to climb. We needed our own method of hauling. As soon as the bulldozing was finished, I bought a 1969 Ford Bronco pickup to cart building materials. In order to carry the maximum number of things at one time, I used galvanized pipe to create a metal overhead rack for the Bronco. The rack extended the full length of the vehicle and was bolted to upright posts fastened to the front bumper and the rear corners of the pickup bed near the tail gate. Among other things, it allowed me to haul twenty-foot tubing, iron rods, and galvanized tubing.

To carry containers of water, bags of cement, sand, and gravel, I installed a wooden box with a removable back panel that fit the bed of the pickup. I began hauling. When the box was full of sand or gravel, I dropped the tailgate, removed the panel, and, with a shovel and the help of gravity, I pulled or tossed the rock and sand to the ground. It took fifteen trips to the site for each six-yard dump-truck load of sand or gravel that was delivered to the parking lot next to Bar Flores, a kilometer from the construction site.

Before the building began, while I was in the process of drawing the plan for our home, I spent time visiting new friends in the barrio. I noticed most homes had flat concrete roofs. These flat roofs caused rain water to puddle and gradually filter through and damage the ceiling of the room underneath. The concrete undersides (ceilings) cracked and flaked. I thought I could prevent that damage at our place if I slanted our roof to let the water run off. That idea led me to design a roof with a six-inch slope. I planned the columns to be nine and one-half-feet tall on the stream side of the house and nine-feet tall on the mountain side.

To start the building process, I chipped out yard-square holes in the hard pan for the twelve column bases that would support the roof. Next, I dug the trenches that molded the footings for the sub floor.

During the winter of 1970, five men from the village mixed and poured the column bases and the footings, which anchored the reinforcing rod frameworks for columns in place. The concrete block interior and exterior walls went up next. These supported the ceiling joists that were later cast inside wood molds at the top of the walls. These became reinforced concrete beams.

Another barrio neighbor built the wood molds that encased the column reinforcing rods. When the molds were in place, they were filled with concrete. After the columns and joists had dried, the forms were removed. Plywood panels supported by bamboo poles were then lifted into place to support the roof pour. An iron grid was wired across the entire twenty by fifty-seven-foot roof surface. That mesh covered all the rooms and extended over the exterior walls to form eaves. The art of combining the concrete joists with the reinforced-concrete roof slab was similar to pouring batter onto the metal grid of a waffle iron. In the case of the roof, it produced a flat, but slanted, interconnected surface called la torta.

The 1971 spring break gave me a week to prepare for the most important day of construction--the roof pour. I had hoped that could be done in June, the week after the end of the school year. I still needed to haul a lot of materials to the building site and was depending on the Bronco to do the job. For months it had performed without a breakdown. I hoped it wouldn’t fail me. I had already hauled material for the floor, columns and joists, but I still needed to haul tons of sand and gravel, dozens of additional canisters of water, hundreds of pounds of re-rod, electrical conduit, hundreds more bags of cement, and a gasoline-powered cement mixer. These materials and more had to be taken up the perilous mountain roadway and put in place for a June roof pouring.

Kim, Ty, and Todd helped carry cement blocks fifty vertical feet up the slope above the house site for a gravity-flow water tank. When finished, it held one-thousand gallons, enough for a month or more of family use. Our supply came from a small spring one-thousand feet above us. It flowed downhill inside a one-inch polyurethane pipe to the storage tank. Thanks to gravity and rain, we had plenty of water by the time we moved into the house.

By the end of May, men from El Duque had finished placing the bamboo poles and plywood framework needed to support the four-inch-thick concrete roof slab.

On June 19, 1971, we poured the roof. People came from all around to help us mix concrete, wheelbarrow it up a makeshift hillside ramp to the roof, and prepare food for the crowd. Neighbors came from El Duque, teachers from my school, Mom and Dad from California and friends of friends of friends. Sixty-five people made the trip up the mountainside to help us mix one-hundred bags of cement to complete the basic skeleton of our house. On that día de la torta (roof pouring day), Linn and others helped wheelbarrow concrete up the ramp onto the “waffle iron” mesh. Before the day’s end, Julie scratched “1971” into one corner of the finished concrete.

When the cement roof of the house had cured for a month, we pulled off the wood used to mold the columns and joists. We took down the plywood supporting panels The dozens of still-green bamboo poles that had supported the roof panels from inside the house, were stacked in yet another pile. Within a few days of cleaning, the residual concrete drippings had been scraped from the wood and nails had been removed, but it took a couple of weeks to clean it all. By the end of that effort, we had a giant teepee-shaped pile of scrap wood to dispose of, which called for a celebration to mark the end of the first phase of construction.

On the night of the great burn, we six gathered around our “Egyptian” pyramid of castaway wood. We hunkered down to enjoy the show. Todd doused it with gasoline. In a breeze-swept SWOOOOSHHH the flame traveled up the splintered timbers until it reached the peak where it sent sparks flitting skyward into the night like fireflies enjoying a frenetic mating dance. The faint taint of gasoline lingered on the ashen faggots. As the triangle of timbers collapsed, bits of flaming charcoal sparked the heavens with fireworks and scattered in a climactic circle at our feet.

Nancy brought marshmallows to roast. Ty whittled tree branches for them. Kim threaded the puffy whites onto sticks for all. We sat around in a circle laughing and shouting idiocies, trying not to cremate our runny white delicacies. Orange firelight danced off our cheeks, goop clung to our lips; the children’s laughter dominated the night. Nancy and I leaned against each other, heads together. Faint smiles parted our lips, satisfaction shown in our eyes. Sap oozed, dry wood crackled, sparkling embers twirled into a star-spangled sky.

We were not yet close to move-in day. The septic tank was the next challenge. To dig the foundations for what was actually a two story structure, I cut into the bank with a pick and removed dirt to form yard-square pits for column bases and connecting footings. The finished two-chambered tank was eight feet wide by twenty feet long and eight feet high. On top of the tank I built two rooms. One room had a toilet. In the other room I built concrete counter tops and a workshop area. Sixty feet of four-inch PVC pipe connected the tank to the sewer line at the house. By the end of summer, the PVC carried waste water from the kitchen sink, shower, and bathroom.

When moving day finally came, we spent the day carting our boxed belongings from our rental home to our new “camp site.” Boxes filled the conversation pit in the great room and were stacked four-feet high where a dining table would one day provide a place to eat. The beds for Kim and Brad were assembled in their cubicles. The mattresses for Ty and Todd were installed on the platforms above their half-closets. That evening, before dark, all six of us squeezed onto the bed in the master bedroom and unloaded our stresses of the day. Nancy brought in sandwiches and cans of soda. Packed together, worn and weary, we released the stresses of the day in rapid conversation. Sunlight disappeared. The barrio vanished. Overhead, starlight punctuated the heaven. The moon crept into view. It cast streaks of yellow and white across the distant Caribbean.

As if testing us to see if we could survive this new lifestyle, a sudden gust of wind tore through the house. It knocked down the pole lamp in the great room, our single source of light. The plastic coverings over the entrance doorways flapped like sheets on a clothes line, testifying to the new location’s power over us. In every direction, piles of boxes blocked our desire to escape the confusion. It was too dark to look for things and fruitless to try. The kerosene lamps were packed somewhere, empty of fuel. No one could see to find a flashlight. We huddled on the bed in the sudden wind. It rained. It rained hard! A fine mist blew in through the openings in the chicken-wire and baptized everything.

But as quickly as the storm had come, the wind and rain stopped. The sky cleared. Stars again sparkled. All else remained cloaked in darkness. The kids crept around the maze and onto their new beds. We slept.

Ω

Nancy and I lived in our rainforest home for twenty-three years, until 1994. During that time the house survived eleven tropical storms and hurricanes with little damage. Although that’s not true of the roadway, which had to be repaired after each major event. In 1994, Todd bought the property and lived there ten more years until it was sold. It never again became someone’s home.