Our house is for sale. It’s been nearly forty years since we closed, and I remember it well. The home, the acreage, the outbuildings, captured our enthusiasm and spirits and promised to satisfy our wildest dreams. Taking ownership was seconded only by the birth of our sons, and our years occupying this speck of land have been extremely satisfying. We made a lot of changes— all for the better, we think— and still love the place. But it’s for sale.
Not everything is included— not the 40 years of memories in raising a family, starting a business from scratch, creating a carbon neutral home. Not included is building ponds and watching them become an integral part of the landscape, in seeing abandoned crop fields become places of immeasurable value to local wildlife. Memories of moonlit excursions on cross country skis, hot saunas on frigid nights, the return of migrating birds, the sweet scent of fallen leaves piled on the deck, the explosion of rhododendron and crabapple and dogwood flowers in spring— these we take with us. Time has passed quickly. Trees planted as mere saplings now tower overhead. They are included in the sale but the thrill in documenting their incredible growth is ours to keep.
There is a degree of self sufficiency here. A grid-tied solar array provides electricity at essentially no cost. Organic gardens routinely produce a year’s worth of amazing vegetables. Most are canned, frozen, or dehydrated; some are stored long term in a highly functioning root cellar. Also included is ready access to wild raspberries and morel mushrooms, venison and fresh fish. With reasonable effort, a family can live here with few trips to the grocery.
So why leave? Our motivation is driven by several factors— a desire to downsize and live closer to our sons chief among them. But there’s also appeal in the idea of living out our days in a different ecotype, exchanging hackberry, hickory, and black walnut for redwoods, Douglas fir, and huge forest ferns; trading views of unbroken industrial agriculture for ancient forests and a horizon where saltwater meets the sky; to live among big game and top predators and whales and seals and yet be within a few hours drive of snow-ladened mountains and prairies and deserts.
How crazy is it to deliberately disconnect from the familiar and comfortable, to trade a place of proven satisfaction and contentment for the possibility of new adventure and experience? How reckless to move to an area with a higher cost of living and increased risk of natural disasters? It would certainly be easier to stay where we are, and maybe we will. There’s no guarantee we’ll find someone who appreciates this place like we do.
Today we canned up a batch of tomato juice— pulp heavy, rich color. Then we sowed winter rye on the part of the garden that gave us a year’s worth of sweet corn and potatoes and cucumbers and green beans. We harvested pumpkins— big, gorgeous, orange pumpkins. We took a bike ride along the river with roadside crickets cheering us on, saw redwings gathered in fall flocks, raising a ruckus. Friends are coming over this evening. We’ll sit on the dock and enjoy good ale and sort through the world’s problems, solving most.
Tomorrow at 10 AM we’ll show the house again. Maybe we’ll get a full price offer and our lives will be forever changed. Or maybe in five or twenty years we’ll still be here putting up food, listening to crickets, and wondering what might have been. We won’t be too disappointed either way.
