We're ON!

After all the years of "that's crazy, the trailer's good enough", the yearning for a wood burning stove to cozy up in front of, the desire for a bit more of a kitchen WITH running water (the outhouse never bothered me), and wanting enough space to have family and friends join us in a way we could all actually enjoy, last summer we made the decision to rebuild a cabin to replace the one that stood on this land from the mid-60's until the Hayman fire claimed it in 2002.

Honestly, there were a few things that made the decision easier.  My husband is no more than two years from retirement, and hopefully only one.  We'd spent enough years there in longish vacations in the trailer to know we both loved it and would be happy with the simple life of puttering, hiking, bird watching, and star gazing -- and sharing all of that with family and friends -- for the rest of our years to make the investment in money and the commitment in time.  Perhaps the clincher was my husband's grandsons, at five and seven old enough to know if they enjoyed their time in the mountains, and it was oh-so clear that they did -- from fort building in a rock outcropping down the hill to tirelessly hiking to the meadow and Karen's overlook and trails beyond, to crying half way back to Denver when it was time to leave, this was a way to give to them what my husband's children knew their whole lives, at least until the Hayman fire.  More time to look like something out of Where the Wild Things Are:

Our contractor, Brian Shelton, called this morning to say that the building permit would be in his hands come Monday and that work on the foundation would begin this coming week.  It's been over seven months since we first met with him up at the trailer, thinking then that we'd not be building until next year and later deciding not to wait.  This year will be the building year; next year the occupying year.  Hopefully we'll get a bit of time in the cabin before summer's end and are planning a week at Thanksgiving, but we have our fingers crossed that next summer will be the first summer of the rest of our lives, with months of time spent in the Colorado Rockies, getting used to the wonderful rhythms of life spent enjoying the long days at 8,600 feet.


By the time we get there, four weeks from today, there should be a foundation fully decked and lumber staged for the framing of the walls.  My husband will get to help raise those walls just as he did over four decades ago with his father, other family members, and neighbors.  After the nightmare of losing the original cabin, being part of rebuilding of the new cabin will be the fulfillment of a dream.

Lost and Found

During the couple of weeks of building permit limbo and just over a month before leaving for the site in Colorado, I decided it was about time for me to make that housewarming visit to my sister and her husband.  They had relocated last fall to El Paso after decades in upstate New York.  It had been more decades since we lived within an easy half day drive of one another and I wanted to establish what I hope will be an easy exchange of short visits several times a year.

I decided to go alone mid-week for just a couple of nights, my rationale being to get a little solo sister time -- it had been almost two years since we were together, sadly a shorter separation than typical for us -- and to avoid leaving our very elderly and much beloved dog Max without one of his "humans".  The outward bound trip was lovely, less than five easy hours on an empty stretch of I-10 watching the Sonoran desert transition into Chihuahuan, with vast stretches of bajada gilded with carpets of Mexican poppies before butting up against distant rugged mountains.

My sister's home is warm and inviting with charming river stone garden walls, good-sized bird-filled trees and views of the nearby Franklin Mountains.  We walked her handsome and gentle German shepherd, Luke, on three miles of the Rio Grande river walk, throwing the Frisbee for him and trying to identify water birds.  We sat out back during the slow twilight while her husband grilled steaks and salmon and veggies over a mesquite fire and then ate the delicious results.

At some point during the day my sister had mentioned a quilt she had that she wanted to give to me.  She wasn't sure about the origin, but thought it was from our grandmother we'd lived with until I was nine and she was three.  I thought she was talking about a partially completed quilt I'd seen long ago at my mother's, but I didn't associate it with my grandmother, the woman who'd been more of a mother to me than my own Mother in my early years (much to my Mother's irritation I'm sure).  When my sister brought the quilt out I almost fell off the couch -- it was THE quilt I'd grown up with, a wedding ring quilt hand patched and quilted -- every stitch -- by the hands of my Grandmother.  It was the quilt that always covered me when I was feeling puny and was upstairs for special Grandma treatment, the one when miserable from one or another childhood ailments I'd try to find all the matching fabrics, and there were many to find matches for.  Its puckered worn surface was so familiar, the softly colored patterns on the white background, all edged in a rosy pink calico.  I thought of it many times over the years, assuming it had gone to the "other" part of the family over three decades ago.

Early the next morning I got a call from my husband that our sweet old dog was having a crisis, probably a stroke, and could not stand.  He took Max to the vet where they cared for him until I could make what now was a too long and too sad drive of over 300 miles to a place and task I did not want to face.  Shortly after arriving at the veterinary hospital my husband and I performed the last kind act we could for Max, holding him close while he was euthanized.

During that long day I did not know I had that many tears in me.  Part of them were shed on that old quilt, folded into a soft memory of comfort and love, and unexpectedly found during a time when something so beloved was lost.  I only wish my old companion, Max, could have lasted the several decades the quilt has existed instead of the 16 years -- extraordinary for large dog -- that he had been able to give me.  We had hoped Max would be with us this summer in the Rockies, snoozing in the sun and watching the chipmunks during the cabin build, but that is not to be.

Back home, while I laid on the couch with a cold wet cloth on my face, so distressed that I feared I might join Max in the Great Beyond, my husband brought a large box from the porch that had been delivered that day.  I knew it was the quilt I had bought online for the cabin.  It took me a few days to have the heart to open it, but I was not disappointed when I did.  It is nothing like the delicate handwork of my Grandmother's quilt, but intricate and well-crafted enough, and the colors are those of a ponderosa pine forest at dusk.  It will look wonderful in the cozy bedroom of our new cabin, a tailored denim bed skirt below and made up with sage green chambray sheets; a nice place to rest after another lovely long day in the thin clean air at near 9,000 feet.

My Grandmother's quilt is now folded across the foot of the old painted brass bed in our Tucson guest room, only for its beauty and cherished memories.  It is too fragile for actual use, that is until this found again quilt is needed for a loss that is almost too much to bear.

For more about Max and what he meant to us see the Tribute to a Good Dog post in my Writing Down the Desert blog.

Thaw

Our contractor promises us the snow is melting and that the cabin will soon start going up.  The flurry of signatures on county building applications and checks for application fees and engineers has been the extent of our own personal activity for the cabin of late.  Unless, of course, you count the little bit of adding to the cabin trousseau I've been doing.  I found a wonderful old Mennonite bench from Mexico, six feet long and with the original old red paint.  It will do dual duty for us in the cabin, either sitting along the dining table for extra seating or under the front windows serving the same purpose in the area around the wood burning stove.  Until it makes the journey from southern Arizona to central Colorado it's sitting happily in my guest room.

The building permit is hoped for this coming week, and expected the week after that.  It's very strange to think that the next time we are on the Colorado property there will be the beginnings of a cabin sitting there.  We are counting the weeks, though we're not totally sure how many we need to count as our departure date is a bit up in the air due to some unexpected work commitments, but somewhere between six and seven.  In some ways that seems way too far away and in others it seems way too soon.  There's much to do and decide in the next few weeks; decisions easier to make here where Lowes and Home Depot are 15 minutes away, not an hour and a half.

I am thinking red.  A light-hearted cherry red.  A cheerful red front door, maybe a kitchen counter.  White walls -- I don't want to be locked into a color scheme.  I'd toyed with oil-rubbed bronze hardware and plumbing fixtures, but it's a new cabin and I want to celebrate and honor that a bit, so we'll go with brushed nickel.  Not only much more available and reasonably priced, it'll go nicely with the hammered aluminum I've been collecting for the cabin.  These trays (and several more) will decorate the wall in the dining room, gently reflecting the warm light from the wood burning stove.

I've been dreaming of a cabin all my life it seems, and it always seemed a fantasy.  Until last summer I was sure we'd make-do with the trailer, and a nice make-do it was too, but since we decided to rebuild the cabin I have been living inside this imaginary structure, and stocking up on Ebay, Etsy, and Goodwill goodies to make the dream more concrete now, and quicker to realize when the cabin is done.

I'm thinking pie...cherry.  I can almost smell it.

A Little Alchemy Help Please?

We made the decision to rebuild a cabin, found a terrific contractor, and took the financial hit on the well (but at least we have a GREAT well).  We've scrambled to find the money, sold off things we'd held for over a decade, and are doing all we can to live simply now, storing up our financial resources for this project.  I've been "living the cabin" for months, wandering through the floorplans, thinking through materials and colors and hardware and lighting, ferreting out retro items to mediate the shiny newness when it's built, grappling with plans of how to manage two good-sized dogs in a trailer in the wilderness, all while managing our life in Tucson from a phone and Internet free location in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.  I'm not ready yet.

A large part of this plan included my husband's taking up to three months off from his job to go up and help with the final stages of the cabin, something our contractor, Brian Shelton, actually encourages -- he understands that folks need to be able to save some money by doing some of the work, and that it also helps them feel invested in their new home.  It's one of the reasons we decided to hire him.  We were hoping the timing would work out so that he'd need us in mid to late May, and that we could spend most of the nicest part of they year there (with the rampant wildflowers) while avoiding the hottest part of the year in Tucson.  With the support of his boss and the financial troubles municipalities these days we figured he'd get some kind of award for volunteering to take three months off without pay during a time when employees have to take furlough days.  Not so.  We were shocked when the request was flat out denied.

So, where does that leave us?

When my husband ended his 24 year career with the state he was getting nearly six weeks of vacation a year.  Now he works under one of the most archaic vacation policies I've ever heard of -- two weeks off a year for TEN years.  It was almost a deal breaker for him, but then he struck a verbal agreement with his boss (and her boss, and her boss's boss) that he could take up to 12 days a year of unpaid leave.  After five years he's never taken a minute of it.  Adding up his meager vacation days, fulough days he has to take before June, and a couple of holidays, we've scrapped together a little over three weeks to be in Colorado this summer -- no where near what we need.  Oh, they've suggested he revisit the request in a month or two and request just a month.  And we must be one of the rare families that is praying for more, a lot more, furlough requirements starting in July.  Rumor is that there will be 80 more hours, so that gets us to over a month.  And even if we can just get one set of 12 promised days for this year, that would be helpful.

This plan to spend time during the build was much more than helping reduce the cost of the cabin -- my husband makes more in his job than he will laying floors.  He helped his father build the original cabin in 1963, and spent many vacations as an adult doing serious cabin maintenance and land stewardship.  It was his favorite place on earth, and still is even though the cabin was taken eight years ago in the Hayman fire.  He wants, badly, to be part of the rebuilding of the cabin and not just the guy signing the checks.

That's where the alchemy comes in.  How do we stretch somewhere between three and half weeks and a month and a half into three months?  We need a presence on site during the finishing of the cabin.  We trust our contractor Brian completely, but I have a clear vision of what I want the cabin to look like and how I want it to function and need to be there while decisions are being made.  We're not sure how we'll work it out, but it appears that after an initial and critical few weeks together, there will be airlines involved, with flights between Tucson and Denver shuttling my husband between work and cabin building to stretch out the time.  I'll stay behind, with decisions and sourcing and labor and trying to keep track of the dogs by day, and lonely evenings and long walks to the outhouse by night.  I'm still hoping we'll manage to be in our new cabin for my 60th birthday early in August, joined by my daughter and her husband and a few dear friends if they can manage to get there.

In the midst of the unwelcome problems created by the leave without pay denial, a sweet surprise arrived.  I'd been haunting Ebay for cabin stuff -- mostly vintage things like tablecloths, hammered aluminum, depression glass, and lighting -- until I discovered Etsy.  Etsy was a whole new world, more of an online community than a place to shop.  One of the things I found was a set of vintage hanging lights for over the kitchen counter.  They were from a farm in Canada with softly frosted half round shades that were like the best beach glass and brown Bakelite fittings.  I'd looked and Looked and LOOKED for something different but not weird, and certainly not from Home Depot.  These were perfect.  Over the course of the transaction I got chatting via email with Penelope, whose shop it was, and sent her the address for this blog.  When the lights came, along with some charming little owl decoupage plaques I'd also purchased, there was something else in the box -- our first cabin warming present.  This delightful little hand-painted pitcher will be used frequently at the as yet non-existent cabin, and will never fail to remind me of an unexpected bit of encouragement from a near stranger at a time when close associates had let us down.

Thanks Penelope!

Click here to visit her shop, Birch Beer Boutique, on Etsy.

Quiet Time for Reflection

We've hit that quiet time in the cabin building process -- for us, not for our contractor.  While invoices are prepared, drawings completed, well reports written and submitted, engineering checks  performed at the site for the suitability of the ground on which the cabin will sit and perc rates for the septic system, and the Colorado Rocky Mountain weather either opens the door to progress or closes it, we are far away in Tucson. 

We've just sent off a rather sizeable check to pay for the work to date, primarily the well.  The well bid had been for a standard dig, 300 feet and a pump to accommodate that depth, and we had been warned that that was just as estimate and that were the most nebulous part of the equation that would give us the cabin we wanted.  Instead of 300 feet, it was 600 feet, and essentially dry.  The hydrofracturing was expensive but wildly successful -- and I understand already a bit of a legend in those parts -- so it was all worth every penny.

Still, neither my husband nor myself are used to writing five digit checks and it gave me a bit of pause about the magnitude of this endeavor.  While I was fighting off nausea, my husband, whose money it was, was cool as a cucumber, an odd reaction from one of the most frugal people I've ever known.

"Doesn't this freak you out?" I asked him, amazed at the nonchalance with which he signed away new car buying money.

"Not at all," he replied.  "I've been frugal all my life and this is my reward."

I knew this was going to be a huge decision in our lives, one that took us several years to make, and a commitment to where we'd be spending several months a year from now until our own forevers, as long as we were able.  He has almost half a century of history with this place.  I don't.  But after several years of spending all the time there we could manage, we knew how happy we were there and that we wanted more of it.  More of it in a way that we could enjoy more fully ourselves and with family and with friends.  No more chilly mornings and evenings in the trailer, bundling up to withstand inside temperatures in the 50's, wishing we had a woodstove to feed and to relax in its warmth and flickering light.  No more apprehension about the weather when we have guests -- how am I going to house everyone if it rains?  No more attempts at feeding a dozen, or four, out of a kitchen where you can take no more than two steps and with no running water.  We are building a home, small and cozy and significantly different enough from "real" life to be meaningful, adequate to the life we want to live and share and eventually pass on to family.

For me this is a wonderful surprise and the unexpected fulfillment of a life long day-dream to have a place in the mountains.  But for my husband I'm beginning to suspect this will be one of the defining acts of his life.  His parents were clear in their expectations and wishes -- when they were gone the cabin and land were to be kept and maintained for their children and their children's children.  His father was gone before the cabin burned.  His mother often said she wished she had been too.  It was one of the great heartbreaks of her life.

We like to think they'd be happy with what we're doing.  We certainly are.

A Sign?

Two days in and 500 feet down, our well was trickling less than one tenth of a gallon per minute. I can cry more water than that. Another 100 feet? Two hundred feet? Brian Shelton, our contractor, talked us through the options and what we decided concurred with what he said he'd do if it were his. We'd go another hundred feet but no more, not unless there was abundant evidence that they were close to a breakthrough. Here we were, a thousand miles away and $10,000 in the hole (pun intended) and nothing.

The next evening Brian called to report no improvement after the additional 100 feet. And here came my personal liability of being willing to believe, just a bit, in signs and portents. And water witching. I had felt the tug on that willow stick standing over the spot where they'd dug that well. Steve, our water witcher, had admitted that he'd had a few failures, but they were less than 1% of the wells he'd divined. Was this a sign? We knew we were pushing the financial envelope a bit by building this cabin, but were we pushing against something else?

There was another thing to try with this same hole. Black Mountain Drilling had the capability to do hydrofracturing, treating areas of the well hole with high pressure to loosen up and flush out cracks the granite it had gone through. There's almost always some improvement, though it can be minimal. We had to have at least half a gallon per minute to recharge the 600 foot deep well that would hold 800 gallons of water. So long as there were no major droughts we might be okay. It was expensive, but no more than going down another couple of hundred feet, and more likely to resolve the problem. Up where our cabin site is, at 8,600 feet in the Rocky Mountains, you're not hoping to hit a cavern of water, you're hoping to bisect veins of water that travel though fissures in the rock far below.



It was a long weekend, waiting for Monday's hydrofrac'ing. We didn't jump the gun by calling Brian for a report before he could call us. We were a bit gun shy at this point and starting to think about cisterns and roof catchment, something very familiar to me from my Caribbean days, but certainly not desirable. When the phone rang I was almost afraid to pick up. Brian's voice was flat; he'd been losing more sleep over this than we had. "Well, we couldn't get you half a gallon." Standing in the kitchen with Brian on speaker phone, I reached out and took hold of the counter for support -- my feet felt like they'd turned to stone and a cloud of doom was gathering in the high ceiling overhead.

"But I could get you SEVEN gallons!" Stone feet danced, that doom cloud vanished, and there was whooping and hollering on both ends of the phone. Brian said it was the second best improvement Black Mountain Drilling had ever seen, from a few gallons per day to seven gallons per minute. They tried for hours to empty that 600 foot column of water with a powerful pump so they could get an accurate estimate of the output, but they could never get it down more than 100 feet from the surface. The water is running fast and clear and sweet.

I'm taking it as a sign.

Well deserved excitement...

We've been at the point in the cabin project where there's been a lot going on behind the scenes, but not much we were directly involved in. Not that I've been idle. Far from it. I've done my bit to stimulate the economy by shopping on Ebay for some treasures to make the new cabin a home with a feeling of history from the get-go. I believe I'm single-handedly responsible for driving up the cost of vintage hammered aluminum housewares, not to mention depression glass, old Colorado souvenirs, and a wall light so old it needs rewiring.

I had jumped on getting our well permit ASAP in October, an interesting exercise in and of itself. With a BS in Geography, the required Township and Range information rang a bell, but I couldn't find any online maps or info about what ours might be. Luckily I had our Easting and Westing data stored in our hand held GPS -- precise latitude and longitude coordinates. Proposed maximum pumping rate? Annual amount to be withdrawn in acre-feet? Total depth? Aquifer? After speaking with a very helpful man at the Colorado Division of Water Resources I learned the answers to those four questions were 15 gallons per minute, one third of an acre foot, 500 feet, and granite respectively. Oh, and our Township is 11S and Range is 70W. We received word that we'd gotten our well permit while we were in Hawaii for our fifth anniversary, and it was one of the most exciting moments we had there, and that's saying something.

Our contractor, Brian Shelton, has made many trips to our land with earth movers and well diggers. He called tonight just as we were finishing dinner and deep into a bottle of Spanish Jumilla, a red wine that sounds way fancier than it is -- we're on a budget. Brian announced that they'd been clearing snow and doing the necessary work to the drive and were going to dig us a well starting on Wednesday! I wasn't nervous about that until he talked about how nervous he'd been when they'd dug their well from over a thousand miles away. We did take his hard-learned advice and hired a water witcher, and I am a believer (see water witching post below). Before the end of the week we should know the outcome and see just how close we came to those "proposed" amounts we filled in on the well application. The good news is that the weather is allowing this work and that it appears the road and site prep will come in under budget, leaving us wiggle room in case something comes in over budget later (well issues or maybe some nicer tile in the kitchen and bath?).

Tomorrow they move the deck and the trailer to a flat spot on the saddle, the place we'll call home when we go up this spring to lend a hand with the finish work. Once we can get a certificate of occupancy for the cabin we'll put the trailer up for sale and begin enjoying running water, indoor plumbing, and a wood burning stove among many other things. Being there during some of the construction is important from a personal standpoint. My husband especially wants to be a part of the build, just as he was over 40 years ago with the original cabin. Deciding to move ahead with the cabin now, before he's retired, was difficult only in that we'd miss some of the construction. Even now it's hard not to be there, to see trailer moved off the building site and the drill rig set up shop. The next time we see the land there will be a cabin sitting on it.


Stay tuned for the outcome on the well...