# 174 - Cabin in the Woods and My Spiral

An important part of the last trip to our acreage was to scope out the prospective home-site, workshop site and the ideal area for our road into the residential area of our property.

The area in which we camp is not going to be the area where we will build. The home-site is on the other side of the property --- where the land is higher, drier, more solid and less sandy.

On a hike, I take the spiral notepad and pen and we go mark it off on foot. Kneeling, I get busy with my notes and do not think about Deputy Dave taking downward photos that will highlight streaks of white/gray in my unruly morning hair.

 I am trying to figure out the direction of the house --- the position of the sun --- the potential views from each window of the cabin, the distance from the cabin to the workshop and the layout of the new road to the back of these structures. We gauge the distance from the water line we had ran to the very front, corner of the property and it seems workable so that we won't have to dig a well for the house.

Since Deputy Dave already has experience with installing a septic system due to helping a friend in need, he will probably rent the backhoe and dig the hole and install our septic system himself. The workshop and house will have to be in close enough proximity to each other to share a septic system.

Our cabin in the woods will give us beautiful views of towering trees and hills with livestock. The creek will be nearby and the lake within a good walking distance. And as I kneel down and focus on my notes, Howdy is curious and wondering if there is something wrong and he closely searches my face for any signs of trouble. He makes me laugh. He's an inquisitive creature.

It pains me that it will be necessary for some trees to be removed. Of course, now that I'm learning to use fallen trees for other purposes, it will be a bit less painful. The trees will not fall in vain.

Deputy Dave is needing blueprints of my cabin design so that he can get started with his own preparations for the build. I've drawn out my floorplan in detail, but I really need to take it to an architect and get going with cementing the plans.

And with our greater purpose for the trip wrapped up, we have to get back on the road for the two hour trip back to the house on the Southside of Houston. It's sad to leave the land. I feel as if I could live out there in a tent right now. It is so incredibly beautiful on our land...it is there...waiting...calling to us and we are nearly able to live there full-time. 

 Our land has so many saplings growing all over the place...it's beautiful, but a tad out of control. It will be nice to live out there and be able to spend our weekends cultivating the land so that we may enjoy a large vegetable garden, beautiful ornate gardens and outdoor areas for a few livestock.



Packing up is so sad. It will be wonderful to no longer have to haul this equipment back and forth from the city to the country.

 Deputy Dave is always well prepared for our trips to our acreage. But, I am sure that loading and unloading all of these tools and large equipment is tedious. However, he seems to enjoy everything that goes with our travels to the country.

We had wanted to go to our land again this weekend, but we've had so much rain lately (very needed) that we have not been able to consider it...we don't want to show up to only be forced to sit around because the heavy equipment will sink into the raw earth that is layered with composted material.





At one time I had been in contact with an architect in Livingston who I admired. He was a para-pelagic and known for being very talented at his job. My mother was a semi-hemi-pelagic, so I am drawn to a person with such disabilities because they are usually more fine-detailed and in-tuned because their senses are more keenly adjusted.

My mom doing what she loved best...teaching for Houston Independent
School District. She taught children in an inner-city school, behavior problem
students and she was very good at it. The students loved her as well.

And that's my personal opinion from growing up with a person who had such a "disability." Less physical abilities usually equates more mental abilities.

My mom with my brother-in-law, Mark.

As for me, I'm not yet doing crossword puzzles, but I had a serious spine injury when my neck collapsed onto my spinal cord in 2009 and created the need for cervical spine reconstruction. I now am able to walk around, thank God, and to better feel my hands and feet...but my spine is full of metal plating and screws and bolts and cadaver bone. Yes, it's strange, but HERE I AM!!

I get to walk around on my land, yet I know how profoundly different things might be if I'd not been able to go through with that surgery and survive it intact. It sure was a time of finding my "backbone" --- so to speak.

Recovery was horrendous; I cannot lessen the experience for the benefit of others. It was particularly grueling because this reconstruction involved going through a double-surgery; they went through the front of my neck to put in plates and then flipped me mid-surgery to go through the back of my neck to finish the job.

Talk about being uncomfortable after a surgery...incisions on both sides of your neck with staples and a hard-shell neckbrace pressing on everything doesn't give you any choices for finding a comfortable position. The swelling in my neck was extremely problematic...so much that I often would choke on my own saliva...there was not enough room for it to go down. More loveliness. Truth can be harsh.

That's me. The view closest is the same on the
other side of my neck.

As for my mother and her Polio inflicted body...I think about her often as I walk around our land with my body that is again fully responsive to my brain's automatic commands. I am thankful that my mother had been able to come several times to our land before she passed away from breast cancer in 2006; she loved having picnics with us.

My mom, Deputy Dave, my dad and my brother-in-law, Kevin.

Well, she loved it out there in the country; she was part country-girl herself. However, she never got to see the backside of our property, the side with the lake...she was mostly in an electric wheelchair and we had no means to get her across the creek so that she could see the lake.

My dad at the lake's edge with all of his grandkids and more!

It saddens me, but I can't think about it too deeply or I'll fall into that pit of mourning that most of us discover in life. 

My mom in a rehab hospital after being hit by a truck and having
to have her one "good" arm surgically repaired due to the accident.
This made her, for a time, to be charted as a "quadra-pelagic."
It's not a good hair day when you can't use your arms.

One thing is for sure...I plan to name a peaceful spot out there on the land in honor of my mother.

My mom holding my sister, the week we left for Scotland.

As for my list of "things to do" to get us moved, I hope I can find that architect in Livingston. Maybe he's still drawing up plans for people wanting to build their own homes. Next week, that will be my task...to find him.