In time the people of the county came to experience in the monks what Thomas Merton describes as "an intangible but extremely stimulating sense of confidence and happiness and peace:" qualities that accompanied them as they built a second temporary home, which came to be known as "the pineboard monastery."

A people with kinship to both the worlds of matter and of spirit, a community dedicated to a radical response to Christ's weighted call, the monks remained in this building until construction of the permanent monastery was completed in 1960.