Channeling Martians

Our land is situated on Mt. Rubellite, in Hebron, Maine.  Note that in the local tradition of changing centuries old pronunciations, the first syllable of Hebron is pronounced like the pronoun he.  Locals tell us that Leon Leonwood (L.L.) Bean owned the property at one point, but sold it during the depression.  Rubellite is the technical name for pink tourmaline, and in fact, there is a defunct tourmaline mine at the base of the hill.  Mountain is really a misnomer.  In fact, Mt. Rubellite is a big hill in the midst of much larger hills.  Mt. Washington and the White mountains of New Hampshire are visible from nearby Greenwood Mountain, but closer hills block our view of the Whites.

The land for sale was land locked, with no road frontage.  Luckily, Hebron does not require road frontage, but Fred decided to include a 50 ft. strip from the road to the bulk of the property.

Our property and Fred's house.

Some of you have been following our progress on this project for a long time, and know that there have been a lot of difficulties and stumbling blocks. We'd not like to dwell on these, mostly because we don't want to re-live them.  But, they are probably worth mentioning, just to maintain chronology.  The first difficulty involved an overly cautious property lawyer, whose interpretation of someone else's interpretation of a state statute almost kept us from being able to buy the land (lawyer number two got confirmation from the state that we are in the clear.)  Suffice it to say we know more about farmsteads and subdivisions in Maine than we'd really like to know.

Once all the legal battles were won, we needed an accurate topographical map of the building site.  Luckily, the Imaging Center at Bates (of which Matt is the director) had just acquired a new GPS for doing just this.  So, we both (but mostly Jen) donned on a bright yellow backpack with a satellite dish sticking out the top, and walked around the property, taking an accurate GPS measurement every three seconds. Only a few people saw us like this (until now), but every single one asked if we were trying to contact aliens.  No.  We were not.

This was May, 2008.  The snow had melted, and the hills were covered in spring green.

This skinny white pine ultimately will be centered on our screen porch.