The property Molly and I own is an unruly 10 or so acres of undulating hillside. There’s hardly an ounce of flat ground to be had, which means a perpetual low-grade uncertainty of your footing. It’s a subtle, uneasy, tension. Standing or walking, it’s a subroutine always running in the back of your mind.1
This has made any achievement in creating flat ground surprisingly celebratory. The few times we used an excavator to carve out a little roadside pad, our ability to confidently stroll around was cause for literal fist pumping.
When we leveled the cabin pad—our largest flat spot on the property by a wide margin—Molly and I took turns running wide laps with our eyes closed, marveling that our child-like idiocy was even possible.
I know. Sounds dumb. Is dumb. But when you live life on an obstacle filled slope, an open and flat space feels like a minor miracle. We returned to the pad all weekend, just to stand and mill about. The feeling upon it was unexpectedly surreal.
Flat ground… you take it for granted.
We’ve constructed a number of flat surfaces, of course. And generally we’ve structured those projects to involve a party of friends, and have worked out the logistics so that, by the end of the day, we’ve all got an achievement to bask in (and atop).
The appreciation for a new space generally takes a predictable form:
We’re so excited that where once there was no thing, there now is a thing. And we made it happen! We’re in awe that it exists. Look at those walls. How about that floor? And what with that roof??
We’re especially awestruck that we have more flat surface area. We walk around on it with assurance and soak up its comfort, pacing out the space from edge to edge, clocking the new square footage and its possibilities.
We have our snack break on it.
We rejoice.
We sprawl out.
That night we’ll likely pitch tents or roll out sleeping bags atop it.
Maybe even watch a movie.
But the main constant is the excitement that we all get to eat a well earned dinner on our new real estate and formally celebrate bringing it into this world.
Doing so always feels special. It’s a christening of the space, of course. And a communal one.
But… and this is especially resonant for Molly and I… it’s also a ceremony that celebrates an appreciation we never would have anticipated—an immense gratitude for the wonder that is flat ground, and all the efforts that made it possible.
We didn’t have railings on much of our decks for years. You can rightfully criticize that choice, but our thinking at the time was that folks just wouldn’t get too close to the edge. It all worked fine, but we eventually realized that the safety subroutine for uncertain footing I mentioned was also running in our minds when we were anywhere near the edge of our decks. We eventually added railings and effectively doubled the size of our deck space by making them more entirely usable and extending our subconscious comfort to every edge of the deck. I know, I know. Duh. Railings. We’re all on our own journey.