A Good Foundation Lasts Forever

As many of my readers may know by now, I am in love with old homesteads. There is something captivating about coming across the remnants of someone’s hard work and dreams from days long gone by. I always wonder who they were and what their life must have been like. Did they sit on these front steps at the end of a long, hard day’s work and dream about all the possibilities of their land?

I went back to visit the original homestead that sparked this fascination. Up in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains near where I grew up, I discovered this grassy valley when I was about eighteen. Signs of the home that was once here are everywhere you look. Old lilacs, fruit trees, fallen-down fences, masonry walls with ivy trailing over, an overgrown driveway, and the stone foundation and front steps of a house long ago burned to the ground. Some fairly good sized Douglas-fir trees grow right out of the middle of where the house once stood. My friends and I spent many an afternoon sitting on the stone steps of the foundation and dreaming up big plans to somehow purchase the property and make our own homestead community.

Eighteen-year-olds can dream up some pretty grand dreams, and somehow our plans never materialized, but every time I go back to this spot, I can’t help wishing it were my homestead. The air smells of warm evergreen boughs and pitch on hot summer days, the tall grasses ripple in the wind through the valley, and all you can hear are the songs of birds and wind in the trees. One of my original homestead dreaming friends and I went up there with our kids a few weeks ago, and the dreaming caught on like wildfire. Pretty soon the kids had plans for an old-style Inn, a hostel for WOOFers to come work on our organic farm, and a waterwheel powered grain mill. My friend and I were talking about a mountain brewery and pub. It was a lovely afternoon with our feet in the fields and our heads in the clouds!