A September day a year ago.

We have not even moved in, boxes still stacked, the house in chaos.

The Nichols family has come up from Davis and Sacramento and San Diego to help us inaugurate the place.

It’s our new home, but it’s not yet our home.  It will be a while yet before it becomes that.  What up with the chicken barn, Evan Nichols asks.

We open the french doors and step inside.  The group oohs and aahs – the unclad raw wood interior has that kind of impact.  Evan’s wife Amy announces that it would make an incredible yoga studio.  Evan considers this.  I see writing workshops, he says.  Mazie can see only the ping pong table. My friends and I are going to hang out here, she says.  I declare that I’d rather it be a beer making room.  Or perhaps cheese once we get the sheep going.  No way, says Anna.  It’s going to be my pottery studio.

Evan ponders all this.  It’s everything that anybody needs it to be.  It’s the Room of Requirement, he says.

The Room of Requirement