The truck’s tires crunched over the gravel driveway as I drove onto my new property for the first time since I had gained ownership of it. Off to either side, the brush had been roughly cleared, and I could see some of the less valuable trees simply left where they were felled. I made a mental note to come back and check to see if they were dry enough to use for firewood or if they had already started to turn too punky to be worthwhile.

When I reached the clearing, I made a wide turn and slowed to a stop, my pop-up camper trailing behind the truck. Flipping off the ignition, the music that had been playing through the speakers went silent, and a head popped up next to me, glancing out the window.

“We’re here, Goof.”

The hound mix bayed, and I reached over to pop the passenger door so he could bound out, sniffing around in excitement. I followed him, taking a deep breath of the fresh, northern air. I cocked my head, but the only thing I could hear was the wind in the trees and the chirping of birds. Not a single sound of civilization could reach me out here.

Pulling out my phone, I scrolled back through my photo roll to the picture I had taken in spring, when I was last on the property to check it out. After making my way back to roughly where I had stood then, I took a matching picture of the clearing now that it was deep into summer. Flipping between the two, it was quite shocking how much greenery had come alive over those months.

I turned, looking back at the driveway we had just drove up to reach the clearing. Getting that cut and cleared and then getting the sand and gravel laid down had taken most of the summer, delaying me from making the move in full. It was expensive, too, especially compared to the property itself.

It had only been half a year or so since I first found the listing for the northern property while idly browsing the internet instead of actually working. I had grown to deeply despise my job—honestly, I had grown to deeply despise most things involving my life in the city, especially after the breakup a few years back—and I was frequently pushing the limits of how little work I could get away with before I got fired. One of the activities I tended to engage in was looking for cheap property that I could afford in cash with my savings and what I would get selling my condo, but given the price range, the listings had a propensity for being piles of shit.

When I widened my search range, and I mean seriously widened, I started finding undeveloped land way up north, a full day’s drive away from the city that was making me feel claustrophobic and constrained. When I saw the price on this plot, I literally couldn’t believe it. It had to be a mistake, so I actually called the realtor in my disbelief to confirm.

“Yup, that’s the price, Jack,” the realtor said on the phone. “Sure, it’s a thousand acres, but since it sounds like you’re not from around here, I’ll clue you in. The land is shit. Rocky, poor soil, useless for pretty much anything. You could log it, but the roads are poor and you’d need to cut new ones in, and frankly the trees in that area just aren’t worth it at the moment. All it’s good for is hunting and recreation. If you like to go four wheeling or sledding in the winter, it’s a great spot, but the folks who inherited it from the previous owner, may he rest in peace, just aren’t about that lifestyle.”

“Ah. So I couldn’t, like, build a house there?”

“You can build whatever you like, actually. It’s an unorganized township, so you don’t even need a permit. It’s just going to cost you, and with the price of building materials now, plus the logging and putting in a lane and septic and a well and utilities… you see where I’m going with this, Jack. The property is the cheap part.”

Initially, I had been discouraged, but I started watching off-grid lifestyle videos online and increasingly found myself tempted. I needed a new challenge in my life, and frankly, this was seeming more and more like it would be just the thing for me.

After calling around and getting some quotes for certain things that I couldn’t compromise on—and the realtor had been right, they would add up to be just as much as the property before I was done—I started to give it serious consideration. The property was so cheap, that even with the installation of the driveway and drilling a well, it was still probably only a fifth of what my condo cost. Sure, most of that had been a mortgage, but I had paid quite a bit of that off since taking it on. If I could sell, especially with the prices of real estate now, then I could definitely make this work.

Once I realized it could be done, I realized it had to be done. I could get a bit obsessive like that, and I had reached the point where I could no longer imagine anything else for myself. I called the realtor back up, and he was surprised to hear me say I wanted to make the drive out and take a look.

To be honest, the drive had been horrific, and once I got there and parked at the side of the dirt road I had started to have serious second thoughts. The realtor didn’t even bother to actually meet me to hike through the property, he simply tied off some flags to demarcate the bounds of the property at the road so I knew where to look.

Mosquitoes and black flies hounded me as I made my way into the bush, and within a half hour I realized that I had gone insane and was simply making bad decisions. I couldn’t live out here like this. It was pure wilderness, and it was real and rugged. I was going to have to go over my legs with a fine-toothed comb looking for ticks and would have hundreds of welts from bug bites just from this short expedition.

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Then I stumbled onto the clearing. It was strangely barren of trees and the grasses were delicate and soft. Something changed in the air, like a fog had lifted off of me, and I knew that I was home. The bugs had even stopped biting, like the clearing was too sacred of a place for them to enter. It felt magical.

Of course, it was probably something normal and natural that I just didn’t understand. Perhaps some large granite deposit under the clearing meant the ground was too shallow for more vigorous growth, stopping the trees and bushes and allowing the finer grasses to take hold. With full sun making it to the clearing, even though it felt light and soft on my skin rather than beating down and making me sweat, the bugs probably just preferred keeping to the shaded forest.

Still, the hook had been set. I pulled my phone out on the spot, just barely managing to get one bar of reception, and called the realtor to tell him I’d be buying the land.

As I had already checked about pricing with the local services and utilities, it was a quick task to pull up some GPS images of the property and draw in the line that I wanted to have cleared for the lane to be installed. It still took months before that was all finished, but at least they took some of the trees with them as they cut the path in, which acted as a small credit for the expensive outlay.

With the driveway carved out and packed down, I hired in the well drillers. I was incredibly nervous about that, because if they couldn’t drill in the clearing due to the granite, I was going to need to consider my other options for water. Fortunately, the fellow I spoke with on the phone said that they had no issues and that the water that they hit was crisp and clear. I would need to get it tested, but given the area, he said it would probably be fine, and he turned out to be right in the end.

“So there was no rock shelf in the ground? What formed the clearing, then?”

“Couldn’t say, Jack, but it’s nothin’ in the ground that I know of. Just a quirk of nature, I s’pose. Real nice spot you got there though, you got lucky.”

And now I’m here, I thought with a wide smile. To tide myself over, I bought this second-hand pop-up camper trailer. In the back of the truck, I had a small generator to run a well pump off of, at least until I set something more permanent up, as well as a bunch of camping supplies I picked up.

My dog, Goofy, started barking at some wildlife, and I called him back to me. His recall was only so-so, and I had to call him a few times before he bounded back over. I looked out at the forest surrounding the clearing. “Just you and me against the world now, my Goofy boy,” I said with a satisfied sigh.

* * *

“I didn’t mean it literally, Goof,” I complained, breathing through my mouth as I held the dog in place and used pliers to pull another porcupine quill out of his nose. Goofy yelped, looking up at me with miserable eyes and a betrayed expression. “Skunked and porcupined in the first day. Unbelievable.”

Clearly, I was going to have to fence in the clearing. Maybe not the whole clearing—it was pretty large, after all—but I needed either a tie-off or a run because otherwise, my dog was doomed. I had no doubt he would chase down a bear if left to his own devices, and who knows if he’d ever return from that sort of encounter.

Fortunately, the porcupine only just grazed him, and he only had a few quills sticking out of his face, which I managed to remove. I’d keep an eye on him to see if any others got buried too deep and started to push out, but it shouldn’t require a trip to the vet, which was good since I hadn’t found one up north yet.

“Fuck, I’m going to have to lock you in the camper so I can run into town and pick up tomato juice or something,” I moaned. The camper was going to stink of skunk, but the only other option was to drive into town with him in the truck, and then leave him in the truck while I bought what I needed, and it was much too hot for that, even with the windows open. Plus, then the truck would stink, and it was worth more than my second-hand camper.

Leaving the baying hound mix in the camper, I unhooked it and climbed into my truck, pulling up directions on my phone to the nearest store that might carry what I needed. Naturally, there were basically no smaller stores left anymore even in the smaller communities, so I headed to the big blue box store which had a bit of everything. It was a bit more of a drive, but I could get more stuff there, including something I could use to stake and tie off the dog.

“Hoo-wee, between the smell of ya and the cans of tomato juice, I’m guessing you’ve got a skunky dog at home,” the cashier said as I placed my items on the conveyor. “You don’t want tomato juice, hun. HEY, LIAM!” she shouted out, and a younger man who was walking by turned and walked over, wrinkling his nose as he approached. “Can you grab this man some hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dish detergent?”

The man groaned but wandered off to pick up the listed items, and while we waited for him, the cashier told me what to do with them to more effectively get the smell off my poor, stinky boy. Fortunately, it wasn’t too busy, which wasn’t a surprise given the relatively low population density around the area. Mostly, I saw senior citizens milling around slowly, and the one behind me didn’t seem to mind the wait when I gave her an apologetic smile.

“That’s alright, deary, I’ve got nowhere else to be,” she said with a cackle.

With some supplies purchased, I picked up some fast food to make the rest of my day a little easier, then headed back to the property. The effect of driving up to the clearing was just as magical as the first time, although the smell of skunk was still noticeably in the air.

An hour later, the dog fully wrassled through a comprehensive washing and tied off on his new, heavy-duty stake, I surveyed the damage to the camper. Leaving him alone had caused a bit of mayhem, and the smell was unlikely to air out before bedtime.

I groaned, stepping back out into the fresh air as the sun settled behind the trees. Despite the encroaching evening, I noticed that the biting insects still didn’t seem keen to hassle me, which was a small mercy. I thought they would descend like vampires as soon as the sun was gone, but the evening air was free of buzzing beasties and the heat of the day began to bleed off, leaving me with a surprisingly comfortable night.

“I guess I’ll just pull out the sleeping bag and sleep outside tonight,” I mused. Hopefully, the camper would be less odious tomorrow.