In what feels like a previous life - prior to pursuing a career in architecture - I went to the woods to live deeply immersed in nature. For nearly three years, my wife and I lived in an off-grid cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains that we built with our bare hands using reclaimed materials. This immersion established a foundation of passive design principles, a more profound awareness of the environment, and a lasting study of the meaning of home in its most intrinsic, philosophical and practical sense.