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...

Change of Plans...

No, we haven't changed our minds about rebuilding a cabin. Just a change of the plans for the cabin. The contractor we met with during our last trip, Brian Shelton, has gently revised my amateur drawings, one step at a time. And they're good changes.

We first contacted Brian via his company's website in mid-August. I'd spent the time since we'd gotten back from the trailer in early July with my graph paper, thinking through our needs in relationship to how much we had to spend. I poured through cabin books and looked for plans online, stealing ideas. By the time we were ready to send the design out for bids I had 13 documents -- floor plans, elevations, electrical plans (for godssake), and a six page narrative specifying materials. It takes a brave builder to deal with that. We had several discussions on the phone with Brian post-contacting him and pre-trip. He'd voiced concern about my roof and suggested more of a Cape Cod style. Of course I knew that would change the way we'd access the loft, which would change the kitchen, which would change... "Let me show you the drawings when we meet," said Brian.

When Brian arrived the day after we'd gotten to the trailer it was glorious weather. A comfortably warm, sunny afternoon, just a bit of breeze, huge cumulus sailing by like ships. We were able to use the picnic table on the deck under the awning; what could be a better venue for the initial steps in rebuilding the cabin? Brian pulled out the plans and I pounced on them. Well, it's still 20'x32' I thought, and the living room still faces the best view. For weeks I had been living inside the cabin I designed, moving around in it, cooking, entertaining, sleeping, reading -- this was like being teleported to a new locale. I had a bit of whiplash. But then I really looked at the plans. The kitchen had a much better work triangle, the bedroom was bigger with better storage, there was no space wasting hall, and the stairs to the loft would be a lovely focal point for the cabin. The roof still soared, but at the center, not to one side, and with a knotty pine ceiling it promised to make for a cosier feel. There were some details to work out, but I could see how much better Brian's design would be. And all my work had not been in vain. Not only was it terrific fun and had given Brian a good idea of what we were trying to accomplish, I'd thought through so many aspects of living in the cabin that I recognized a terrific plan when I saw it.


Brian spent the whole afternoon with us, reviewing the plans and walking the property with us, discussing the county application process, wells vs. cisterns, septic systems, material options, construction schedules, and where our efforts could help save us money. One of the things that had appealed to us about Brian was his philosophy of welcoming owner participation, both as a way of saving money and for the owner to feel more personally invested in his new home -- sweat equity, not just financial investment. My husband had helped build the first cabin that stood on this spot over 45 years ago, and he wanted to be involved in this one too. We'd felt good each time we talked with Brian on the phone -- he was relaxed and enthused about our project, responsive and full of terrific ideas. After the day at the trailer we knew we'd found our builder.

By the time we left Colorado we'd met with Brian one more time for the hand-off of the latest rendition of the drawings. We've been through one more iteration, slightly changing the dimensions of the cabin to 20'x34', giving us two more feet of width in the kitchen, which will be the heart of the house. I love to cook and entertain and we have many friends in the area we enjoy sharing time with, and a meal is usually involved, and friends farther afield are already making plans to visit. Also, we are hoping the cabin will again become a hub for family gatherings, and this kitchen will allow for lots of people to participate in prepping and cooking the next family feast, from both sides of the kitchen counter.

There's room for a large table to gather around, and space to cosy up near the wood burning stove. The loft will have room for many sleeping pads and the landing a space for the little ones to spy on the adults below. Our window to living space ratio is high, but when we're not outside, we want to see outside, and we'll have views of every direction in the cabin. The deck space is also extravagant, only slightly smaller than the main floor, and it wraps around three sides of the cabin, including the very important shady afternoon side with its up close and fascinating view of the voluptuous 25 foot red rocks flanking the cabin to the east. And yes, the railing facing the view will be a bench, just as it was in the cabin that burned. Even with a full house and more, there will be space for everyone to find a place to sit and enjoy the view or a good book. And that's important.

With the reality of rebuilding the cabin upon us, we're facing some interesting changes. After so many years of being so careful, so frugal really -- still driving our decade-plus old cars, considering a trip to the Costco food court for a hot dog a "date", and socking away all we could, it is a shock to stop the deferred comp and talk about selling investments to fund the building of the cabin. But we know, in our heads and in our hearts, that this is the right thing to do. Our plans are to spend at least four months a year in this new second home, avoiding the activity-limiting searing heat of the desert during the summer, and providing us a healthy outdoor lifestyle filled with nature and motion in the two places we love best on earth.

When do we start!!!???

Water Witching

The beginning of any major construction project, even for a small 800 square foot cabin like ours, feels a little bit like trying to levitate. While juggling. Balls you know about like finding the money, finding a contractor, negotiating time off with an employer, designing the cabin, applications to the county (AKA Bureaucratic Hell), readying the site. And being extremely rural, planning a septic system and a well. And then there's the balls you had no idea about. Like getting a water witcher (AKA douser, deviner).

The contractor we met with while in Colorado suggested getting a water witcher before drilling a well, adding the drilling company would be reluctant to drill without one. When the contractor had built his own home in the area he'd decided to pass on the water witcher, chalking it up to charlatanism at worst, unsubstantiated "science" at best. After over 300 expensive feet of drilling with no water, only a broken bit jammed into dry rock, the drilling company said they'd drill again AFTER he'd gotten a water witcher. The water witcher indicated a spot 40 feet away and they hit water.

We decided we wanted to be around for the water witching, partly for the experience and partly because we were nervous about being able to find water close to the cabin site. The line from the well to the house has to be buried in a seven foot deep (!!!) trench per code (an increasingly irritating word), and as the ground is mostly rock....well, you see the problem.

We were planting ponderosa and fir seedings up on the saddle when we heard the water witcher's diesel truck grinding up the steep dirt road leading to the cabin site. I wandered down the hill to welcome him, leaving my husband to finish up. Two men got out of the truck, brothers. Steve the water witcher (not his day job) and his brother Stan, an excavator who was along for the ride with a side order of drumming up some business for himself.

"Is this anything like a seance," I asked Steve, "where a disbeliever will screw it up?" I looked up the hill at my husband who was just then making his way down to us, muttering "I'm a scientist; this is BS," under his breath no doubt.

"Naw," Steve the Water Witcher said, good-naturedly, "nothing like that".

After a little chit-chat and some discussion about the cabin's location, Steve got out the tool of his trade, a freshly cut forked willow branch over two feet long. He stuck a huge bunch of blue flagged markers on wire through his belt for easy access. Holding the forked ends of the willow branch in his hands he rolled his wrists slightly, torquing the end that had grown closest to the ground into a slightly up-tilted position and started walking.

As his brother Stan chatted with my husband, I watched as the tip of the willow branch dipped straight down, again and again. Each time Steve would jam a marker into the earth at that spot. Since I couldn't believe that the branch was moving over 90 degrees on its own, I assumed Steve was moving it. It simply made no sense to me.

Steve spent a good 20 minutes wandering the land surrounding the cabin site and eventually you could see patterns in the blue flags dotting the landscape. There were two relatively straight lines that followed a path radiating down from the high point of our property just to the east of the cabin site, supposedly fissures in the uplifted rock in which water collected -- the spots that drilling was most likely to be successful. One line ran down in front of the cabin, the farthest from the driveway; fine for drilling before a cabin stood on the site, but bad in case we ever needed to get a drilling rig (all 40 feet of it) in there again. The other ran right behind where the cabin would stand, with easy access from our road and that would require only a short seven foot deep trench to the house. If you believed water witching worked -- Steve claimed a better than 98% success rate after witching for over 500 wells -- it looked like we had a good chance of a well close to the cabin.

"Can I try?" I asked.

"Sure, everybody's got to try it," replied Steve.

He handed me the willow branch, showing me how to gently roll my wrists to get the right torque. And understand this -- I badly wanted to be able to feel the tug of water deep below the surface of the earth. It would be equal to a religious fanatic finding the image of the Virgin Mary as clear as day on their breakfast toast, like having something reach out and touch you from the "other side". I wanted the connection, but I was also certain I would not be a Chosen One. Besides, I knew where the water was supposed to be, so it would be too easy for me to imagine the tug. I ratcheted my skeptic meter to high and walked slowly across the line Steve had marked.

Just as I passed over the line I thought I felt the slightest vibration, a gentle pull. "Nonsense," I thought, "you just want to feel it." So I turned around, determined that I wouldn't feel a thing on the return trip. As I crossed over again, very conscious of keeping my hands immobile and with Steve and Stan and my husband watching, I felt a decided pull and we all watched the end of the willow tremble. Frankly, it scared the crap out of me. I was a believer. AND I had the gift, at least a little bit.

Now it was my husband's turn. I grabbed the camera, knowing I could get good money from his staff of fellow-scientists for evidence of him dabbling in the dark arts. He doesn't particularly like advice, especially from people he half considers quacks about something he thinks is pure hooey, hooey he's about to pay good money for. Ignoring Steve's advice about turning his wrists gently, he gave his wrists a healthy twist which resulted in the willow branch snapping up, bonking him in the head. While we all tried to stifle ourselves, Steve attempted grasping instructions again, but to no avail. Impatient with the whole thing, my husband reversed his grasp with the result of the willow branch snapping in the opposite direction, thwacking him firmly in the crotch. Marginally recovered and anxious to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible, he simply strangled the willow branch, snapping it, and proceeded to stomp across the supposed water line holding the tortured branch in a death grip. No one was surprised when he said, "I didn't feel a thing." Though we all knew he did, at least in his privates.

We'll let you know how the drilling goes.

Expect the Unexpected

We seem to draw climatic extremes wherever we go. Finally, FINALLY back in Colorado after over two hellishly hot months in Tucson, we were reveling in the crisp 8700 foot Rocky Mountain air on our annual aspen turning week. The week was not strictly a vacation. Having decided to rebuild the cabin we were meeting with the contractor we hoped would build the cabin for us and doing a little site prep which included moving a storage shed off the cabin's footprint. But we were also looking forward to several quiet days of hiking, birdwatching, fishing, and planting ponderosas and firs -- our normal mountain activities.

We arrived Friday afernoon to perfect temperatures, cool in the shade and gently warm in the sun. Saturday we spent the whole afternoon outside with the contractor, on the deck reviewing the plans and wandering the property discussing wells and septic systems.

Sunday we had a long hike to the base of Cedar Mountain, enjoying the changing colors and collecting dried wildflower seeds to scatter on the sunny saddle on our property. We were having friends for brunch the next day and I hoped we'd be able to move the picnic table to the sunny edge of the deck and eat outside.

My husband, a very early riser, woke me up before 7 AM the next morning, saying I had to come up to the swing near the granite peak that is the high point of our land. The fog was rolling through the valley, back and forth like water sloshing in slow motion, a truly mesmerizing sight. Snatches of cloud began sneaking between the swing and the rock not ten feet in front of us, and then the sleet started skittering off the canopy overhead. Unable to tear ourselves away from the ever changing view and plummeting temperature, we sat fascinated beneath jackets and blankets. By the time we'd headed back to the trailer to get brunch underway it had started to snow. When our friends arrived there was already an inch accumulated on the deck. Clearly we would not be using the picnic table.

The snow continued off and on that day and into the next. High temperatures hovered around freezing and we struggled to maintain 60 degrees in the trailer. Eventually three inches of the white stuff covered the deck. It was lovely to watch drift down, slowly smothering the ground and cloaking the trees. We sat inside alternately watching the snow blanketing the red rocks behind the trailer and reading to our heart's content, sipping hot tea or cocoa out of thermal mugs. We did some walking nearby, but didn't stray to far afield as we'd been unable to get anything other than the most general weather forecast. By the next afternoon the sun re-emerged and it seemed to be over. We swept the fluffy dry snow off the deck and the sun quickly finished the job. Tomorrow we'd get back on track with what we needed to get accomplished outdoors. We still had three full days, right?

Wrong. Wednesday morning it started snowing again, in earnest. Something we'd kept in the back of our minds -- our friend's offer of their cabin, complete with fireplace and indoor plumbing -- pushed its way to our consciousness. They were traveling and we knew they wouldn't mind, especially given the circumstances. After breakfast we decamped to what can only be described as an enchanted cottage for the duration of the storm which was predicted to last all that day and into the next.

Their cabin is one of my favorite places and as the fire in the stone fireplace did its job I spent my time looking through each curtained window in turn. How deep is the snow on the arms of the Adirondack chairs now? What's the temperature on the thermometer outside the kitchen window? If I watch long enough what animals -- deer, elk, fox, bear -- will I see crossing under the snow-laden ponderosas out the sitting room window?
We finally settled cozily in front of the fire where I read an entire book and where we decided lots of things about our own cabin. It won't be like the one our friends, built by their own hands over decades, filled with their own art and steeped in their children and grandchildren. We'll be starting from scratch, inspired by the old family A-frame and borrowing on our pasts, shared and otherwise. In time we'll season the new cabin with visits from family and friends, reinstating some old traditions and creating some new ones.

In the end, the weather cooperated the last two days and we did get through our list of must do's. The shed got moved. Trees got planted. Seeds were scattered. Oh, and we had a visit from a water witcher. But that's another story.