Sunshine and The Campersand (#9)

Living in D.C., it was not uncommon to go a day without ever leaving the apartment. It didn't happen often, but once in a while I just ... didn't go out.

Far more common: I had plenty of days where my time "outside" mostly consisted of walking to the car, from the car to a building, from my apartment to a store. From one inside place to another. Maybe the bar had a rooftop or sidewalk seating. 

In a city, "inside" is the default because personal outdoor space is so rare. If you can hang out on your front steps in the city, you've really got something. A back porch or small yard is gold, and apartment buildings advertise rooftop decks as major amenities.

Being inside is simply the norm. Being outside is different, something to celebrate.

For the last few weeks, I've been spending most of my time on the property. And because there is no cabin yet, most of that time is outside. Maybe 8-10 hours a day spent outside in the sun. I set up a small camp, with a tent and hammock and stove and fire pit, and have been clearing out brush and dead trees, preparing trails and getting the site ready. 

What a difference it makes. Everything seems slower, feels slower. I drive slower. I work more, eat less. My body aches, but from actual movement, and I can slowly feel myself (very) slowly getting stronger.

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#GonzoTheCat is tired of sleeping in the van.

Alas, I placed the camp where I intended to sit the cabin. Made sense at the time, but with excavation work planned for this week I had to move everything. #genius

Camp &.

Campersand?

Excavation work was actually slated to begin today, but unfortunately had to be delayed until the end of the week. But the folks from Woodtex came out to survey the site, and it looks as though things are pretty straightforward. I need to take down another three or four trees, but only one of them is significant. With a little luck, the cabin could be in place ... well, I don't want to jinx it by speculating.

Soon, I hope. 

Soon.

Gonzo is getting tired of sleeping in the van.

To Post or Not to Post ... (#8)

“Are you going to post it?”

I got asked the question several times – meaning, would I post “No Trespassing” signs at the edges of my property? I debated it for about a minute before deciding that I would.

The signs are ugly, jarring in the woods, and feel threatening. I hate seeing them. But they line many of the wooded areas along Hector's roads, which cuts in and out of federal hunting land. Personally, I don't want to wear an orange vest just to walk to the mailbox come fall.

And I have a mailbox now, which is kind of awesome.

At this point it's just a mailbox nailed to the top of a three-foot stump, but somehow it means I actually exist at that place. Or, as my brother puts it, now the town has a place to send the tax bill. Which … true.

Physical mail is a minor obsession of mine. It kills me that no one sends letters anymore. There's something about the physical act of opening a letter, an envelope that started out in one place and was entrusted to be delivered somewhere else. Good letters are rare.

So now I have a mailbox. An address. Even so, I get the mail delivered at a box in town.

A Driveway & An Address (#7)

Before I started this project, I'd never given a lot of thought to driveways. It turns out, they're pretty important.

Let's state the obvious: Rosy is a minivan, and has about six inches of clearance underneath. Which makes her a great vehicle for traveling and sleeping in, but no good at all for getting across an 18-inch culvert separating the land from the road.

In D.C., this would have taken many forms and a lot of waiting. But in Hector, I just called the highway superintendent and he told me to put out some stakes where I wanted the driveway. They sold me the pipe for about $7/foot, but installed it and supplied the gravel for free.

"Buy the pipe from the city," the excavation guy told me. "The gravel is the last free thing you'll ever get from them."

The time from my email exchange with the highway guy to the driveway being installed was something like six days. And that includes a Friday they apparently don't work, and a weekends. So, three days.

I'm not sure if Hector is just that efficient, or that tiny. I think seven people work in Town Hall.

Brother: "You should have asked them if they got a permit for the town hall building."

Me: "They didn't need one. Structure is too small."

Jokes aside, I have a driveway. 

And an address. On Friday I called emergency services and asked if they'd been able to locate the land, as a "fire number" is needed for a building permit.

"I was just out there an hour ago," said the guy who answered the phone. "Scared away a bunch of your deer."

My Second Chainsaw (#6)

“That's a lot of chainsaw for a homeowner”

I do most of my shopping at Tractor Supply Co. now. Which still feels ridiculous, but I can't seem to make it a day without finding something I need. Funnels. Fucking funnels. And you can't buy just one.

Anyway, the first chainsaw turned out to be a lemon. I cut down a lot of trees with it, but at the end of the day I was more exhausted from trying to get it started. Or sometimes it would start at full bore, and the chain wouldn't stop spinning. So, lesson learned: Do not skimp on your chainsaw.

Back at TSC, they were going to let me exchange it and upgrade but because I don't have my receipt “that's going to be a problem.”

“As in, I can't exchange it?”

“No, you can. It's just a lot of work for us.”

The man vanished for 30 minutes. How can a little slip of paper be that important? So I'm standing there waiting, chainsaw next to me, when this voice booms, “That's a lot of saw for a homeowner.”

I said, “Well, it's a lot of land,” turn and am immediately embarrassed.

The man is 250 pounds of square bulk. He's wearing the hat you imagine, he's wearing the overalls you imagine, and his beard is even better. He's a beast of a farmer, and I instantly realize my few acres are probably just where he stores his hay. Or whatever.

He pauses, kind of chuckles, and then says “Well let me give you a piece of old-timer advice” (seriously, he said that, it was awesome) “ … only use non-ethanol gas. Something about the ethanol gums up the motor.”

I thanked him, wondered if it was another crackpot theory or something to consider, and was happy to exchange the saw and be out of the store.

The next day I could feel the difference in the saw. It's got more power, it's sturdier, lighter, idles as it should and makes quick work of the remaining trees for the driveway.

Job done, I was wandering around the clearing I'd just created when the phone rang. The Hector code enforcement officer. I'd need building permits to bring on the cabin, including site plans and a fire number (essentially an address), to install the cabin.

This surprised me. I just hadn't thought about it. One of the reasons I chose Hector, originally, is because it does not enforce zoning and so living in a camper was legal. But it simply hadn't occurred to me that in choosing to buy the cabin I was also going to have to deal with other ordinances and laws.

The building permit turned out to be a double-sided sheet of green paper.

The Highway Superintendent returned my phone call the next day – at 6:30 a.m.

The Fire Department told me they'd have someone could out to assign a number that week.

The code guy emails the next day to ask about the permit.

Small town.

My First Chainsaw (#5)

Years ago some friends of mine took a course and got their motorcycle licenses. After, all but D--- bought a bike. “It's a death machine,” he said, mostly joking. But he didn't ride again.

That's how I always felt about chainsaws. I'd used one once – to cut the legs off of a friend's couch when it wouldn't fit through a door. But living in a city, I figured that would be my first and last need for a chainsaw. And I was fine with that.

But that first day on the land very clearly illustrated otherwise. Owning a chainsaw wasn't optional.

Parts of the land are a shit-show of downed and leaning trees. A never ending supply of firewood, yes. But also not very pleasant to look at or navigate. And to install a driveway and cabin I would I need to clear back about 175 feet and then create a large space.

At Tractor Supply Co. they sold two brands of saws, and with an 18-inch blade they had one which was cheap ($169) and one which wasn't ($370).

I had no idea how to buy a chainsaw. Did one ask questions? Was some sort of license needed for this zombie-killing weapon? What supplies did I need? My brother had showed me how to use his, and I'd cut a couple of small trees, but standing there in the store all I could see was … saw.

Obviously, I went cheap.

Back out at the land, armed with oil and gas and glasses and gloves, I looked around for the first tree to cut. There were so many that needed to come down just to get access to the land, so much brush to clear, so many downed trees to cut into manageable pieces.

It turns out, chainsaws are a hell of a lot of fun. Turning “tree” into “wood” is a powerful feeling, and the sound of the motor is intense and distinct. I spent the day clearing space and cutting trails, my face and beard and hair all covered in sawdust.

It was slow going. In scrub that dense, trees don't fall. They just sort of lean on another tree. Sometimes you can push them off, or pull them down with ropes, and other times it takes a series of cuts to finally bring it down. Slow going.

I was cutting up some of the wood, but also just pushing aside smaller trees and moving ahead. At one point it occurred to me that I had no idea what I was doing. Was I doing this correctly? Was there a method?

I turned around and looked back down the slight hill where I planned the driveway. It looked like every other ugly piece of land awaiting development I'd ever seen. Stumps outlined the rough shape of a road, felled trees lined the edges, small orange survey flags waved in the wind.

Later on my brother would just laugh. “Yeah, there's nothing you can do with all that wood right now. Just keep cutting.”

Being on The Land (#4)

When I was traveling, the big problem was always finding a place to just be. Whether that was a campsite, a parking spot, a motel, whatever, finding space to be alone, can be tough when you're on the road.

The first morning I owned the land, I drove out there with a pair of hedge clippers,  a shovel, hammock, a pellet gun and a six-pack. I set up a small table and chairs I'd brought along and spent the day plinking tin cans and hacking around in the brambles. A kid again.

The land is secluded. It's on a dirt road, off another dirt road. The property sits adjacent to the Finger Lakes National Forest. On one side is an Amish farm, and on the other sits an undeveloped property. I have neighbors, but not many.

Space.

No one has been on this land in some time, it's very obvious. I hacked my way through dense brush, scarring up my arms but it felt good. I stumbled on the occasional beer can under a tree, but it was clear they'd been there for a decade or more.

The land is an old Christmas tree farm. Parts of it are dry while others are very wet, and so some trees are healthy, some are nothing but brittle twigs, and others are rotting from the inside. There is a lot of spruce, pine, and some apple trees as well.

At one point, pushing aside a mound of dead trees which are dried and feather-light, the shape perfectly crystallized for me. Hundreds of Christmas trees, brittle, dried, perfect reminders of Jan. 2, all the trees on the side of the road. It was a perfect skeleton, like childhood unearthed and naked.

But back to that space.

It was a completely new experience, standing on land I owned. It's a canvas, in many ways. I will have to make decisions about what to do, which trees to keep, how to care for it. It can't be stolen or lost. I can always come back to it.

It exists even when I'm not there. At least, I think it does.

The Cabin Episode (#3)

I used to spend mornings going through Craigslist RV and camper listings.

The sky is the limit when it comes to buying an motorhome or camper. They can easily cost as much as a house, but I was looking at the lower-end. I didn't want some piece of junk that someone was giving away because it was rotted out, but I was trying to keep the cost down to a few thousand.

I looked at a lot of trailers. I bid on several Class C motorhomes (had a brief obsession with the Toyota Dolphin) but lost all of them. But in my head the idea kept evolving. I also looked at box trucks and storage containers. Ultimately I envisioned the structure as a blank slate, into which I'd figure out what to do. I still thinking building I into the back of old box trucks is a great idea. How many of those are sitting around rusting in junkyards? Seems like they'd be easy to renovate into something cool.

It turns out, you can buy a home on a credit card. I went out and looked at the cabin: They come as unfinished structures that you insulate, wire if you want to, and so on. It felt sturdy, was far larger than the camper options I'd considered, had an actual door and windows, insulated floor.

I bought a completed/in-stock version to save some money. The siding is vinyl rather than fake logs (which …. same thing?), and it was constructed four feet longer than standard and with extra windows. It has a ridiculous porch, off which I'll build an actual, usable porch.

Another impulse buy? Who knows. It felt right, but it also took the project in a whole new direction: I would have to hire an excavation guy to put in a gravel pad for the cabin, and ultimately would need building permits. Unknowingly, I'd taken a far more complicated route than I realized.