I am allowed 2000 characters to explain why and its probably not enough. Maybe it was the tree frog stuck to the glass of our front door during a warm summer rain. Maybe it was the distant howling of coyotes deep in the woods late at night or then again maybe it was the cement trucks buried in the mud up to their fenders a hundred yards into a forest (our front yard) during construction.
Or maybe it was just the countless other construction projects done for others or the days, weeks and years of us working out of town to make this all possible.
In the end it simply comes down to the land, the magnificent water that abounds in the area, the unpredictable climate and what we have gone through to tame this land and build a home that provides us constant comfort in an unpredictable changing climate.
We have slowly over 15 years time, carved our homestead out of what, after a storm has knocked out power for few days, sometimes seems like pure wilderness. This is such a beautiful place but when a late November windstorm roars in from the West, and the leafless trees are swaying 10 feet at the tops or a mid-winter snowstorm from the North drifts 3 feet of snow on the deck the day before the temperature plummets to zero, we are reminded that our presence at our quiet little place in the woods is up to the good graces of mother nature.
And that's okay we prefer it that way.