Alder Alley

We hired an arborist to assess the trees on the bluff edge — the ones leaning, the ones dying, the ones quietly waiting to fall on something we hadn't built yet. He walked the bluff with us, identifying hazards and opportunities for selective limbing. As we worked our way back toward the access road, Alex pointed out two trees standing close together and asked the question he had been asking for months: could a spruce and a hemlock, side by side, hold up a treehouse?

The arborist looked at them for a long moment.

They're perfect. The best seats in the house.

That alone would have made the day. But the trees were not the day's surprise.

When the bluff work was nearly done, we asked if he'd come into the wooded interior of the property — the part we hadn't really walked yet, the part that had been more concept than place since we bought it. He agreed. He brought a saw. We brought enthusiasm and almost no idea what we were going to find.

We walked through brush. We climbed over deadfall. We pushed through the kind of underbrush that makes you wish you'd worn long pants. Thirty, forty-five minutes in, the canopy thinned and the ground opened up. There was a corridor — east-west, naturally formed, lined on both sides by alders. The alders had grown up tall and clean, their trunks like columns, their canopy meeting overhead.

The corridor opened into the first clearing. Then, a hundred feet beyond it, a second one — softer, ringed with conifers, light filtering down differently.

Same five acres. Same day. We walked back to the truck with names already forming.

• Alder Alley — the naturally-formed corridor. Our path into the woods.
• The Campsite — the first clearing. Glamping eventually. Maybe a second tent platform.
• The Chapel — the second clearing. Quieter. A place for gatherings, for ceremonies, for sitting and not saying anything.
• A future disc golf course, threading between them.

The arborist came back the following week with his crew and equipment. In a single day they took down the hazardous trees, limbed the bluff, cleared the trails through Alder Alley, opened up both clearings, and started sorting the old log deck. We'd been on the property for two months and felt like we knew it. We didn't.

Sometimes the land has been waiting longer than you have.