About five years ago, I was looking to buy a little cottage somewhere nice within a two hour drive of my home. Most of the time, I focused on the Point Reyes area in western Marin County, a place where my sweetie and I love to go and have been regularly visiting for over 20 years. At that time, though, nothing decent was showing up there so I widened my search and included Big Sur.
I found this cute cabin in Big Sur, just a two room thing, on 10 acres up a windy and nasty dirt road above the fog line with a great ocean view. Joan Baez owned the adjoining 10 acres. Great, I thought. I can sit around the fireplace and jam with Joan. The place was so dilapidated, small, and raw that it had been on the market for five months; but it was perfect for us. I called to put in an offer. The realtor informed me that another offer had been accepted that morning.
I was very disappointed, of course. I had dreams of fixing the place up a bit and maybe adding a second little cottage. It was so peaceful and beautiful up there. Walking that land, I felt my head free of any angst.
This past week, though, I felt very lucky not to have bought that property. Fires in Big Sur have crept within two miles of the ridge containing that cottage and all homes have been evacuated. I'd be a nervous wreck right now if my offer had gone through back then, worried about my little dream cottage being turned into toast, about my beautiful trees burned, about my beautiful view scarred.
As coincidence would have it, this past week I made an offer - the first offer I made since way back then - on another cottage, but not in Big Sur. It's on three acres of land just outside of Pt. Reyes Station alongside of Highway One. There's no windy road to navigate. There's no ocean view. But there's a nice little creek that runs through the property and you can see Inverness Ridge from the cottage windows, a place that had its own fire about twenty years ago. Walking the land, I feel a peaceful feeling.
If all goes well, we'll own it in August. And unlike that place in Big Sur, it's in great shape. I don't have to do a thing to it. I'll cross my fingers and hope it stays fire free for the next decade or so. I'm hoping to get lucky.
2 comments:
Didn't the Big Sur place have, oh, no running water, among other issues?
I think you got the better deal for more reasons than just the fire.
The Big Sur place had a spring they sucked water out of and put in a tank, which had my professional seal of approval. You needed four wheel drive or a dirt bike to get up there, but my oh my, what a view!
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