By Dan Cook

Asha Deliverance, founder of Pacific Domes, donated this geodesic dome to the city of Ashland for use as a science teaching facility. She frequently donates domes to causes in which she believes, although her priority is to ensure that Pacific Domes remains profitable. // Photo by Jamie Lusch

Sweating, his back bent over a shovel, Dr. Gerry Lehrburger methodically works a small section of a sacred garden at the Jackson Wellsprings just north of Ashland. “Dr. Gerry,” as he’s known around the Wellsprings, is installing a huge irrigation system for the garden, part of his vision to create an eco-village on the property. In his day job he’s the emergency department physician at Ashland Hospital. He also greets the faithful at the Goddess Temple at the Wellsprings and manages the nearby ceremonial cleansing bath that he had restored last year.

At the opposite end of town, Asha Deliverance discusses an order for a new geodesic dome with a customer who’s purchasing one from her company, Pacific Domes. Pacific Domes is the world’s leading maker of geodesic domes. Customers include Nike, Disney, Donald Trump and scores of Burning Man devotees. Deliverance regularly donates her domes, which cost as much as $300,000, for relief purposes to those in need in places like Haiti, Honduras and New Orleans. She also donated a dome to serve as the Goddess Temple at Jackson Wellsprings.

As Lehrburger digs into Mother Earth and Deliverance sells domes, work progresses on an all-green-materials home on a hillside west of downtown Ashland. There, a crew of burly contractors works to construct the dwelling. They are all paying a company called EcoNest about $1,700 for the privilege of building this “living sanctuary” and learning the secrets of clay-straw-timber building. The homes sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars and are sustainable and ecological.