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Visiting Kibbutz Lotan after a four year absence was a real trip. I have a mixed history with the place; I used to live there, for half a year, in 2001. I moved there hoping to settle down, but after six months, I left disappointed, knowing that I could never call it home. I wrote a resignation letter explaining my reasons for leaving, and distributed it to the kibbutz membership, and, of course, my blog readership. It seems that some of them are still sore about the less-than-kind words that I had for them at the time. Apparently, they felt the sting of my criticisms when potential donors confronted them with the realities that I had reported on. I thought I would come back the conquering hero, thanked for pointing out their inadequacies and for learning lots of new natural building techniques. Oops! Guess some a dem are still holding a grudge. Nevertheless, I came back down to Lotan to visit with my mentor and friend who first put me on to natural building, to share with him the new skills that I'd acquired in America, and to see what he'd been up to all this time; a mini-mud colloquiam. And I also brought down the Amoria group, so they could have a brief body experience of earthen architecture, figure out what I was trying to get at, with all this talk about communal mud huts. Lotan has built with bales and mud bricks, but most of its ecological construction revolves around stacking empty containers as a way to take up as much space as possible, then plastering them over with a mud mixture. This was a revelation for me, to realize that, contrary to what I'd been taught, clay has no problem adhering to car tires and jerry-cans. Of course, these walls are only used for infill, not for supporting a roof structure, but they do the trick. One thing is for sure: they can certainly claim to have the highest concentration of natural buildings in Israel. Due to the tireless work of Mike Kaplin and his teams of Green Apprentices, Lotan has put together an impressive portfolio of mud structures. Even more impressive are Mike's experiments, his attempts to crack the code, create a housing system that doesn't need any fossil fuels at all, even in the sweltering heat of the Arava desert. In order to avoid conflict with the authorities, they've decided to use a geodesic dome of steel girders as a skeletal system to build upon; when walls and roof are part of a single system, no engineering tests need to be performed to get building permission. On top of this metal frame, they've stacked a layer of straw bales, with a coat of mud plaster on either side of the straw. Looks great, but it hasn't been tested by a summer of 50-degree Celsius temperatures yet. The photos certainly paint a pretty picture, but I still have some misgivings about the place. After my time in Yemen, I'm certain that the only way to survive one of the harshest climates on the planet is by creating a metre of mass, building three-feet thick walls of earth. But the kibbutz won't allocate Mike the resources it would take to try it out. Once peak oil hits, they're going to regret it, though. Without their A/C units, they're going to dry up and crack like the clay around them. My other critique of the kibbutz also relates to the relative importance given to these ecological undertakings. Almost all of the eco-construction has taken place on the fringes of the village, so in the daytime the eco-park is only sparsely populated, and at night, it's a deserted ghost town, albeit a beautiful one. It's a shame that the ecological initiative is seen primarily as a way to attract the eco-tourist dollar, as opposed to the ontological compass that it must become. I repeat the verdict I gave five years ago when I made tracks out of there: "Lotan may still be leaps and bounds better than ninety-nine per cent of whatÕs out thereÉ but thatÕs still not good enough for my snobby self." I hope that this time my words will be received with an open head and an open heart. Don't kill the messenger with your six-shooter, pardner. It's all for the love and liberation of all living beings. Remember that!
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