Western Dreams
Like many men my age, I grew up during the cowboy era with the likes of The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, Have Gun will Travel, The Rifleman, Bonanza, The Big Valley, Rawhide, Zorro, Maverick, Wagon Train, The Virginian, and even F Troop. If we had dreams in those heady days of the 50s and 60s, they were about being either astronauts or cowboys. I didn’t really think too much about either in a vocational sense, but I sure did like a good Western whenever it came around. We’ve all learned a lot about the Wild West over the years and the cowboy life has lost a lot of its luster, which makes sense since those were the migrant worker jobs of their day. While the Marlboro Man and Clint Eastwood were fine idols to look up to, you really didn’t want to scratch that surface too deep for risk of disillusioning yourself. I think what attracted me more than the exact cowboy role was the wide open spaces of the west. Whether the Estancias of Southern California that we saw in Zorro or the big ranches like the Ponderosa (Bonanza) or Barkley Ranch (The Big Valley), they all shared what we call the Big Sky feature of making you feel like the land goes on forever from horizon to horizon.
I first got a taste for the Big Sky feeling when I bought my second place in Utah in 1993. I had started my Park City, Utah experience by buying a condo at the Ontario Lodge on the Deer Valley mountain. The condo was not a ski-in-ski-out condo, but also cost considerably less than those which were. The best part about it was that buying there introduced me to a lifelong friend, Frank Trumbower, who was my next-door neighbor. Like most people who buy in Park City, it was all about having a ski house. One of the favorite expressions in Park City is that people come for the winters and yet stay for the summers. My first summer trip to park City made me fall in love with the clear mountain air of summer and the Big Sky feeling that came with it. That all caused me to look for an upgrade from the condo to a ranch. What I settled on was a ranch house set in the middle of the Snyderville Basin, adjacent to Park City proper. The house was set on four acres of flat, high-desert, ranch land just off Old Ranch Road. It was a classic “Big hot, no cattle” house that was all big logs and beams. What made it very special to me was that in every direction you looked you saw flat land (miles and miles of it) and then hills or mountains that framed what had to be one of the biggest skies I had ever seen. I used to think that my spirits were always lifted when I went there and I felt like I dreamed cowboy dreams. For reasons I don’t really remember well, I sold that house and bought a nice new townhome on one of the golf courses. There was a less big sky there, but that was only a temporary waystation before I bought the big monastery 11,000 square foot Frank Lloyd Wright wannabe house on Canyon Court. With its vast interior open spaces adorned in cherry and redwood, that house fulfilled another childhood fantasy to own a big ski house, but it was set on a wooded hillside and BIg Sky was not really a part of the appeal.
Park City was a big part of my life over 5 homes and fifteen years. I certainly got my skiing Jones out of my system by skiing anywhere from 35-40 days a year during those times. I went out to ski at lest 4 or 5 times per season and then spent several weeks in summer out there as well. Had it not been for the altitude, which always bothered me somewhat with its 7,500 – 8,000 living altitude, I might have chosen to retire there. But while the dry throat and mild headaches might have disappeared over time, they were enough of a deterrent to drive me away eventually. What I knew was that I needed something out west for my final home stretch, so Kim and I talked about it a lot.
In those days between 2007 (when I sold me mast house in Park City) until 2012 (when I bought this hilltop in Southern California), Kim and I talked non-stop about where we wanted to settle out in this direction. We both somehow knew we wanted to be out here somewhere since all our siblings were nearby and we both loved the west. We talked about Utah, especially in places like St. George, but that seemed more remote than we were willing to do. We spent a lot of time talking about Las Vegas. My mother and sister lived there, so we visited often. Real Estate in Las Vegas was particularly attractive after the Great Recession crash, but Kim had a real problem with the Tinseltown aspect of the place and I had my concerns about the heat in the summer. I wanted to have ONE home at long last, so we decided to look in California.
We planned a week-long excursion (joined by youngest son Thomas) that we started in San Francisco and then headed south. We literally looked at most of the reasonable housing options between Sausalito and San Diego. We sort of avoided the L.A. Basin, but otherwise looked in the Bay Area, the Monterey Peninsula, Santa Barbara area, Orange County (Laguna Beach) and finally all over San Diego County. I suspect we were always leaning towards San Diego, truth be told. But this is a big county and what we say further north in Fallbrook and Bonsal, the area my sister thought we might like, was really more rural than we wanted. We are not horse people and that is horse country. We also are not beach people, so we knew that paying the bigger price for something close to the ocean would probably not feel like such a bargain. The idea of a view of the ocean had appeal, but was not essential. I don’t think we actually verbalized the importance of a view property, but we were clearly more drawn to those properties that had nicer views.
When I happened on this hilltop, I was on my motorcycle and it was Christmas morning. We were heading home the next day and I felt somewhat empty-handed. Then I saw a sliver of this place from the road (I really didn’t want to disturb the owners on Christmas morning), but really didn’t have any idea of what the views were like. Nevertheless, from the pictures, the videos (my sister and sister-in-law came over for a look), it seemed like a solid choice at a decent value (the price had just been dropped), so I bought it. It was a somewhat impulsive move on my part, but Kim seemed eager to go along with it, so we barreled ahead. In other words, we got very lucky.
As I sit here in my favorite living room spot I can see blue cloudless sky in every direction. The nearby rolling hills strewn with boulders and high chaparral make this a slightly less big sky feel than that ranch in Utah, but there is still an awful lot of sky out there. That and we get to see 40 miles of ocean out as far as Catalina Island and snow-capped mountains to the north and east. In many ways, it is an improvement to the rather uniform Big Sky of Utah thanks to the Pacific Ocean vistas. I guess I have always known that I had western dreams and that the Big Sky of the west is where my heart soars the highest. I get to enjoy these views every day and for that I will be eternally grateful.