Arrival I: First Sight through Adoption Day

It was the first Saturday in January of 2019 when I clicked that link on Zillow.  Three days later I was standing in the rain, mud, fog, and cheerful earnest company of Josh Anthony, who turned out to be the best buyer’s agent a girl could ask for.  The fog was so thick you couldn’t see much more than 500 feet away, leaving the edges of the property blurry from where we stood and a shroud of mystery over what lay beyond.  Josh and I tromped around through the ramshackle fences and soggy meadow, inspected as far as we dared the various derelict structures, confirmed the presence of a well, made a game plan, and shook hands.

[Frantic internet research, numerous phone calls back and forth with banks and contractors, hours of reading fine print, assembling financial records, and digitally signing documents ensues.]  

Mortgage pre-approval.  Offer. Counter.  Contract.  30 day feasibility study period.  GO.

It’s got potential.  It meets all the basic requirements on casual inspection.  It needs some cleaning up but that’ll come.  The junk that has been sitting here for 5-15-50 years can sit some more.  It’s a good deal. 

I had been dreaming of this for over a decade, had spent dozens of hours on the internet window shopping.  Three years prior I had narrowed my criteria to: Lewis County, within 30 minutes of I-5 and less than 5 minutes off pavement, 5 acres give or take.  I had talked to several each of real estate agents and bankers and county officials and toured half a dozen properties on the ground.  The two previous places I really liked had sold before I had a chance to work on financing for them.  This time I was ready.  I had learned the rules of the game and had been watching the market.  I was ready, I had slowly collected the right hand of cards, and I knew I was looking at a deal. 

January 28 I was back for the ‘perk test’, which is where you pay a lot of money for a large digger to come out and put six 6’ deep holes in the ground so that a soil scientist and engineer can inspect them and draw a map so that you can pay more money to the county to tell you that you can install a septic system so that you can get permission to build a home there so that a bank will lend you money.  It’s a fun game.

Even if it costs you upwards of a week’s wages just for the presence of the machine, it is fun to have a backhoe at your service for an hour doing the bidding of an affable and seasoned engineer who occasionally asks you questions and interprets what he sees.  It is really fun to see mounds of rich crumbly soil emerge from below the overgrown pasture with its stubborn thicket of roots.  (It is those roots and years of cow pie decomposition to which you owe said crumbly soil.)  Yes, that’ll do nicely.  That’ll grow.

Also January 28, the fog lifted and I got to see the wider landscape for the first time.  [Cue “Sound of Music” fanfare.]  2,000 foot ridgelines of timberland flanking a broad valley with Winston Creek (hidden from view by trees and steep drop-off, presence announced by regular parades or flourishes of mist) at the center of it all.  Yes, I think I’ll keep it.  Yes I would like to grow old here.  Yes please more than anything I’ve ever wanted I want this to work out. 

It would be good to have a home at all.  But how amazing would it be to have this place be HOME?!??

Home.

I’ve moved a lot, often not on my terms.  I’ve had 28 addresses since high school and another 4 in the seventeen years before that.  Four times I have been not-quite-homeless, thanks to the goodwill of stellar humans who may or may not have been close friends before they took me in, but financially unable to procure housing for myself.  It was far from certain for many years that Home was something I would ever know.  For many years it felt like the story of my life was packets of expired seed and leaving gardens behind.

Now I can put down roots.

Now I can build to last, establish things and see them come to fruition.

Now I can plant and harvest for myself.

Now I can have space and sustenance to share.

[Proceed to hold breath for several weeks and ache with hope mingled with anxiety about all the things that reasonably or unreasonably could go wrong.]

It passes the perk test.  Well water gets a ‘thumbs up’ from the lab.  Some goofy technicalities from the county and the mortgage underwriter and some cryptic legalese in the easement paragraphs but my agent and my loan officer go to bat for me and sort that out.  Delay from the appraiser, whose name happens to be Scott Hamilton.  He probably doesn’t think that is as funny as I think it is.  [Cue 80’s ice dancing to the Beatles “When I’m Sixty-Four.”]

It passes.  Bank approves.  I got it.  I GOT IT!  I have a HOME!

Closing day set for February 22.  Found someone to cover my shift.  Got up well before dawn to hit the road from north Seattle before traffic started.  Two hours later I found Market Street Bakery in Chehalis and enjoyed the local-talent artwork on the walls, a mocha, and a chocolate croissant fresh out of the oven that rivaled any I had in Paris.  The girl at the counter, probably in her late teens, had an old-soul quality about her, warm and solid and direct.  I told her my story.  She grew up on a farm and she gets it.  It was good to have someone to celebrate with.  She remembers me and asks thoughtful questions when I stop in.

(If you’re on the road between Seattle and Portland and you need a pastry, Market Street Bakery in Chehalis is the place to go.  Also they have loaves of amazing sourdough for $5.  Be warned: they are not open on weekends right now.)

Josh met me at the title company and sat beside me making sure everything was in order as I glanced through, signed, and initialed umpteen times in an intimidating stack of Very Important Documents.  I had gone to my bank and wired a Very Large Sum of Money a couple days before.  It’s official.  Just like that.  Heavy envelope full of my copy of the adoption papers tucked under my arm, warm handshake from Josh and heartfelt well-wishing as we headed back to our cars.

I had remained calm and businesslike through the proceedings.  Now I was giddy, euphoric combined with the weariness of all of the doings and callings and comings and goings of the past month and a half.  Less than 7 weeks from seeing the listing on Zillow to owning it.  I have a Home.

It was breezy and snowing lightly as I drove down Highway 12.  As I turned onto my road, I put in George Winston’s “December”—fitting soundtrack for the moment—and as I rolled down the winding tree-lined road the joy and relief swelled in my chest.  Coming home, really Home, for the first time.  I pulled off the easement road in front of the For Sale sign and sat in my car and cried.

Naturally I am going to spend my first night as a landowner camping.  Not about to be deterred by the February part.  When you are recently descended from Scandinavian peasants and from the northern Midwest, freezing isn’t cold.  It also helps to have a closet improved by a decade of employment at REI.  The Swedes have a saying: “There is no bad weather, only bad clothes.”  In Swedish, it rhymes.

Bundled up, pitched my tent, and set up the first of what would become a series of Little Blue Roofs:  a 6’x8’ tarp held up by the fence, some utility cord, and large sticks that had fallen down around the old maple trees.  Built a fire.  Settled in for a celebration picnic, contentedly surveying my domain.  Not long after dark I crawled into my tent and read a few pages of Wendell Berry (specifically his essay “A Country of Edges,” a fitting benediction on my place, its name that found me before I found it, and my vision for my life’s work here) before dropping off to sleep. 

Welcome to Edgewild Farm.  I am home.