The Temple Construction Begins!

On Thursday afternoon Kismet, Mark, and I wandered all over their 80 acres looking for the best location to build the temple. We each had our own ideas of what would make a good site but we all were open to the spirit of the land telling us where it wanted a temple to be.

We ended up in a location that none of us had considered before we started our wandering. It seems to be the perfect spot with a great view of the San Francisco Peaks to the west, the Hopi mesas to the north, the painted desert to the east, and Merriam Crater to the south.

Friday morning Mark came out and the two of us did a little ground-breaking ceremony. Mark said a Navajo blessing from the Four Directions and it was perfect. Together we dug the first shovelful of dirt and the project was underway. The weather was perfect, clear with a light breeze. An auspicious beginning.

The digging of the holes for the foundation turned out to be not that hard. The biggest problem being that the loose cinders that goes for dirt up here kept falling back into the holes. We hit caliche about 16 to 18 inches down which was perfect. Caliche is a hard clay that makes for a solid base for the foundation. It was good to find that the temple would be sitting on more than just loose cinders.
Saturday evening several of us (Royce, Harry, Quiote, Ninjah, Sunny, Mark, and Chita stood on the temple floor framing and watched the sun set directly on top of the San Francisco Peaks while the full moon rose over the Painted Desert. Beautiful!

By Sunday afternoon we had all but four of the foundation holes dug and we had the rough framing mostly done for the floor.Thanks to all who helped with the process! That would be mainly Harry, Quiote, Ninjah, Gordon, Steve, Mark and myself digging, lifting, hammering, laughing and doing the dance of temple building. Thanks also to Sunny for cooking us breakfast on Sunday morning. What a treat! And especially big thanks to Kismet and Mark who own Gateway Ranch and are funding the basic materials for the temple.

This weekend the work continues in the midst of a big party called Soul'd Out. We hope to finish the foundation, get the sub-floor screwed down and start the wall framing. There will be many more potential volunteers working so I am thinking we will get the walls mostly done before the end of the weekend.
Thanks to Sunny and Chita for taking the above photos. I was just too busy working to think about getting my camera out.