I spend a year babysitting a mansion in the Blue Ridge of Virginia. There was absolutely nobody around. No TV, but inground indoor swimming pool with Japanese garden, tennis court, but nobody to share the experience with. The only people I would see at the property were the caretakers for gardening and a woman to care for the cats. I was teaching there, so I was paid squat. I found out that I loved being by myself most of the time...except you know, women... It was owned by PJ Orourk, and James Kilpatrick. I jammed on drums without neighboring complaints, read all published work by Mark Twain. My parents had a lot of acreage in NY, in the middle of nowhere a third of a mile off the road, township of Cherry Creek. I thought about building it for a long while. Fell trees, debark, mortise and tenon joints...which turned out to be a pain in the butt, so I finished half with those, but then I borrowed a mill-race and bored holes in everything and put in threaded rod and bolts. A window place in Fredonia always had huge double pane windows leaning in the scrap area, so they were free (rich people get their windows replaced when the casing rots, the window is still perfect). Loved it. Four big picture windows in each end of cabin, in triangle formation, watching sunsets was beautiful, the full moon rising at one end and sun setting in the other was a spectacular sight when it happened. When the full moon rose on other times, it reflected in the other side, so it looked like two moons. Anyway, drummed a lot. I also met girls who were fascinated with the idea, and they'd come down, and they would love it. Dancing and being completely free of any constraint that civilian life creates. You can run around naked and scream, and nobody would hear or care. Those were the days (five years) that I will forever cherish. There are times when you could die from something and you wouldn't be discovered for a while. The flu got closed one night and filled the cabin with smoke, I was lucky to wake and crawled out on hands and knees. I then got married to one of those girls, 17 years younger than me, and a cabin is not a baby safe environment, so I moved back into society. Now have a wonderful family, when the kids get old enough, they will know the woods and we'll be using the cabin often.
