It all started a while back when I made an off-hand comment about selling my land on the mountain where the cabin is located.

It happened around Easter, I think. My sister and her husband came up and visited and we were all chatting about general stuff.

I was talking about my plans for the future, which include purchasing a more permanent home — hopefully a small farm, but maybe just a home with a few acres of land.

That was about the extent of it until last week, when my brother-in-law Tom called me back and told me that one of his friends in Salisbury is interested in purchasing some land on the mountain.

He had mentioned what I mentioned and then the other fellow mentioned that maybe something mentionable might occur if a deal could be constructed.

So, Saturday I saw an almost new full-size Ford pulling in the driveway at the cabin. Deer hunting was its occupant's primary concern to start with, but once the whole picture was in view, I think that changed somewhat.

On Friday, I had the day off work and spent most of the time trying to get the place presentable. I really didn't think about getting it ready to show so much as I thought about trying to get caught up on the work that needed to be done. For instance, the grass was at least two feet tall in some places and a lot of limbs that were broken during the winter months were strewn here and there.

Also, I must admit that I hadn't exactly done my part to keep the place in perfect order. A lot of my junk belongings were also scattered about, I spent a good portion of my time stacking up some boards and moving things around.

I have three huge stacks of lumber, one of them measures almost four feet tall and eight feet or more wide. I don't really have a grasp on how much lumber is there, but I would say it may very well be enough to construct a good-sized two-story barn. Now all I need is enough land on which I can build the barn. One thing at a time, I suppose. It is better to have the lumber and not need it than to need it and not have it, I figure.

I also have a lot of other things that I am not using right now, like standards to old store shelving, wire racks, the bumpers off my two old ‘59 Chevy trucks, a lot of safety glass in clear and smoked, old doors and windows and too many other items to list.

I suppose I need to break down and go through all this stuff and figure out what I might actually use. I think I have enough glass to build a greenhouse with roughly the same square footage as the Taj Mahal, but I don't have anywhere to put it yet either.

So, where to go from here is the question.

After the prospective buyer left the house, I started really thinking about the proposal at hand. I don't really want to sell the place, but I don't have the time to devote to it that I would like to. Even so, everywhere I look on that hill is something I either built or repaired, trees that I have cut and brush that I have stacked.

It is impossible for me to go anywhere without thinking of the many friends that have been there to help out, the many days of labor spent in construction and the many hours of thought utilized in planning some of the projects.

For instance, I recall the time I dropped the tree on the corner of the front porch. Of course, that is made easier by the fact that the damage still hasn't been fixed. I'll put that on my checklist for later this week.

The two-story building turned cabin stands as a testimony to construction expansion. What started off as a tool shed ended up being a good-sized cabin.

Then there's the decks that I constructed out of donated materials from several locations, all of which came together to make two nice porches on the back of the place.

Not to mention the fact that I can recall walking up there the first time, before the first tree dropped, and scoping out a location to clear and get started.

A lot of my friends showed up for the work, helping drop trees and drag brush. I can even still hear the sound of the brush sliding over the leaf-covered ground on its way to the big pile at the end of the drive. I also recall many late summer nights watching the crackling fires consume the center of a big pile of brush, leaving a molten red crater like a volcano. Soon after, it was always refilled again by the tines of a pitchfork pushing more brush to the center until it was all gone. I also cleared out several hunting areas, once thick with brush, and placed several salt licks and feeding stations around in the off season. Sometimes in the spring I used to go out to ‘hunt' with a camera, trying to get a nice picture of a big buck at work horning a tree or digging at the ground.

I can say that it never happened, but I still had a good time trying. Well, there's really no call for all of this sentimentality yet. I still haven't heard back from the fellow on whether or not he is really interested in purchasing the land. It's kind of funny that I would sell land I am not advertising, but not sell land I am advertising for sale. That's the way it goes sometimes.

Once a place like that is gone, it is gone. I will probably never own anything just like it again. The little places in the woods that I liked to sit and read, the place I strung my hammock, my best hunting spot and my prized fruit trees, all will be in someone else's hands. All I can do is watch as things change all around me. Life is just that way sometimes — wind it up and watch it go like a toy soldier.

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