The View, Staked

This past Saturday, the dream of our new home became a tiny bit more real. We met with the surveyor to flag the boundaries of our little acre of paradise to be. There are now stakes in the ground saying that something's happening here, something goes here--a little home with a big view, the one over which we want to see the sun rise every morning for the rest of our lives.


That's the big sweep, the real feeling of which is hard to convey with just two dimensions and few camera skills. Tighter shots capture the layers of hills and trees and barns in the distance.


Still, you'd just have to be there to fully appreciate the aah factor. And we're not just imagining it.

When the surveyor climbed out of his vehicle, he said that he really wished he hadn't seen this place, then declared that there was no prettier place in all of Kentucky. I don't know about that, but I do know that the other people we've taken back there have been totally in accord with our desire to live in just this beautiful spot. We're dreamers, but we're not crazy.

Today when I got home from the office and the gas station and the grocery store, all of which took a little longer than I wanted, I sat on the porch swing out back all by myself, just looking out at green grass and letting the peace seep into my bones. I feel utterly joyful at the thought that someday soon we'll have our own green field to gaze upon. After hectic, tiring days, we'll bump down the gravel road to our little farmhouse where the world can't have us any more and sit with the land that is one long exhale.

OK, so we'll still have a house and yard to care for, and we plan to have animals and a garden that need tending. If it's our shangri-la, apparently it will be one with mud and sunburn. But here we go because the call must be answered. If this is the courtship phase, so be it. I let myself have it. But marriage can be good, too. I can't wait to get hitched and see what living intimately with land is like.