SunRay Kelley wanted to build in rhythm with nature, his teacher

The forested lower slopes of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State are dense and not much inhabited. But, venturing there in recent decades, walkers might well believe they had discovered an Old Man of the Woods. He wore a brown peaked cap, like an elf’s, on white dreadlocked hair that fell to his shoulders. His beard was long, his scruffy clothes were matted with mud and straw, and he went barefoot, even in snow. At times, as he scavenged for berries, dragged branches or enjoyed a swing from perilous trees, his fleeting, shuffling form seemed more animal than human. But his wave, with a hand that held either a chainsaw or a fat hand-rolled “herbal palliative”, would be welcoming and warm.

This, a nine-acre spread outside Sedro-Woolley, was SunRay Kelley’s homestead-kingdom. Dotted around it, often shadowy in the Washington drizzle, were seven or so houses, hand-built by himself. Three multi-storey ones, with wavy shingle roofs, cupolas, spires and protruding ridge-poles, rather like Japanese temples; tiny round cabins sprouting from the stumps of massive old-growth cedars; tree houses linked by suspension bridges, and several nine-sided yurts. Moss and sedum grew on most roofs. Whole small trees, sometimes with their roots, were used as railings. The fitting-out inside, entirely wood and glass, was beautiful; outside his buildings had an unfinished look, because they were evolutionary, ready to be altered if he had a better idea. After all, everything in nature changed; everything was in a state of going to compost. His biggest and perhaps his finest work, the Temple at Harbin Hot Springs in California, lasted less than a decade before wildfires burned it to ash.

Parked somewhere about the place would be a Gypsy Wagon or two, old Toyota camper vans with their back ends transformed into cedar-wood dens with big glass windows, double beds, propane gas and solar fridges. The first-made of these vehicles was probably the first solar-electricity-diesel hybrid in the world, as far as anyone knew. It was all more than enough to keep a steady trail of America’s eco-architects and gearheads coming along the track to find him, and a mushroom-sprinkle of 70 SunRay buildings appearing across the continent.

He would not darken the door of a studio any more than he would visit ER when his chainsaw smacked him in the head, or opened up his leg. But he liked giving visitors a tour. He was proud of his craft and in love with his materials, their usefulness and their abundance. His homestead was surrounded by pine and cedar trees, and this was where he had grown up, smelling the dust of his grandfather’s cedar-shake mill, making forts of the old stumps and camps of branches. In fact, he had just gone on doing what he had loved doing as a child. As he wandered through the woods, he picked up whatever looked likely. When he met carved and polished wood, especially cedar, he could not help stroking and smelling it. This was sun trapped in wood, solar energy manifesting itself. The outer cladding on his latest Gypsy Wagon was cedar wood he found on the forest floor, lying there probably for 100 years, with all its bulges and ripples; so old that he could split it without breaking the cells. It was almost eternal.

Wood was cut too much in Washington, however, so where he could he used straw-bale or, better, cob. Most of his buildings had cob on the outer walls, an excellent insulation. It was just water, sand, clay and straw, an age-old recipe, but his had more straw and sometimes no sand. For strength, you needed fibre. It was creamy then, so inviting, and as it dried he could sculpt it and free-form it any way he chose. He carved dragons, flowers and, round the doorway of one yoga-yurt, giant female genitalia. Mixing up cob was pretty physical too, in big troughs into which he and his friends would jump naked to stomp the stuff around. He met his second wife Bonnie that way. Cob was also what caked him from day to day, matting his hair, sticking to his clothes. But Earth wasn’t dirty. Rolling in it and rolling on it were just fine.

His parents had raised cattle and kept pigs and chickens, but he never wanted to build fences or chase cows. Or, for that matter, eat three meals a day of meat cooked in bacon grease, like his father. He was vegetarian early and, though he might have made a good linebacker, inclined more to art and drafting. He began to study building as a third-grader, watching a new gym go up at his school. His college building designs were so wild, though, that he was recommended to get a hammer and construct them himself. So in 1976, with the help of his younger brother Tim, he did. He called his first attempt the Earth House; his solar-power ideas were primitive, but it was good to live in, and had bronze hands holding up the roof-beams. His next big idea was the Sky House with its peaked, flyaway roofs, a building that felt to him as if it could pick him up and scatter him to the wind.

Mother Nature was the greatest artist and his true drafting-teacher, and the woods were her store. He simply copied her. Nature abhorred a straight line, therefore so did he. He went with curves and circles as the most resilient shapes in nature. Natural heating and cooling through the cob, natural lighting, compost outhouses, living roofs, solar power; and floors (of cob again, but with more sand) that were smoothly hummocky, not flat. He wanted his buildings to sing and dance, to be full of the energy of the spirit of life that moved through everything. His rafters spiralled towards circular skylights, his jambs and lintels flowed and round poles made his timber-framing. He had to visit the sawmill sometimes, for 2x4s and 2x6s to reinforce the walls, but their relentless straightness was disguised. In the same way he had to hit town sometimes for supplies, but travelled low and close to Earth on his electric-powered recumbent bike, strung with fluttering prayer-flags.

There was a business model here, somewhere. He advertised locally, offering to design and build a small modular house in a week for $15,000-20,000. No permit needed. His latest reconditioned camper-van could be had (can still be had) for $59,000, including a new carburetor, tyres and brakes. Most of the buildings on his own patch were rented out as B&Bs.

Business went slowly. Yet he hardly minded, because it was not the reason he was there. The best thing he had done was to make the ten ponds on his homestead in the pits he had dug to get the clay out. When he filled the ponds the frogs came, the eagles came, the herons came, the otters came. He had created an ecosystem himself. Similarly, in the orchard, where he had grafted dozens of new apple varieties on old, bent, moss-laden trees, he had created an “edible forest”. Besides the apples he had nut trees and berry bushes, and to these bear came, deer came, flocks of birds, and he came too for most of his meals in fruit season. Here was another ecosystem which would comfortably outlast him.

The Native Americans of that part of west Washington had lived down on the water, not in the mountains. But he liked a saying of theirs: each human being had a song, and once you found your song, you needed no other blessing. For everything would come to you. ■