Occidental home honors family and the land

It’s a home designed for getting closer to one another and closer to nature

Nestled into a clearing between a grove of old oaks and a meadow that overlooks forested ridge lines in the hills above Occidental, Will and Julie Parish’s “Longhouse” as they call it, sits low and unobtrusively on the site, its dark exterior finish serving as a kind of camouflage within the landscape.

It was mindfully designed to not upstage the rugged natural beauty that drew the couple to this remote spot in the first place.

“It’s not meant to be loud in the space. It’s meant to be quiet,” said Melanie Turner, the architect who designed the home with casual comfort in mind.

The house is 136 feet long under a single gable roof, with a large open living area and kitchen, bracketed on both ends by “dog trots” or open breezeways that separate the main house from the sleeping quarters.

It is faintly reminiscent of a lodge, with open ceilings of cedar and a four-sided fireplace in the middle of the room where folks can sit and warm up after a walk in the woods in winter or chat up the hosts as they prepare meals made with ingredients brought up from their own garden. A long slab table handmade from a fallen oak on the property is the heart of the room where the Parish’s gather with friends and family, including two adult sons, a daughter in law and a one-year-old grandson.

“What we wanted most of all was to have a place where our family could gather in a cozy and congenial way and definitely everything around food,” said Julie, who, with a degree in landscape architecture from U.C. Berkeley, has an appreciation for well-thought out design, particularly how buildings orient to the landscape.

They chose a location on the property that had already been cleared, and cleaned it up, without removing a single tree.

“It had been used as a junkyard and there was a hodgepodge of water piped in from springs and wells. It was kind of swampy,” said Turner, a principle on the project, with Pfau Long Architecture, now part of Perkins&Will in San Francisco. “By the time I got here the trash was gone but it definitely had been scarred. And then there was a big fallen tree.”

Attention was made to small details that mean a lot, like creating a wide space between the main counter and the stove so more than one cook can move about in the kitchen at the same time. A generous counter island invites friends and family to get close and converse during meal prep, central to life at Longhouse.

There is a spaciousness to it and a coziness as well,“ Julie said of the house, .

“There’s space for many people to circulate and find their own place and activity and to be together, but also to find our own more intimate spaces,” she said, like a reading nook built into a window in the main suite.

Both Parishes are outdoors lovers and land preservationists. Julie is a big supporter of The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land, whose mission is to create parks and protect land. Will is a former high school science teacher with a particular interest in environmental education. He also founded Ten Strands, a nonprofit organization to incorporate high-quality environment-based education into schools.

It’s about the outdoors

There is a large television hidden behind a piece of fine art photography, a cyanotype by photographer Meghann Riepenhoff. But the real attraction of this family retreat is what is going on outside. Massive glass pocket doors when open give the living space the feeling of an open area pavilion on warmer days and connect the home to the spectacular Bohemia Preserve, 1,000 acres of protected open space in the western hills of Sonoma County that the Parish’s steward in partnership with the non-profit LandPaths.

They consider it a multi-generational commitment.

The Parish’s portion is 450 acres, but no fences divide the old-growth forests, oak woodlands, deep ravines, creeks, ponds and open coastal meadows. It is a special place, home to several endangered and at-risk species of plants and animals, including the northern spotted owl, red tree voles and Pennell’s bird’s beak.

An avid bird watcher, Julie keeps track of her sightings, both flora and fauna, on a blackboard in the entry area by the kitchen: Douglas Iris, trillium and California Goldfields are among the flowers that dot the land. Overhead she’s seen pygmy and northern spotted owls, red tailed hawks, acorn woodpeckers, robins and spotted towhees. Flowers, branches and leaves foraged from the property are brought inside for natural adornment.

The 25-foot-wide house has two distinct views. One side snuggles beside a grove of mature oaks that provide shade and natural cooling in the summer. On “the meadow side” is a field of natural grasses that looks out over the vastness of the preserve. Footpaths lead to a vegetable garden and a labyrinth. From this perch, not another human or human made structure can be seen. Fallen wood from the property whenever possible was milled and repurposed into benches, a natural seating nook by a fire pit in the meadow, furniture and finishes inside the home.

A small metal emblem bearing a simplified diagram of the house is attached to each piece of furniture designed and constructed for the house.

The covered passways between the main house and the sleeping areas serve their purpose, one offering refuge on a wet day for gathering and playing table tennis.

“There’s a lot of symmetry in this house,” Turn said. “There’s a path that runs through the meadow. It connects to the pool to the house and the house to the garden. I’ve always thought of it as a spine connecting the various systems here. And the house very much refers to that. There’s an amazing grove of oak trees and its shady and relaxing and refreshing. And then there’s this grand vista,” Turner said. The house sitting quietly between them, she explained, gives them equal importance, while also serving as a bridge between two different worlds.

The house makes use of simple and honest materials. Pendant lights are in reed baskets dyed dark. The cabinets are eucalyptus. Instead of a huge beam to provide ceiling support there are a series of dark steel cross ties.

Julie said the home, finished in 2020 during the pandemic, has proven to provide the togetherness in nature that sought going into the project.

She said they love “harvesting, preparing and eating lovely meals and talking late into the night.”

“The table allows us to cluster at one end and we might have a puzzle at the other. We might move everything aside and play games. Or we head right out across the meadow to the fire pit, and that is really our favorite destination.”

Will whips up a concoction he calls “The Bohemia Elixir” and they do nothing, looking up for entertainment.

“We just go out,” she said, “and look at the stars.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 707-521-5204 or meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com.