I recently bought some land in the Adirondacks. Who didn’t? Or at least who didn’t think of doing such a thing during these last few years of pandemic and catastrophe? North of someday-underwater-Manhattan, east of the incinerating-West, south of foreignerscan’t-buy-land-there-anymore-Canada, the Adirondacks sit in a sweet spot for American escape. The harsh, minus 30-degree temperatures of olden days will all but disappear in the coming winters and the year-round weather in the region will, by century’s end, resemble the mild conditions of North Carolina’s Great Smokey Mountains. I’ll be dead by then, but maybe on a balmy December afternoon in the mid-2090s my heirs will lie back on my land, mix up a pitcher of North Carolina’s state cocktail, the Cherry Bounce, and drink toasts to my foresight.
My land is a humdrum wooded acre in a mostly undeveloped development known locally as “The Acres.” Its official name, “Ausable Acres,” was cooked up by a logger who thought that subdividing a huge swath of second-growth forest into single-acre lots might attract those looking for a cheap way into vacation home ownership. That I bought my acre for a sum in the mid four figures astounds most Realtors today when I mention it to them. And indeed, I can’t stop bragging to anyone who will listen that I own an acre free-and-clear in a place that might eventually be one of the more habitable spots left on Planet Earth.
Once the excitement of a good deal wore off, though, I started to wonder how I might actually come to inhabit this acre. I am a man in middle age with all the usual stressors—poor liquidity, a college-aged child, inadequate retirement savings, and a body disintegrating joint-by-joint.
