Building a command post
Alexander Selkirk was a Scot whose adventures on an uninhabited island were reputed to be the basis for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. From ‘Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk’ by poet, William Cowper, are these lines:
“I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute.”
When we first bought the property here in October 2000, I was inspired by a shady, cool area above where the house would be built to make for ourselves a spot. This spot is on a rise above where the house is now. There are three tall Ponderosa pines there and three or four oaks, with a line of small manzanitas in front. The mountain, which inspired us to choose this place to live, rises above all.
For the first five years we had no electricity, no water and it was a few months before we even had a flat place to park our small trailer. We needed a living room,…a spot.…