A life among the pines

When I walk out to take pictures of cabins in the woods, I frequently stop and think about owning one.

There are times when living in town wears on you. Traffic, nearly continuous noise, constant human interaction. And when I am in the midst of these times, I think about a cabin up on the mountains to call my own.

Admittedly, most of the cabins I shoot are solidly in the fixer-upper section of real estate. No cable tv service. Broadband is non-existent. The roads are a little rough getting to them. I doubt UPS or FedEx would deliver to them. I doubt even Amazon’s drone fleet will. There are no coffee shops within walking distance, or grocery stores. In fact, most of them have no roof, no running water, no electricity, and are a little short on other basic amenities as well.

But every time a siren runs past going full blast, or I get yelled at while riding my bicycle, I begin to think that these may not be as big an obstacle as I first thought.

The rub, of course, is that money problem. How do Steph and I both make a living close enough to a cabin far enough back in the woods to be attractive. It’s a pretty good question. I have no answer as of yet. Well, besides the unoriginal and unlikely lottery win. Which is why we still live in the city, and the houses we are looking for are not out in the mountains.

the patio

But there are times when I am walking out in the tall grass with my camera slung over my shoulder, among the smell of sage, lodgepole pine and douglas fir, that I feel the pull, the urge to get out and move in to a high lonesome place of our own. Somewhere where the loudest sound is the wind when it rushes through the trees, or the thunderclaps reverberating off the mountains. Where the white noise isn’t traffic, but a small stream running over smooth, well worn rocks. Where the only neighbors are likely to be hawks and owls, who probably won’t bump EDM in to the wee hours of the night.

Maybe I should knock out those novels I keep erratically working on and become a rich author who moves in to the mountains with his wife to lead an eccentric, colorful life among the pines.

Life goals. We all have them, but mine are rough hewed wood in forgotten places.

A life among the pines