Shit. I just left a little slice of heaven a little broken hearted. See, for a while now I've been working towards a goal that seemed to be culminating into a victorious moment this weekend that just sort of blew up in my face...
I visited this joint in the mountains of southern Colorado a couple of months ago and knew instantly that one day I would own a piece of it for myself. And Friday I went back to make that a reality.
But thanks to rampant regulations, this little town has liberalized themselves out of countless responsible residents. A $3000 piece of land will end up costing in excess of $25000 just to build.
This is due to the fact that even if you jump through all the hoops and get approval for solar power, you still have to pay for connection to the grid.
Even if you intend to harvest and recycle water, guess what? You still have to pay for a licensed operator to come and dig hundreds of feet of trenches, then another licensed and insured electrician, plumber, to come do their thing at $200 a man hour, oh and let's not forget permits, inspections regularly....you get the picture.
What else? Oh. The forward thinking proprietors of this quaint little mountain village invested loads of money into infrastructure 40 years ago that has degraded to a point that it's essentially all being ripped up. So....all new land purchases come with an additional$7500 "tap fee" for services we absolutely do not want.
The only real estate agent listed turns out to be a huge dick that genuinely believes he's better than others and his main goal in life is to prevent others from moving into this town in any fashion.
So we turned oir eyes south towards the great sand dunes and a few small towns further down the line. Same shit, different players....fucking Colorado. I love your gorgeous nuggets and friendly people, the women are beautiful if rare, and good God, the mountains are breathtaking sometimes....but fuck your fucking rules.
I've spent too much time in the Ecuadorian mountains, and the Peruvian desert to give a fuuuuuck about setting down roots under your goddamned rules.
So, today I bought a ticket to Mexico. I've been given an opportunity to buy a piece of land on the behalf of an old friend and help build a house in exchange for my own space. Sea views on one side and mountains on the other. Pretty good deal.
I reckon next week I'll begin uploading vids to dtube for any of y'all that are interested in unplugging a bit from the machine, learning more about natural building on a budget, water recycling and filtration, and fuck tons more.
So...ive got metric fuck tons to do so I'll likely write again from Baja motherfuckers!