Regrets. I will…

… never really return to the Yang world of the stream bend surrounding my house.

Shortly after moving into our current house in spring ’98, I thought this area would be a new center, an *intra* hiking region to balance the extra-hiking area all around. It even wrapped itself up as a sphere or planet of some type, as the beginning of the stream looped around and ate, snake-like, the end of the stream. This is George Harris’ Son’s Branch.

Things happened. A huge development was built on the mountain beyond ours, and just above the falls area pictured at the first of this post. A town, really, of about 900 people, all students. But even before this our neighborhood was degenerating. The house next door was enlarged on our side, with a protective bank of rhododendrons essentially destroyed in the process. Then the neighbors moved out, and the place became a student rental. Students again. At another point, the nice neighbor across the street who lived alone in her house perched on a rock above GHS stream decided she needed more room and left the community. It too has become essentially a student rental, and probably always will be. The neighbors who lived on the opposite side, a nice elderly couple from South Carolina who weren’t up much, decided to sell their house. It too became essentially a rental unit. The couple that extended their house toward ours built a huge new house at the end of the road in former wilderness. There was really not room for this house. It also intruded on my intra-hiking region. The end of this same ridge was suppose to be the site of a shed, a new center to balance our house.

I still regret not having this shed, this intra-center. I should have developed it. But it’s all water under the bridge now. I cannot tolerate the new noises of the neighborhood, especially coming from the student town on the hill just above (sound condition again coming into play here). Whatever dreams we had for the house were shortlived, really. We do not plan for this to be a retirement home. But, then again, Edna expressed to me that she would like to have another house in Blue Mountain to replaced the present one, but admitted it was probably not practical at this point. We are close to work. I am close to my beloved Frank and Herman Parks. We are in an excellent location still, even if the neighborhood did not progress as we wanted it to. The dream of an intra-space is destroyed. I’ll have to look back on my notes.

“Blinker’s good enough.” (Baker B., 1/22/08, upon choosing surname for SL birthday)

I suppose when I created this post in early 2008, and also this one…

no further than my own backyard, 1

… the dream was still alive a bit — not totally destroyed. This was before the student town. This was before the giant new house at the end of the road. This was before all of our surrounding neighbors moved to other locations. It may have even been before the neighbors extended their house toward us — the beginning of the end. Now we are the only ones left.