Even though our lease is up at the end of August, and we've been looking for a rental house closer to PH's work, I'm still surprised to announce that we are moving away from Portland this month. Partly because it happened so fast, and partly because the place we're going to is darn close to a picture I've dreamed of my entire life.
PH has been watching the rental ads for several months now. Occasionally, we go and look at one. It always seems nice in the ad but turns out to be infested with rats in person. A couple of weeks ago, he found another ad that seemed like what we wanted. It's 25 miles from the hospital, which is farther than PH would like but closer than we are now. And it's rural, which we really wanted. When he saw the ad relisted a couple times, he contacted the landlords to make an appointment to see the place. Sometimes he goes by himself, but this time I was able to take a few hours away from work to go too.
We drove on a rural highway past miles and miles of beautiful farms. Then we turned off the highway into a hilly area. After a few miles we found our street, headed toward mountains covered in trees. Then the street ended. We found a gravel drive that had our address on it. So we kept going. A long narrow gravel road, uphill. We stopped at a beautiful house, but that turned out to be the landlord's house, not the rental. We had to drive further up the mountain to the rental house.
When we got there, and I saw that the house was clean on the outside, I made up my mind that I wanted this place. I didn't even know what the inside of the house looked like. I just knew that there were no next door neighbors, and the house had a deck around it and it was on a mountainside with an unbelievable view on one side and literally zillions of acres of unoccupied forest behind it. I mean, unoccupied by humans, of course. The only reason I didn't offer to buy the place right then and there is that the land is not suited for gardening or farm animals. There isn't really a huge area that is flat and/or cleared. The landlords told us that previous tenants had tried gardening before, but the deer just eat everything.
We looked at the inside of the house and it was big, and clean, as well. It is a manufactured house. It's not anyone's dream house or anything, but it is clean. Three bedrooms, 2 baths, 2 dining areas. And a garden shed outside. So there is definitely room for us.
It's all electric, and they told us the power goes out every winter. It's a good thing we make preparedness our hobby. Now we will see how well we can live when the grocery store is not 5 minutes away. I wonder about the narrow gravel road. I know they obviously got the house up that road somehow. But I also know the trash truck doesn't go up there. I think about the big UPS truck and wonder if might just be better to get a mailbox rental in town. I wonder about our big propane tank and how it's going to get filled. I wonder how we're going to deal with trash, now that I think about the fact that the trash truck isn't coming. I wonder what part I will play in the network of 3 houses on the road (including ours), and if I will like my part. What is an everyday normal lifestyle for some is going to be an adventure every single day for me. It feels like a dream.
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