The Music of the Spheres

By Richard F. Miller

To the poet Gertrude Stein, "House is a house is a house is a house" might have said it all about walls and a roof that enclose living space, but to my wife and me, our house is much more. The desire to capture solar energy shaped the structure’s functional architecture and determined its placement on the land. The resulting celestial orientation of the house inspires insights into the cosmic order of things that have become a psychic extension of our lives. During the years it has sheltered us, we have routinely come to expect the metaphysical rewards this house bestows upon us in its close relationship with nature and celestial events going on in our corner of the universe.

The compass rose tells us the house is sited on a true north-south azimuth so that the studio and living areas face east and south to embrace the bounteous sunlight lavished upon Central Oregon’s high desert country. Early sun’s rays spilling over the Paulina mountains finger east-facing solarium windows like a warm reaching hand, then shouldering above the mountain range the life-giving star floods the kitchen-dining area with cheerful morning light for breakfast. As the sun arcs on west, its rays stream through south-facing windows, warming the house and suffusing it with a pleasing quality of light. Skylights and gable windows light and warm inner rooms.

Four times a year, at high noon on the summer and winter solstices, and on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, points established on north walls light briefly as the sun’s rays touch them at ecliptic limits of its seasonal arcs. This is our own Stonehenge, satisfying an atavistic yearning as old as humankind for an ordered universe. But unlike Stonehenge, many of whose mysteries remain shrouded in arcane rituals of the ancient civilization that raised the standing stones on the bleak Salisbury Plain, our celestial calculations were performed to aid in designing a house that would return passive solar energy.

As intended, the house does indeed generate solar energy, measured in significant dollar savings, but this material benefit is not its only appeal. The house itself is a reliable compass, a daily sundial, and a seasonal calendar, telling time as well as direction. Like the triangular shadow cast by the gnoman on a sundial, geometric shadows formed by sunlight shining through south-facing window openings inch across floors and walls to mark the hours and passing days and seasons as the earth turns from solstice to solstice. Living daily with these ever-changing patterns of light and shadow, we are continually aware of the celestial rhythms to which the structure is attuned.

A bonus of this orientation is a growing familiarity with star constellations glittering in the night heavens, and an intimate acquaintance with the waxing and waning moon as it tracks across the sky. On restless nights, which occur more often as one grows older, these luminous bodies flung across space are old friends to the fitful sleeper as he roams the house, their pale light glimmering through windows and skylights contrived to capture the sun. Gazing directly at the north star while standing under the skydome that lights the library, the novice astronomer is reassured the world is still on course. Fixing on that distant pin-point of light, he fairly senses the earth revolving on its axis, wobbling a little, to be sure, and he is not too concerned that due to the precession of the equinoxes, by A.D. 12,000 another star, Vega, in the constellation, Lyra, will be the polestar.

And there is a romance about living in this house that itself lives closely with nature—a romance enriching our lives with wondrous events which would go unnoticed in a structure shuttered against its surroundings and the elements. Nature’s pageant plays every day of the year. Changing seasons set the stage, and as the earth turns through spring, summer, fall, and winter, our window expanses command a front-row seat for this captivating cyclorama.

As spring awakens a sleeping earth, these windows frame budding plants and trees striving for new growth. Then as days lengthen and the sun climbs toward the solstice, we look out upon a flowering world vibrant with energy under summer’s high bright sun and intense blue skies. Nature has set a lavish stage, and our lives quicken to meet the challenge of the long, full days separating spring and fall.

It seems as if these halcyon days will never end, but after the solstice, with each sunrise minutes later and each sunset minutes earlier, all too soon the familiar bite of approaching fall sharpens the air. Twilight hours end the days again as daylight fades into dusk, then closes quickly to darkness. Near the end of September, when late shafts of light from the setting sun gild the top of a lofty ponderosa pine seem through a high gable window, we know that within the hour the tree will be a smudge against the night sky. Summer is over, and fall sets a Spartan stage for approaching winter.

When winter does pounce upon us from where it has lain in wait at the timberline in surrounding mountains, we watch the sun arc lower each day, cutting the horizon ever farther to the south, until at noon on the winter solstice it struggles to only twenty-three degrees above the horizon. Yet rising late and setting early through the winter months, its golden rays still greet us for breakfast, and during the day penetrate deeply into south-facing rooms. Unlike the ancients who feared that the sun would disappear altogether, we know it will reverse direction on December twenty-first and begin its slow climb north to sixty-eight degrees altitude on June twenty-first.

Short days and long winter evenings are times for more personal pursuits—for hobbies and books and writing; for introspection and thoughtful communication; for firelight and music and friends around the dinner table. Long to be treasured is the memory of a February anniversary night when we sat alone listening to music, lights out except for a subdued lamp in the stairwell.

New powder snow blanketed the earth with a rumpled satin coverlet glistening coldly under a clear moon just one night shy of full. Outside, the temperature had fallen far below zero, and even faint shadow traceries etched on the snow by mute trees and brittle shrubs seemed frozen in time. The very air crackled and snapped, but inside, a leaping fire whirled and sparked in the faceted, round glass fireplace, painting the walls with fanciful patterns of dancing flames.

The moon, a burnished globe in the eastern sky, illumined the solarium with a crystal radiance belonging in another dimension. It was a magical night made for the enchantment of a favorite Mozart violin concerto filling the rooms with seductive melody. As the fire quieted to glowing embers and the haunting musical notes faded into the night, before retiring we stood at the solarium windows for a last entranced look at the silvered world stretching eastward to the mountains. Even the nocturnal hooty-owl who timorously challenges the dark from a nearby pine tree knew not to break the spell with his throaty "Who? Who-Who?"

In addition to predictable celestial phenomena which delight us, serendipitous happenings in the house add unexpected pleasures. Dramatizing the dinner hour on exceptional evenings, a flaming sunset awash against the Cascade range to the west relights the darkened eastern sky with colors rivaling a sunrise. At times, as if directed by a stage hand, odd shafts of sunlight penetrate rooms and hallways to spotlight a vase, a flower arrangement, or a special painting. And when the quality of light is right, oak floors, cedar paneling, and teakwood furniture glow with the deep, mellow richness craftsmen of another generation breathed into their work.

Nature’s creatures live their daily routines outside our glass window-walls. Skittish cottontails bounce from cover to cover searching their little world for food and shelter. Flowing-tailed gray squirrels that have just robbed a critter-proof bird feeder scamper onto the deck begging peanuts, standing like well-dressed little people to peer into the dining room. Brazen jays rap at the glass screeching for their share. Deer bedded in protective bitterbrush watch us unafraid, all eyes and velvet ears, and until some brave hunter shot him, "Limpy," our lamed resident-coyote, boldly quartered adjacent fields hunting his supper.

While preparing the evening vegetarian meal, saturated southwest light penetrating kitchen windows transforms colorful fruits and vegetables into lustrous Della Robbia ornaments almost too fine to eat. Varicolored legumes spilling into the pot could be strung and worn as decorative beads. In large, clear-glass jars, pastas, flours from many regions, and an alphabet of hearty grains turn on oversize lazy Susans awaiting the cook’s skill to transmute them into nourishing meals. Harvested from earthy fields where the sun’s energy combined with moisture and nutrients to grow them, these basic foodstuffs are compelling evidence of our imperative to maintain nature’s ecological balance.

Increasing awareness of our total environment teaches a sensibility of our role in nature. No one really knows what the future of the world holds in terms of energy, of material goods, or even of life itself; but living in our celestially oriented house, we have learned profound respect for the universal scheme of things that allows us to survive on our fragile planet. Conserving energy where we can, always aware of the Faustian bargain of mindless consumerism at the expense of the earth’s finite resources, we are determined to direct our own energies toward a more responsible stewardship of our share of nature’s bounty.

And although scientists would scoff at the metaphysical presumptions our closer relationship with the universe inspires, on still, star-spangled nights we are almost certain we hear the poet’s ethereal music of the spheres.

Fred J. Becker, Architect

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