A QUICK AND INEXPENSIVE SOD IGLOO

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Setting the walls and roof came next. The small trees I selected as my raw materials were each 4" or 5" thick at the base. (I needed almost 200 of them, but the woods at my building site are so thick that this depletion did little more than allow a few additional rays of light to reach my clearing.)

First, I cut and trimmed the young conifers and scraped them clean. Then I began to build my walls, leaning the poles against the frame at a slant of about 4-1/2 inches per foot of height. (I reasoned that, by doing so, I could use gravity to help hold the earth and sod against the walls . . . and allow the floor's dimensions to be greater than those of the ceiling.) I hammered each pole deep into the soil, nailed its upper end to the top beam, and sawed off its excess length. (For the sake of the inside appearance, I placed the poles as close together as I could, but an occasional gap — even as wide as 6 inches — wouldn't have done any harm, because the whole wall was sealed off by plastic sheeting later.)

I set the roof poles across the beams and ridgepole, nailing and trimming them as I had done for the walls. Then I laid the plastic vapor barrier in place and stapled it to the logs (more about that later) before beginning to build the earth and sod layers that would provide my new home's insulation against the cold.

It might have been quicker and easier to use boards or plywood for my ceiling and walls. However, the fact that the small trees I cut and peeled were available free-and already too thickly clustered for continued healthy growthplayed an important part in my choice . . . and so did the aesthetic appeal of the soothing visual rhythms produced by their irregular rounded shapes and natural wood grains, especially when seen by lamplight.

Indeed, after I'd worked so intimately with earth and trees in the building of my house, putting an exterior plastic covering over those gleaming shafts of wood felt like sacrilege. The vapor barrier was necessary to keep the dwelling dry and snug, of course, but I was still glad when it was hidden away beneath the mound of dirt and sod insulation that left my new home looking like an organic (albeit somewhat traumatized) part of the clearing.

At summer's end — after taking a twomonth break to pick apples and bring in some much needed cash — I laid a plank floor, hung the door and windows, rigged up a woodstove and chimney, and moved into my sod igloo just before the first serious snow of the season transformed the Vermont landscape .

. . . WHAT I EXPERIENCED . . .

During the first weeks of winter, small beads of condensation formed on the plastic sheeting between the poles, and I was afraid that my shelter was going to be damp and cursed with mildew. But as the earth around the walls began to absorb the heat generated by my stove, the moisture disappeared. At the same time, living beneath a ceiling made from several feet of insulating soil and snow was proving to make both economic and aesthetic sense. Inside, I was warm and cozy . . . outside, the sod igloo now really blended into the landscape, looking like nothing so much as a large snowdrift miraculously puffing a thin trail of smoke.

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