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 You get the feeling that Larry Medinger builds homes just as an excuse to dig holes in the ground.
It’s in the dirt and the rocks that Medinger, a geology buff and a designer of Aleph Springs, can see most deeply into the region’s geologic past, while appreciating the forces behind its diverse ecological beauty.
“From any of the home sites at Aleph Springs, I can look south and west to the foothills of the Siskiyou Mountains and see Switzerland, with its fir tree forests and snowy peaks; to the north and east, I could be looking at Northern California with its dry grassy hills spotted with the occasional stand of oak. These are two amazingly different ecological provinces.”
To afford residents the most beautiful views, Medinger is designing the eight single-family homes to sit as high on the land as possible. The new community will also have six condominium homes with similar second-story views.
Medinger says that residents who grow vegetables in the community garden will be particularly grateful for the forces that shaped the region over the last 25 million years. With much of
Ashland developed on the alluvial plain of a granite mountain, the soil is the same kind of “rich black dirt” that Medinger worked on the family farm in Nebraska. 
Medinger enjoys introducing friends to the natural wonders of the area.
“I take them to Siskiyou Pass, along I-5, to see the roots of what are called the Old Cascades,” he says. “There you can look up at the cliff and see a black horizontal line. When you get close you can see that you’re looking at ancient tree stumps and roots that were carbonized from by an ancient hot ash fall erupting from a nearby volcano.”
For hundreds of years, Medinger adds, travelers have known the remnant of that volcano as a landmark called Pilot Rock.
“All these beautiful things,” says Medinger, are here in front of your eyes.”
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