A New Start
Once I had a regular life of things that fed ego and false impression of who I thought I was. I had a beautiful home overlooking the ocean, a nice truck, a family and a well paying, respectable job.
Funny, how you define yourself by things and status. Funny that even though you think and believe this is not true, it is.
I believed that I was not materialistic. I believed I lived minimally. I believed that giving up my television was a big thing. Trust me it is not. When you suggest a belief into your belief system it will be challenged. My thought is that just me believing I was this way, invited the Universe to challenge this belief.
Life is how you choose to look at it though. After I lost my job and things got really bad, the wife left with the step kids. The house ended up getting sold. I gave the Toyota Tundra back to the bank and replaced it with a beat up old 1980's vintage Ford truck, that I had to will to move. I don't have to say it, but it was not a good time, but I decided to look at it as a new adventure.
What little I still owned was in storage. I took my two cats, two dogs and whatever I could fit into the back of the truck and headed east. I stayed at a friends cabin for a bit letting my head ease. It was early spring and for the first time in my life, I had no idea what was to become of me. Not having control over my life was so unsettling that I ended up just letting go. I didn't know it back then, but it was the best thing I could have ever done. The idea that I actually controlled my life was taken away. I had no control. All I could do was wait and watch my life unfold. When I was finally OK with the idea of letting go, things started happening. I could see clearly, breathe more deeply. I actually began to feel moments of time that before were only blurred lines.
One day when I was out in my travels just looking at trees and rolling hills, I came upon a For Sale sign that was at the start of a weak, dirt road. Curious, I found an old forgotten cabin all boarded up. Someone had broken into it, which gave me an excuse to enter. It was a wreck. It was filled with old dirty diapers, trash and more. Wildlife had taken it over leaving nests of all sorts and hard to see movement in the dark corners.
That night I called the number on the sign. An old man answered. I told him I didn't have much money, but I'd give him what I had and asked if he would finance the rest.
He told me "Ya buy it as-is, I ain't gonna garantee nothin' to be workin. If yer miss a pyment I'll take er back".
He asked me if I knew what shape it was in. I told him that I had had a peek inside. He grunted. "Ye, think ye can live in it thata way?"
Over confidently I said "Yes."
He kind of laughed, but not a good laugh. Then asked "Ye been here over ta winter ave ya?"
"Er, no." was my reply.
Then came that laugh again, but more mocking than the first one. The next day I handed him my cash and he handed me a screw driver for a key.
The land was fifty acres on top of a mountain with a log cabin that had not been lived in for over ten years. Seven miles of a dirt road led to the little road that was to be the driveway, a few miles more dirt led to the cabin leaving a modern world far, far away. There was no sign of anyone unless someone happened to drive the dirt road. Not a man made sound, not a plane or horn, or voice could be heard.
The cabin was charmingly rustic, meaning house without walls. From the outside looked quaint and story bookish, but inside the charm had a gone askew.
There was electric and phone, but not in working order and there was no running water. The well house was torn and broken. There was water hidden somewhere, but it smelled badly and I could not get close enough to see it. The old man had dug the well by hand and put concrete rings around the well part. The gap around the rings was wide and as deep as the well making it a treacherous place to be and impossible to access the well without a ramp of sorts. I made a note to get a ramp.
I unscrewed all of the boards off the windows and doors giving light to the already bad news I had inside. I made another note to find out where the dump was and get a LOT of disinfectant.
You entered through the front door into the kitchen that had been added on after the original cabin was built. To one side was a small room that had been added on after the kitchen add on. The roof leaked badly in the little room and nearly all the walls were bending from being rotten.
On the other side of the kitchen you went up six steps up to where the living room sat. The stairs between the original dwelling and the kitchen were in good shape, but the old man neglected adjust for the overhang so you had to duck as you changed rooms.
Up in this part of the house the footings underneath the floor must have started to give out because the house started to list to the right. It also, moved when you walked. Frowning, I jumped up and down, yes, that was certainly movement. Made a note; No jumping in the house.
Towards the back of the living room was a narrow stair case that turned a corner leading to the loft. Just before you ascended the stairs was a knob-less back door held closed with a twig in a homemade latch. The cabin leaned so drastically on this side that it gave you the feeling you were on a large ship at sea on the down side of a huge wave. I stopped half way down the crooked stairs listening for the flapping of the sails.
The chinking had fallen out in most places between the logs and whoever lived there before me had obviously experienced being cold because there was newspaper stuffed in the cracks between the logs. Much of the newspaper lay tattered on the floor leaving holes in the walls in which, you could easily make out the scenery outside. The old wood stove had holes in the back and the pipe up to the ceiling was rusted.
Walking back outside I found the bathroom a windowless, door-less outhouse built on the hill a bit up from the cabin. It had half a tin roof, which left the other half for a ceiling of stars. The floor was pretty bad off too, with it's gaping mouth threatening my feet.
I figured it was going to be tough. I had no idea. I really had no idea.
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