Ice formations around the waterfall’s edges, January 2025

Hello Everyone and Happy 2025! 

It is hard to believe that we are already a quarter of a century into the second millennia. I know most people talk about New Year’s resolutions at the beginning of January, but a few weeks into the new year we probably already know if our resolutions will stick. I’m a believer in small realistic goals. Last year, my resolution was to take walks more, even in the cold dark gray damp days of winter. I did pretty well, since my goal was simply an undefined “more” walks, and I definitely took more walks, though I did not manage to walk every day.

This year I have no specific resolutions, only to keep making progress on my place while taking reasonable care of myself and not drop too many of the other balls that I am juggling! Seems enough to ask of myself. This should be an exciting year for me, with the possibility of moving into my new home and studio. We shall see!

I do have a very specific goal for this newsletter this year, which is to share with you the entire process of building the house from the very beginning! This month, I’m going to share with you the site preparation, basic design and layout, and digging the foundation. In reality, of course, I am way ahead of that stage. This means I can fast forward through the boring parts, like the many months figuring out a septic plan and the six months spent getting all of our permits. I will be condensing a year into this month’s newsletter, so it will therefore be a long one with lots of pictures!

In addition to the building project, there will be two other sections. For my “Nature Spotlight” section, instead of sharing about a living thing, I want to share with you ice related things on the property, especially icicles around waterfalls. I will also be starting a new section where I feature a “Superhero of the Month”. This time around I will give you a more thorough introduction to the most key person to the building project, my father Gary Gyekis, who is orchestrating the entire thing, using his decades of building experience to make this all happen.

Also, I love to hear from you! Let me know what you thought of this newsletter, what your New Year’s resolutions were and if you’re sticking to them so far, what DIY projects you are up to, how are you are staying healthy and sane in this climate (both literally and metaphorically). Or send me a picture if you have gotten your art from my sale up on your walls!

My final thought that I would like to share is: it may be cold, and we may be just entering the heart of winter, but we’re over the hump of darkness. Every day we gain a minute or two of light, and I am so enjoying those slightly later sunsets. Keep heart, my dear friends. We will weather this winter… and these four years… together. Thank you so much for being part of my community and bringing light into the world.

That’s all! Again, its a long one, feel free to just skim and look at pictures! Also, there are some videos for this newsletter here.

Love,

Elody

The bright side of these long cold spells - skiing on the frozen reservoir!

One of the waterfalls last week with icicles and ice built up from the spray.

Nature Spotlight: ICE

As mentioned, instead of a creature or plant, this month I want to share with you ICE! Specifically, two wonderful ice-related phenomena. One is, the magical icicles and other ice formations that form on and around the waterfalls from the drips and splatter. The other is that when we have several weeks of sub-freezing temperatures, the reservoir freezes over with thick ice. Usually there is also snowfall on top of the ice. Three times now I have used the wide flat expanse of the lake as a surface for cross country skiing! I have not yet had the opportunity to ice skate on it, as I don’t trust the ice until it is VERY thick, and by then there is always snow. I also stick to the edge where I know that the lake is shallow. The first time I dared to go out, we saw ice fisherman in the middle of the lake and they reported the ice to be 19 inches thick. Regardless, don’t worry, I play it safe, and it is an extraordinarily beautiful way to spend a crisp winter sunset.

Above: Intricate ice formations built up from water splatter “stalagmites”

Below: from a previous year in March, the ice had built up for months, and after a few weeks of melting, this was the ice formation that was left behind:

Above: My sweetie on the frozen lake when we first skied on it two winters ago

Below: Our shadows when we skied two weeks ago, and during the snowstorm on Sunday!

Dad and I at an art opening in 2016, and us after a long work day last fall!

Superhero of the Month: Gary Gyekis (aka Dad)

As mentioned, my father is a builder, and none of this project would be possible without him. Many of you on this newsletter already know him, but even you may not know the full extent of his experience and history as a builder. I asked my mom (Loanne Snavely, also indispensable to this project, there will be a section on her in a future newsletter!) to help me get the early details right, so the sections in quotes are in her words:

“After his junior year at Bucknell University, Gary took a break to work for his father's roofing company. The roofing work was strenuous, hot, exhausting and to which the new person was assigned the never-ending task of carrying heavy bundles up endless ladders, along with other tasks. Gary learned a lot about what he did and didn't like to do. He liked working physically with his hands and strength, but he didn't like roofing! He also enjoyed taking some history night courses. Eventually returning to Bucknell, and not allowed to take any more history courses, he spent his last year having fun with art, which opened some creative possibilities.

After graduating, Gary and his friend Bill Geyer began making items of wood  - wall sconces, coffee tables, and other objects. In January 1976, they formalized a partnership called Geyer & Gyekis. As woodworkers they did all kinds of projects until Steve Stamos and Lucie Whitchurch asked them to build a house! A whole house, from the bottom up!!! To prepare them for such an undertaking, they sent Bill and Gary to the Shelter Institute in Maine in April 1978. There they had an immersive learning experience in sustainable and economical home design, engineering, weight loads, passive solar principles, and so much more. They were also sent to work on actual home building projects in the area. So they got plenty of book learning and hands-on application in a brief period.

Upon returning to PA, they immediately set to work on the design and building of a home for Steve and Lucie on a beautiful mountaintop just south of Lewisburg. The crew were mostly friends and included Steve. It was a memorable project and was the first of many (16 or so) homes and additions they built (with various crew members) over the next dozen years. They also designed some homes for others to build.

In June, 1991, a disastrous fire was set by a neighbor kid to their shop, destroying the building, the tools and equipment, and the entire wood inventory. Everything!! (and almost our home!)  It was a new beginning from the ground up. They were nearly finished with a remodeling job, and Bill had just begun his teaching career in the carpentry program at Penn College, so Gary continued as an independent woodworker.

When Loanne got a job at Penn State in 1992, the family moved to Penns Valley and Gary designed and built a new home there, and after a year of working out of the garage, he designed and built a new woodworking shop in which he worked on a multitude of projects over the next 30 + years.”

In the past decade or so, my dad was mostly doing custom cabinetry and kitchen design/build and remodels, and had not done a whole house in quite some time. So there were a few new things we had to educate ourselves on, such as new building codes and some new options in materials and techniques. Essentially, however, we went into this project armed with Gary’s amazing brain: knowing how to design and build a house, phenomenal carpentry skills, and a network of local connections with other contractors, sources for wood and materials, etc.

None of this project would be possible without him, and he is dedicating himself full time to it. I am the luckiest person in the world to have him! I love you Dad!

Above: I had no photos of Steve and Lucie’s house, so I stole some from Lucie’s FB page!

Below: The second house my father built was the house that I grew up in. These were the only pictures I could quickly find, from a visit a few years ago.

Feature Project: Breaking Ground!

Step 1: A Clean Slate

When I purchased the property, there was a single-wide trailer from the 1960s on it. We initially considered trying to work off of it, basically building a large addition on it. While this would have been easier for the building permits, we ultimately decided that it was not in good enough condition. Anything neglected in the woods for years is going to be mildewed and mouse-ridden. It was not structurally sound enough to haul, so we had to take it apart. This project took most of the summer of 2022.

My wonderful partner Tim directed the demolition. First, we unfortunately had to remove the four lovely hemlocks out front. Then we demolished the porch, removed the roof, and stripped the metal siding off to be recycled. Then Tim used a sawzall to literally slice it into pieces like a giant loaf of bread, knocking over each “slice” one at a time for further dismantling. Finally, we dismantled the steel undercarriage for recycling. See pictures of all this below, plus some videos here.

Though inevitably some things went to the landfill, in addition to recycling the metal we were also able to salvage a lot of other materials, including two-by-fours and sheets of plywood. I painstakingly removed many nails and we were able to reuse the boards and plywood for all kinds of things around the property, especially dirty jobs like creating concrete forms.

Step 2: Garden Shed and Power Pole/Lines

I will not bore you with the details of how many phone calls and hours spent on hold in order to adjust our power situation (removing old pole that was on building site, setting up temporary power, getting the new power hook up with the last section underground) but suffice to say that the process was about a year long. More fun is the one day it took to move the shed that was also in the way. Basically, we used a mini excavator and some heavy duty ratchet straps to drag it to the other side of the property to get it out of the way. We are still using it for miscellaneous storage! Here is a timelapse.  

A schematic of the foundation and my paper model of the house, showing the two sides and the trapezoid porch in between.

Step 3: The Design Process

I’ll tell you a whole lot more about the design in a future newsletter. For now, I will say that the winter of 2022/2023 we spent designing and re-designing and re-re-designing it. The many iterations partly were a result of the permit process and learning what the limitations and opportunities we had specific to the property and current code. Everything was carefully thought out to suit my needs and be as fabulous as we could make it while being modest enough to be possible, but mostly it just kept getting bigger and grander!

For now, I want to share with you the basic layout. We could only get a building permit for one home, so we designed it to essentially be two small houses connected by a large shared porch and a covered vestibule. Technically it is one house, but one side is just for me and the other side is a separate guest house/mother-in-law house. The ingenious and unusual part of the design is that the shared porch is a big triangular/trapezoid shape that mirrors the natural curve of the cliffs with the waterfalls down below, and opens up the view down into the gorge from the porch. You can just barely see the falls, but you can hear them loud and clear.

Above: Me attempting to stand in my future bedroom!

Step 4 - Laying it out on the ground

This was a lot harder than creating a rectangle and making sure that everything was square.  Arguments were had, adjustments were made, and eventually we got it all symmetrical with the complicated trapezoid correct. At this stage, we were simply marking where the house would be and thus where the excavator should dig.

Step 5: Breaking Ground!

This was the one day we hired a real excavator. All the smaller scale earth-moving stages done with rented equipment driven by our friend Kenny. Once the area was dug out and level, we laid it out again and began the first layer of the foundation!

That is all for now! Next steps will be in the next newsletter!

Sirona Falls