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By Root 489 0

building site would have to be above the 250-foot mark. Again, fine, except that, at 240 feet, a long granite ledge thrust up from the ground and ran along the edge of the property. Turning in anywhere near the 250-foot mark would require blasting the ledge, and that would be expensive and difficult, and would blow a big hole in the landscape. I was sick about it. I wanted my presence on the hillside to be light and harmonious, and now I was having a serious discussion with Paul about backhoes, pneumatic hammers and dynamite. Maybe I had not done my due diligence and the purchase had been illconsidered. I could sell the land, I thought, and still get out of it without a loss.

Paul and I walked up and down the right-of-way and took more measurements, but we could not figure out a way around the ledge. There was only one way in, and the ledge was a good forty feet of granite obstacle preventing it. It was blast, back out or seek an exception to the no-disturb rule. I doubted we could get an exception. Paul, who often encounters construction impediments in his work, said it might be possible. We talked it over and decided to play it out. Paul made a telephone call to the Department of Environmental Protection, then followed up tenaciously with e-mails through the spring to environmental officials who had questions. It was a reasoned back-and-forth with references to distances, environmental buffers and intrusions. Finally, he received this note: “You may proceed with your plans to develop that path to the cabin site as proposed. No further permitting will be necessary as the proposed path is not likely to have a significant impact on the adjacent wildlife habitat buffer.”

The experience certainly debunked all the loose talk that gets thrown around about the inflexibility of bureaucrats and environmental regulations. Now that I knew I didn’t have to blast, I went looking for an excavator who could cut in the cabin path. These men are spread across most of rural America. With backhoes and dump trucks they dig foundations, clear paths, construct driveways, plow town roads in winter and clear culverts in the fall. Sometimes to make a living they combine their digging and hauling with concrete foundation work and carpentry. They usually carry big debt on their equipment, their lives are noisy and hot (or sometimes very cold), and more often than not they have dirt in their shoes, but they are their own bosses with their own businesses. Their wives do the books, and somehow they get their kids through college. The difference between a good month and a bad one might be having a few guys like me showing up in town wanting to build a place in the country.

I called three excavators, and all of their estimates struck me as high. I soon learned why from the excavator who had given me the lowest price. In the aftermath of Rick Rhea’s dealings with the town’s planning board and the ill will that had developed between them, the town had increased the minimum driveway width for newly subdivided property to twenty-four feet. The town could not do much about Rick since he had prevailed in his division of the property, but it could be tough with the people who bought his land, and the twenty-four feet that the ordinance required might settle the score. It was heavy-handed—wider than many of the roads in town. Not only would the new width add expense to my project before I had even gotten started on the cabin, it would disturb the hillside, perhaps even more than blasting the ledge. I would have to give up my dream of a narrow trail from the road to the cabin. I had wanted the cabin to disappear among the trees, to fade among the grays, browns, blacks and greens of the trees and rocks. A twenty-four-foot driveway would be a big gravel scar up the hillside. And there was more: the town’s part-time code enforcement officer thought I should also have a forty-foot turn-around on the hillside at the top of the drive, to accommodate a fire truck. I was looking at the construction of a parking lot.

I put my head in my hands. I had settled on