Day: July 13, 2020

Do you sometimes feel like we have lost touch with part of our humanity? Our modern life is so easy and we take so much for granted. I am not a luddite and I do believe that science and technology can create a better world for everyone but I sometimes wonder how much of our humanity we lose due to the technological world. How many “Bed Bath and Beyond” and “Applebees” do we need? For better or worse, the Covid-19 paradigm shift, hasn’t altered my social life much. We tend to be home bodies or forced family fun day trippers. We don’t dine out much, don’t engage in a lot of social activities but try to get outdoors and play or do yard work as much as possible.

My son is a teenager and with each passing day I am more aware of how short our time is as a family unit. Though we spend nearly all of our time together, I am always questioning if we are teaching him enough. During these last few months at home, I am trying to really get the point through to both of my children that the only constant is change and the ability to adapt to your situation is the most important thing to learn.

So back to the land, literally and figuratively. I am a real-estate junkie and follow all types of home and lands on the various websites, monitoring the sales and price changes. We spend a lot of time in the mountains, here in Virginia they aren’t as busy as in many places and hotels, cabins, campsites etc can be in short supply. I saw a large price drop on a 13 acre parcel of land bordering West Virginia, showed it to my husband. He also thought it sounded like a good deal and called the agent. The agent said they were considering an offer at the moment but were waiting to hear back on a counter-offer. I asked if we could also put in an offer, he said sure could and my crazy husband and son took off on a Sunday afternoon for a 3 hour drive to see the lot.

I think it was a good bonding experience for the two “men” to go and look at the land, it was a rough parcel with no clearing. They had to cut their way through and by standing on a stump, a mountain view could be seen in the distance. Though it wasn’t an area we have done much exploring in, it was within an hour of many hiking/biking/kayaking places we wanted to be near, the price couldn’t be beat and with Corona-Tine still in effect for most summer activities, it would be something to do as a family.

As a kid, I never went camping. The closest I ever came to camping as a child was the time I went to summer camp for a week and slept in a cabin. I didn’t really enjoy the communal living aspect and I became violently ill with food poisoning one night and thew up all over my bunk and the bunk below me. I spent a lot of time in the infirmary. I did not make life-long friends at this camp.

After I married my husband, we went tent camping once in South Dakota. I don’t remember much about this trip except we brought along our little shih-tzu mix and he barked at every noise he heard. It was a busy and noisy campground and we didn’t sleep much.

Now that my kids are older, we have taken them camping a few times. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I tend to be a control freak and I think having to let all of that go is actually quite relaxing for me. I actually prefer the remote campsites, no bathrooms or people right next to you. If you are going to the wilderness having a giant RV next to you running a generator isn’t my idea of fun. So while I actually like camping, I don’t particularly like camgrounds.

I have always wanted to own land. I joke about wanting to be the “landed” gentry.” My mother’s family comes from a long line of farmers and I like to think that I have land lust in my blood. I also have a deep doomsday prepper vein constantly running in the back of my head. The last few months have really brought this to a head and I had to check myself from going Mad Max. But recent events and shortages also showed how by being as prepared (and certainly there were lessons on things to improve upon) I was much less stressed than I might have been otherwise.

I like to consider myuself a minimalist, I like to keep the belongings I have for as long as possible, I try to keep life as simply as possible. I work to live not live to work. Recently, we found some acerage, priced very inexpensively, in the mountains about 3 hours from where we live. We made an offer on sight and closed a few weeks later. The day we signed our documents on-line, we headed to the property with a weed whacker, a chainsaw, tick spray and a dream. We cleared just enough to fit our tent so that the next time we came back, 4 days later over the 4th of July, we had a homebase!

I am going to chronicle our progress here, we have had a blast getting outside and getting very very dirty!