Earthships Take Flight

About ten years ago I was in Colorado and one of my friends took me to see some alternative housing structures that were being built in the mountains. The first was an amazing teepee that had a woodstove and the second was an ‘earthship’.

I was blown away by the originality of the design and the ingenious idea of using recycled materials to build the home. The foundation was primarily compiled of recycled auto tires that had been cut in half and packed with dirt. Walls were plaster surrounding aluminum cans and bottles, solar panels were feeding batteries for power, and rain water was being filtered for drinking.

These homes are visually striking in their symbiotic relationship to surrounding terrain and can be completely off the grid. My husband and I fantasize about building one someday and there are seminars you can attend in Taos, NM to learn how to build your own from scratch or even retrofit existing homes.

Earthships are now sprouting up all over the world. Their ingenous co-existence with the earth makes them an intelligent alternative to exhausting the earth’s limited resources.