The Price and the Benefit
Published on: Sep 04, 2023Filed under: Farm
According to the text message from Russell my real estate agent, it was a year to the day since the photo below was taken. We’d been visiting my then-under-construction house to drop off sandwiches and check on progress.
That house, my house, was the culmination of a very search with a very specific request – I wanted a feeling rather than a specific number of rooms or lot size.
“You know that feeling you get when you first walk into a cabin for the weekend. When you set your bag down and the door isn’t even closed yet, but the world back there? That world just goes away? I want that. I want that every day.”
As things would have it, I received Russell’s recent text on an a Saturday spent staining the same deck he photographed me on. I was taking advantage of the long weekend a dry forecast to finally stain my decks, a job that I hoped would only take half a day, but realistically understood would take a whole one.
The work is both part of the price and part of the benefit of trying for a bit more serenity. It’s a change of pace from the day job and an investment in the days ahead. As far as how well we did in achieving that rather amorphous goal of trading convenience for serenity?
This morning I was up before the sun made it over the treeline, having coffee on the back porch while the dogs ran around the yard. The sun rose pink into the morning mists and to the east I could see my neighbors’ horses were out already.
Yeah, I’d say I’ve carved out a rather serene little corner.
