40 acres (but no mule… yet)

About a year ago, Pete and I, though a very long and fortuitous set of circumstances, ended up purchasing a 40 acre plot in Moses Lake, Washington. The land is completely unimproved, with no power, no water, no shelter, and barely a fence to speak of. During the summer days it is blazingly hot, with barely any natural shade to speak of. During the nights it gets very cold, with a clear sky and constant wind.

It is also beautiful land. When we went out to look at it, I admit I almost cried. It wasn’t so much the look of the land – mostly empty except for sagebrush and a lonely, broken down fence. Rather, it was the smell. We arrived on the land just at sunset, and the sound of the small bugs just waking up for the evening made for a background to the gorgeous scene in front of us. Then there was the scent. Sagebrush, growing strong and hardy in the buffeting breeze.

I grew up outside of town, on a house that had mostly sagebrush behind and surrounding it. Almost every childhood memory I had of being outdoors was tinged with that scent. Standing on the land, smelling the sagebrush, watching the sunset, it felt like… home.

And so, we bought it. Last summer, we did some camping on the land, though not as much as we would like. The first thing we did was go out with our family (some blood related, some not) and ask the land for its blessings in return for its protection. Beyond that, we haven’t done much… yet.

Sure, we have plans. Lots of them. Some of them hare-brained, some of them not so much. Water will be an issue, as it always is in high deserts. We’ll have to drill down several hundred feet through solid basalt to have any hope of reaching the stuff. About 2/3 of the land is former farming and Conservation Resource Protection land, and the other 1/3 is grazing land, full of basalt rocks and thick underbrush. There is a tiny little canyon on the land, and while we own one wall and the basin, the other wall is just over the “border”.  It is a quiet place, a calm place… a place you can feel the grounding of the rocks while feeling the lightness of the air around you. I hope to spend many mornings watching the sun rise in that canyon. A few mornings, we have discovered hundreds of little desert flowers, surprisingly bright in the landscape of brown and sage green.

This year, we hope to possibly complete some kind of shelter on the land – for practical purposes as well as the experience. With no shade, and only bring-your-own shelter, hauling a tent out can get frustrating. Creating your own shade on this landscape takes at least a tarp and a few building materials – and we would love to be able to just go out to the land and enjoy ourselves each time. So, the current plan is to attempt a modern version of a Central Asian Yurt / Mongolian Ger. We’ve got the basics of the plans – now it’s just a matter of buying the materials (we’re planning about $500 for the wood and building materials, and we’ll be recycling the covering cloth). That, among the many, many other things we have planned for this summer (wedding, family reunion, etc), will hopefully be another project completed.

If we complete the yurt before winter, though, doesn’t really matter so much to me. I may very much enjoy living in the city, and perhaps be a little too attached to my coffee, but there is absolutely nothing that beats waking up in the morning, watching the sun rise, and smelling the sagebrush welcome another day.