Change Comes to the Ridge

I've lived on this mountain for thirty years. In that time there have been changes, certainly. When we bought this land, there was no access except by tractor or, in the summer, by four-wheel drive. We spent a lot of time walking for the first few years. I remember a snowstorm with drifts over 10 feet deep that broke the axle in our 4WD truck. That winter, we walked a mile in, and the boys missed school for over a month. We survived quite well, the boys went back to school and found they were ahead of their classes because of the schoolwork we had done at home. In March, the state roads brought out a huge endloader and cleared the road so we could drive in once again. One of my vivid memories of that summer was leaving our non-electric home to walk a mile out to our truck so that we could go to town to watch the movie "The Wilderness Family." It struck me as we hiked home in the darkness with our four sons that our life was probably more difficult and more exciting that the movie.

In 1984, we got a telephone by paying $600 to have the line run in. By then I was working 50 miles from home and the phone was necessary. In 1989, we added electricity. At that time, we had a year-old baby (in addition to our 4 teenage sons) and my husband's elderly father, and I was a sophomore in college. Dealing with kerosene lamps and the other tasks associated with a non-electric home was too difficult. So we signed up, paying to have the line run over a mile to our house. In some ways the change was good (laundry by hand is not fun, and neither is a laundromat), in others it was hard to take. I mourned the quiet and the independence we enjoyed without power. We'd been set up pretty well with spring water, bottled gas for stove and hot water, and wood heat. We kept the spring and wood heat, gave up the gas and changed kerosene lamps for electric lights.

Years passed, the spring dried up and we drilled a 730-foot deep well. Until 1993, our nearest neighbor was a mile away. That changed when his children grew up and built homes on the hill, and civilization crept closer. They had children and petitioned for mail and bus service on our road, which by this time had been graveled and tamed into a mostly passable road. As the road improved, we saw more traffic. Gone were the days when the sound of an engine would send us all to the windows to see who it was. Now four-wheelers invaded the quiet, roaring across the ridge every weekend.

Still, our land protected us. With eighty acres around us, and no house within sight of ours, we were still pretty isolated. We let the trees grow along the road, and that and our quarter-mile driveway kept things quiet around our home.

This fall, another change came to our ridge. A gas company has bought up most of the mineral rights up here (except for those under our 50 acres) and planned to drill gas wells. Although I didn't like it, there was nothing I could do to prevent them from drilling on our 30-acre parcel. Since the first of the year, they've been moving closer and closer, and two weeks ago set their drilling rig up on our land.

I have to admit that I'm fascinated by the whole process. The drillers work all night, the rig roars, the lights shine, and the flags fly from the top of the 40-foot rig. It's very industrial and so foreign on this hill. They finished our well in 10 days and moved out the ridge to the next site.

Did they hit gas or oil? Who knows? Not us--they have not told us anything yet. Will we get anything from the well? Since we didn't own the mineral rights, we're not entitled to royalties. What we can get is free gas for our home, if we run the line a mere half-mile to the well. Of course, we'll have to change all our appliances too, and add ductwork if we want to replace our wood heat with a gas furnace. Is it worth it? Maybe, but I'm not convinced. The well adds value to our land of course, but since we don't plan to sell it that's a moot point. The profile of the hill is forever changed by the excavation for the drillsite, and that is hard for me to take.

More change is coming, since the company will also be laying a gasline along the ridge. After that, things might quiet down again and give us a chance to adjust to the recent intrusion.

When I moved here, I wanted peace, quiet, and distance from manmade things. It seems that no matter how far you run, change follows. I suppose we are fortunate that it has been so slow in coming, and came in stages rather than all at once. But in my heart, I want it like it was when I came here, no electric lines, no phone, no bus, no mail, and few people. I know it can't be, but I will always remember those days as some of the best of my life.