For the past fourteen years I have located a lot of my dreams in a place to be called Kalien. Many times it felt like a mystical utopia—a Galt’s Gulch or a Shangri-La—only scrawled words in my journal. A dream each night in the dusty recesses of my mind, only to wake in the day to find it was vanity. But for over 5,000 days in the best and worst of times I could not shake it. And dreamers of the day become dangerous men, for we will risk everything to act our dreams with open eyes, in order to make them possible.

I began to be bound to this place called Kalien in a relationship so rich and profound as to seem almost predestined, as though I knew it before birth and was born for it. It involved a delight that I associated with no other place.

On September 22, 2014 the world suddenly became profoundly alive and full of meaning. I had at long last found a companion—Gina—who was willing to join me and strike out beyond the bounds of the accepted, beyond the ordinary and common things that most people respect—as any person does who sets a willing foot into the woods—and we felt an exhilaration like none we had ever known.

Like treasure at the end of a rainbow, we found Kalien. Fifty-five verdant acres of woods, streams, waterfalls, wild animals, and mountains. Our garden of eden—fruitful and well-watered. We immediately began to mark out on the untouched land the dimensions of our home. From that day the place began to look different, the land possessed an intimacy that it could never have had before.

Once those boundaries were marked, we felt a permanent allegiance. To the land and to each other. We determined to live fully the rest of our days there together. There were no bad associations with it—only peace and beauty and solitude. From the first, we associated it with freedom. We felt an eagerness felt only by people doing what they passionately want to do, and who are not justifying it in an account book.

Our house was to be located next to a massive white oak that was over 180 years old. We would picnic on a flat rock high on the hill of the homesite at all hours of the day, watch the clouds, listen to the leaves rustle, and imagine what our home should look like. Then we would lay back and try to retell the stories that must have played out on that very spot with the oak tree as inscrutable witness.

Our sixth president, John Quincy Adams, was in office when that sapling first sprouted. It was alive during the horrors of the Civil War, and was over fifty years old when slaves built the stacked stone wall that still stands and forms the southern boundary of Kalien. That oak became symbolic of our lives. It had survived countless storms, winters, and parasites, and somehow still stood strong. We named it “Old Majestic”.

We built a simple house with five big rooms, a bedroom, a dining room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a great room. Three of the rooms open onto a rambling open porch that is on the downhill side and enveloped by the treetops of a black walnut grove. Looking out here gives you a fine view of the panorama of the Appalachian Mountains. The dining room opens to a small screened porch so that a nice cross breeze can be had in fine weather. The windows are big and numerous and not a curtain to be found.

As much as possible, we aimed to bring the outside in. We want to live of the land—not on it. The lines were carefully designed and placed so that it naturally graces the land from every angle. The house has shiplap siding with colors carefully chosen to blend in with nature. It is adorned with hues that complement the trees, the soil, and the rocks.

We feel home at last. Finally home. The past fourteen years have been tumultuous and filled with wounds and wandering. We are weary but delighted.

This place seems open to experiences not comprehended in the regularities of life. One world being supplanted by another. The first half of life has melded into the second. We have this place to ourselves and now possess the years of experience and suffering to know what to do with it.

So, very soon Kalien will expand once again. The wounded and weary will find this road less traveled. And solitude, beauty, and encouragement awaits. It will feel like home. Sweet home.

(*Thanks to Wendell Berry for many of the beautiful words and phrases. His life and writing inspires and encourages me and helps me express the inexpressible.)