Tread Lightly Paul Bunyan

Paul Bunyan was a man of legend, a tall dude who had a big impact on Minnesota. His famous exploits still affect us in many ways, I think, right?

We are finishing off the basement in our 1920's era home. The stairs, though solid wood, creak on the way down. The walls, though solid block and mortar are aged but have held their own over the years. The house, and the basement as the foundation, were built with the best lumber and other materials of the day - back in the day when resources were limitless, costs were topless and the future was bright with residential progression in America.

Paul Bunyon was a great man. The legendary tales told regarding him are as tall as he was. An outdoorsman, a lumberjack, a hard worker, a conservationist...? I don't know. For one thing he thrived when parts of this land were still open and boundless and free range; and for another thing his carbon footprint was probably fairly large - an anomaly in a balanced world (and the world has a way of dealing with anomalies and balancing things out {dodo birds, woolly mammoths, polar bears?).

I wonder why my boys don't know of Mr. Bunyan's tales yet? (Though they will after this writeup). Is it because they live in an urban area - where all folks aren't white, where forests aren't seen for miles and miles from their bedroom window, where an endless supply of varying tales is available - straining and sifting so that only the most shiny and pronounced legends stand out?

What are the tall tales of today? Some sort of microchip man, using his minuscule stature to fight the effects of static cling? Maybe a nanobot securing the open source world from the encapsulated effects of patented software... who knows, perhaps your neighborhood has it's own legends that are just starting to creep into the everyday pattern.

Natural resources aren't bottomless. And neither are checkbooks. Sometimes it gets old to balance between this and that. Folks like to work, company's like to make money, Paul liked to cut wood. We want to move forward, to get things done, to create economy. The lakes 10,000 lakes Paul made are great to cool off at, the old growth wood he cut holds my house (and much of Fargo, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago) together and we still use both - though they do have natural limits and we logical people will have to make difficult choices about balance at some point.

Perhaps the answer is infill. What can we use to fill-in the neglected urban gaps? Spaces that might have left a big guy like Paul feeling constrained, uptight and uncomfortable? Maybe further modern and technical answers will assist with these endeavors, or perhaps your neighbor has elbow grease to offer, or your faith will pull through with some great act.

Houses were built differently at the height of Paul Bunyan's era and have been built differently through the ages. There have been interior and exterior retrofits and brand new models that become old. Also, houses that were built to breathe and bear the elements and houses that seal and encapsulate to fight the elements - efficiently.

For now, we will be paying extra for the man-made foam insulation in our basement - thereby encapsulating it from the seemingly changing natural elements. To seal it up, and create a comfortable living area. The financial cost may not be made up completely through efficiency, but we will live and play and create and hopefully the trade off will be that we use less energy and resources.

And eventually, who knows - perhaps one of our young pups will use the space to write tall tales.