Plans

The summer I turned 4 years old, my parents and I lived in a teepee on 10 acres of land they bought on a hillside in Valley County Idaho while they built a house. It was solid enough for us to live in by the time winter rolled around, but 26 years later it's nowhere near "finished". And when I say it's incomplete, I don't mean that nobody's gotten around to painting the drywall in the basement (because there is no basement). I mean that three sides of the house don't have siding - they're just bare plywood. I mean that the second story loft HAS no drywall - puffy yellow insulation is visible between the studs and some long ago renter stuffed a patchwork quilt into a hole in the wall where a fan used to be to keep out the bats. For a house that's more than a quarter of a century old, it's still pretty raw. And I'm planning to move in at the end of June.

I haven't really mentioned my immediate plans here, mostly because I'm still not sure if what I'm doing is completely insane, or beautifully and cosmically right. Ok, that's not true, I am absolutely sure that this is completely insane, I'm just hoping with all my might that it's also right. Did I mention that the house's sole source of heat is a wood stove? And that Valley County winters can get down to 40 below?

The little piece of Idaho I'm moving to is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. It's a lovely green valley of farm land and ranches interspersed with cat-tailed wetlands and surrounded by pine scented mountains. At least that's what it is in my fond and fuzzy memory, and based on a quick trip this week, my first in 20 years, that's still what it is. But a four season resort recently opened across the valley from my childhood home, land prices have skyrocketed, and every substantial acreage I drove past had a "for sale" sign fronting the road and little white tubes sticking out of the ground - test holes for future housing sites, subdivisions and lawns replacing the open space. In fact, a 50 house subdivision is being planned on 150 acres bordering my parents' land. So this might be the last year that the land looks more or less like it did when I was a child, the last year I can put on cross country skis at my back door and ski for hours without running into somebody's else's back yard, and my hope is to experience a little bit of the beautiful life I remember before it's gobbeld up and gone forever.

Of course, I've been living in cities in apartments for my entire adult life. Even nine months of keeping the wild grasses from becoming a fire hazard, and chopping firewood and keeping the house from falling down around my ears could very well turn me into a raving lunatic. I'll keep you updated.