I Once Owned 20 Wooded Acres

So it finally happened.  He closed on his house today at 8 am.  It's gone.  It feels weird.

I purchased that house, with it's woods, in the fall of 2002.  I had decided to shed the house that Rocco and I had bought together and move to something nicer.  I wanted a little land and a big screened in porch.  I accidentally stumbled upon the 20 acres with a fairly new home (no porch) just 4 miles from town on a paved road. The house wan't my style or what I would have built but it was only 6 years old so it seemed new and fancy to me.  The woods though....that was the thing.  They were amazing.  20 acres of fully wooded land, on a road that was literally a tree tunnel in the spring when the trees were thick with leaves.   It was my quiet paradise.  It cost more than I ever dreamed of spending but they happily loaned me the money (I have excellent credit) so I threw caution to the wind and bought it.

I moved in over Thanksgiving weekend and did 95% of the moving by myself with the borrowed company minivan.  It was miserable.  I swore that should I ever move again I would hire movers to do it for me no matter what the cost.

I remember the first night; I laid on my mattress on the floor looking out the window at the trees and cried because I was so sad and missing Rocco.  The windows didn't have curtains (they never had).  The stars shone bright in the sky.  I used to crack my window at night...so I could hear and feel my woods close to me.

That first winter I started making trails in the woods.  I loved it.  I would walk the woods and get a feel for the lay of the land and then I would plot a course that took rain drainage and tree placement into account.  I would clear the trail by hand with an ax, tree trimmer and hand clippers.  It was absorbing and just what I needed to funnel my grief into.  I had lost my son, my grandson and my soul mate.  My heart was soooo very heavy.  Some days I would cry all day as I worked alone in the woods.  It felts good to just pour it all out.

Some days I would wake at dawn and pull on my mud proof boots and just head out for the WHOLE day.  I remember standing in MY woods and swearing I would never leave them. 

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Flash forward to 2007 when I tried to sell the house/land.  I was expecting Beanie and had moved to be with her father.  I was ready to shed the responsibility of a large house on 20 acres.  When i purchased it I assumed that I wouldn't be single forever and that one day a nice fellow would join me in my wooded paradise.  But sadly it never happened and i wasn't up to it all on my own any more. 

Unfortunately I chose to try to sell my house just as the housing bubble burst and NO ONE was buying or selling shit.  Eventually JDK decided to sell his house, so we keep the house in the woods.  His starter home sold fairly quickly and I found myself giving the old house in the woods a make over so we could make it into our family home.

The colors we chose went with his belongings.  I was never much of a decorator.  His house was red, dark green and gold.  I'm not a fan of red so we used burnt orange at my house.  He painted the legs of this coffee table the color i chose to match our new home.  We worked hard and it looked good.  We even installed curtains.

Over the next few years he made the woods his territory while I watched our little girl who didn't care to spend much time outside.  I missed the woods but my heart was with my daughter now.

Last Tuesday I went and walked the woods one last time.  I remembered the hours / days I had spend in them alone....with their healing power.  I also remembered how JDK seemed to take them from me when he moved in.  I didn't feel they were mine anymore.  It sounds weird but my special place wasn't familiar to me anymore.  It was still beautiful.  Anselle and Brie are buried there.  So many memories over so many years.

He sold his furniture with the house.  He left that coffee table that he made himself (not store bought) behind.  It was a such a nice sturdy piece of furniture and I really did like it.  It doesn't go with our new house...and we don't have room to store it.  Sometimes it's good to let go of the past even if it feels weird and kind of sad.