All good things must come to an end

Even time on The Hill.

This is the place I said "What the hell?" and went ahead and fell in love with my husband of 25 years (next week). He brought me here on our summer break - we were both answering to Uncle Sam all through the school year back then, albeit through different mechanisms - and our summer breaks were precious.

He brought me to this place (and back then it had no running water) in the middle of an oak-hickory ecosystem, in a clearing, at the end of a 3/4 mile gravel driveway, that you will zip right past on the two-lane blacktop if you don't know where you are going. His dad had bought the place 25 years earlier, after coming home from the Korean War to find his ticket punched and a cushy defense contractor gig that would run 30 years. Good on him. When we retired, we were bestowed with 40 acres of timber, and we now have a cozy little half-earthen, 1250 sq.ft. windmill-powered, zero-footprint get-away.

This is the place that I can best call home. As far as roots go, the only ones I have are about 13 miles from here. Via one grandparent, I myself go back six generations in this county.

We came home two weeks ago to take the actions to change our voter registrations so we can vote for Kay.

We also harvested a couple of deer, pulled the rest of the onions, dug the rest of the potatoes, picked the last of the tomatoes, and commenced with the final canning and freezing spree, finishing on the last day of summer.

And on Sunday, the first day of fall, we started cleaning - ten days of canning and freezing and cooking like a mad woman - coupled with every fucking bow-hunter on this side of the river traipsing in here to use the bathroom or charge their cell phones or just drink coffee and bitch about Bush, I had plenty of cleaning to do. Anyway, every surface needed washing. So I commenced with the proper cleaning.

Gawd am I tired!

We will leave in a day or two, lock this place up tight, and go back to the city. We will put the Escape back in storage, and not drive again until we come back up here for rifle season in November. And maybe, just maybe, when we come up here next time, it will be a permanent shift. This will be home and the co-op in the city will be the get-away.

That's kind of the goal...