Neighbors

Greetings from Domelandia,

I live in a little valley in Southern Colorado down by the New Mexico border. We've been here 30-odd years, with the exception of a year spent back east while my husband and I worked to pay off the hospital bill for the birth of our first child. We also took a sabbatical in 2000 to see if we could find a better place to live, but ended up back here. When we finally got home from that trip, I was so happy to be home I fell to my knees and kissed the ground.

Sometimes I tell people how long we've been here and they say, "Oh, do you like it?" It cracks me up every time.

We raised two amazing daughters up here in the foothills. At first we had no running water, no electricity, no telephone. It was hard sometimes, but the payback was being able to live in the middle of nowhere. Who needed TV when the wild world hummed with the music of LIFE, right outside our door?

My husband the Viking planted us smack dab in the middle of this little mile-long canyon. The first part of our 'driveway' down at the county road crossed a stream and this crossing was steep, narrow, and dangerously slippery when wet. The Viking said, "Keeps out the riff-raff." Only our most determined friends would dare that crossing, even in fine weather. It wasn't a problem for us, at least in the beginning, because we didn't have a vehicle. We caught rides to town with one of the pioneers who live further up the road. It worked for us.

We didn't have neighbors until some time ago when the land that borders the county road was sold and the first people moved in. They were determined to tell all of us The Right Way to Live. They had opinions about everything and expressed them louder than anyone else. After a few winters, they moved on. We'd gotten used to the reality of having neighbors down there, and so we welcomed the new ones that followed. The Viking even helped them with some building projects.

We had the whole valley to ourselves, acres and acres of unfenced wilderness. Our children rode their horses all over the canyon, following the paths of elk and deer. Every place had a name--Raven Rock, the Meadow of Morning, Serendipity Trail. I can still see our girls, red and golden hair loose and streaming behind them, pounding up to the barn after a morning in the hills. They rode bareback and were patently fearless.

An elderly couple bought the 80 acres behind us. We were a little surprised, but not upset. They drove a small travel trailer back to the end of the canyon and visited only in the summertime. They were friendly and considerate. They brought us little gifts, including some iris corms that I planted alongside the path to the well. The neighbors made little hitching posts near their trailer so our girls could tie up their ponies when they visited. One day they asked us if we would mind if there was a gas well on their property. And would we mind having a nice new road with big trucks going back and forth in front of our house all day? We were horrified. "We don't see our place as an investment," we said. "This is our home." And for some reason, maybe because they were people who understood that money isn't everything, they declined the offer from the gas exploration company. I am forever grateful to those two sweet souls. When the iris bloom each May, I think of them and send prayers to Heaven, where they most assuredly reside.

As the years went by, we got running water, solar electricity, a good road, a satellite dish, a couple of cars. We even bought a little parcel of land to keep it safe from development.

A few years ago the land at the end of the canyon was sold, and sold again. We had an opportunity to buy it, but by then we were saving money for college tuition. (Plus if you buy all the land that touches yours, it just never ends). The most recent owners are from the Big City. They bought the land as an investment and as a possible place to live when they retire. We hardly saw them until a couple of years ago when they started spending time on the property in the summertime. They told us that their intention was to allow the gas exploration company to put a well on their place. This time there was nothing we could do to prevent it. Thank goodness the road to the well won't go through our place, and that makes it way more tolerable, but we struggled with these changes anyway.

I don't recall the Viking and me formally discussing it, but at some point we became reconciled to the fact that we'll be getting full-time neighbors. We even said when they move down here for good, we want to have a good relationship with the new folks. I'm glad we had some time to get used to the idea, because the other evening, our new neighbor stopped by for a visit. He wanted to talk. He said, "Where I live is tame, boring. Down here is wild." He asked surprising questions: "What have you given to the land? What has the land given you?" He wanted to know how he could be a good neighbor. There was more to him than I thought.

He and his wife will do just fine down here in the wild world, with the help of some good neighbors.