While visiting friends in Seattle this summer, I had a some time on my hands and realized that I was pretty close to a town called Renton which is where a guy named Jim Anderson built a beautiful geodesic dome on the banks of the fabulously named, Lake Desire.
Jim Anderson sitting on top of the Shake Dome c.1971 as it appeared in Domebook 2
Jim Anderson along with Chuck Nelson and Jim Lang had given a course at the Free University at Ohio State called "Photography For People Who Like to Drink Wine" that I enrolled in (circa 1969) and it really propelled me on my way as a hippy artist.
Chuck and his wife Chrissy and Pam and I had stayed in that dome for week or two back in 1974 and it was amazing. So naturally I was curious to see if the dome was still there and if Jim still lived in it. I figured it ought to be easy to find since as I recalled, Lake Desire was a pretty small. As it turned out, it wasn't all that easy and after diving around for a while realized that I might be able to locate it by using the Google Earth app on the alPhone4S.
Lake Desire screenshot from Google Earth.
The dome revealed
Voila! Thanks again Google for the valuable tools you give us for free (while data-mining our every move). By blowing the image way up and carefully tracing the shore line I was eventually able to spot it. Unfortunately there was nobody home and the dome had apparently developed some leaks over the years and now wears raincoat. Here's how she looks as of July, 2013.
40+ years later.