Commentary by Carlee Duncan (daughter) May, 2004

My dad the inventor has an amazing way of blending art

and tinkering to find scientific solutions to

ecological building and mechanical problems. Being

deeply tied to the earth, it is fascinating how he

blends the troubled history of our family in to the

desire to save the troubles that fatigue the land he

grew up on. His passion for art, desire to understand

systems, curiosity, technical training, construction

background, the ecologist in him and having made a

very fundamental choice to swear off materialism has

fueled (really) some very progressive inventions. The

most fascinating of late is an almost 100% efficient

propane stove. The beauty of this Home Depot pieced

invention is the memorizing curves of the main

chamber, the turns of the hoses and the artistic arcs

of the main plate. To have him describe the DNAesque

double helix that constitutes the inside and guts of

this mechanism, combine with the stark glow of a blue

propane flame, peak the curiosity as to if the inside

is the true beauty of this creation. To have created

a heat source, which can allow one to live through the

coldest of winters in the heart of the Rocky Mountains

at $8 in gas bills, is a leap and bound ahead of the

$80 I pay to freeze in my San Francisco Victorian.

The next fascinating part of the living environment that

has been developed by Gary Duncan is the electric

personality of the 12 volts that light my dad's world.

On this trip to Colorado, I flew into Grand Junction

airport, stopped by to make a few courtesy calls on

the relatives, soaked my city stress away at the

Wiesbaden in Ouray and ate a very satisfying Chicken

Suisa at the Adobe in Ridgeway. The entire time we

are chatting it up in the Screeming Chartreuse Banana (my

dad's VW Vanagon) as we trek across the Southwestern

Colorado scenery, I'm sitting on the storage unit (car

battery) which is collecting the electricity that will

later light his house for as many hours so he can

write or play the guitar on this beautiful spring

evening.

Of the three utilities for any standard house in the town

of Montrose, Colorado, the one remaining to mention iswater.

Water being the catalyst of

life, it can be such a precious and pricy commodity in

this drought stricken southwestern corner of Colorado.

At this moment the majestic San Juan mountains, which

you can't quite see from this spot in Shavano Valley, are

teeming with snow which is already melting and finding

itís way to the water cources which feed this area.

With a large percentage of this water going to

agricultural production it can make this substance

very scarce. With the bleak outlook that plagues

water rights in this area, my dad pays a whopping 25 cents

a month for water. Yes he has to hop in his huge

F250, affectionately named "Thug", so add a little

transportation cost to transport from the water

facility to his site, but it is still significantly

less than the $40.00 per month my grandmother pays to

use water in downtown Montrose.

So one might ask, "what is this guy doing? Camping?"

Well by standard city dwelling terms, yes! If you ask

my dad what he is doing he'll say he's "Living the sane life". As a

textbook case of EI (Environmental Illness) his health

issues have forced him to rearrange his lifestyle and

living situation. The pollutants of building

materials, furnishing etc. of any standard house in

the town of Montrose would send him into a state of

allergic reaction and immobility. By living on the

outskirts of town, my dad serves a dual purpose. He

is living in an area and in a space that makes him

feel healthy and in return is working to restore the

health of the land he resides on. The site my dad

currently calls home is located in the Shavano Valley,

just 10 minutes from the town of Montrose. In a

5-minute walk from his trailer there are remnants of

hunting trips (shotgun shells, targets and dead animal

carcasses), late night drinking parties (fire pits and

broken bottles), blatant waste dumping (concrete

chunks and full garbage bags) which make this juniper/

sagebrush land rival a trash heap. On a spring day like

this one, the primroses have just bloomed, the bugs

are making their way to food, and the fauna is light

green against the background of the yellow sandstone

soil. You can just see the North Fork Mountains

peaking over the foothills and mesas all in contrast to

the dazzling blue sky that is only this blue in

Colorado. With these sharp contrasts it is no wonder

Gary Duncan has taken it upon himself to forge a land

steward program, which is a delicate understanding

with the BLM, about his residency on this land. He

stays here while working to restore the

destruction that has occurred on this site. One of

the amazing aspects of this lifestyle my dad leads is

that he produces almost no waste and can actually

utilize the waste of others to develop and produce

necessary building and fertilizing materials. In a

nutshell, each venture into the environment that

surrounds this self-contained unit, actually improves

it as he is reclaiming the land through harvesting the

litter and doing something positive with it.

The final factor in this equation of ìliving is

education. As all dads are a source of knowledge,

discipline, custom and insight, my dad is willing to

impart these fathering instincts on the troubled youth

in his community. Too often the law enforcement

officials and judicial system shake their heads at the

"bad seeds" that cross their paths in their line of

work. It is those very seeds, which my dad would like

to plant out in Shavano Valley to serve a dual

purpose. Having been convicted of various

misdemeanors, this group owes society and their

community retribution for their errant choices.

Instead of subjecting them to the criminal minds and

ways of incarceration, wouldn't it be better to

utilize them as a labor force to help clean up the

very land they may have been a destructive force on?

The idea is this: have them come out to this

sustainable living site, gain the knowledge of how to

love the land through positive environmental action,

history telling and sweat off their own brow in an

effort to encourage their thoughts towards a more

holistic view of their destructive activities. While

they learn, their labor in cleaning up and helping to

produce ecological building materials helps to pay

back their debt to society.

So I implore all of you to take a moment out of your

lifestyles to be open minded about the values of

sustainability. It is not an easy lifestyle as many

tasks like solar cooking and solar laundry take way

more time than the 20 minute Swanson TV dinner and the

hour and a half at the Laundromat to accomplish clean

clothes, but aren't we all too overscheduled anyway?

Take a minute to sit among the Juniper, with

your feet on the sandstone gravel, watch the green

caterpillar crawl through the primroses and sip your

free-trade coffee with Gary Duncan out in Shavano, the

only requirement is an open mind.