Leaving Lightcap Farm
From 2005 to 2021, I lived atop the San Juan Ridge in the middle of the Tahoe National Forest. I thought I’d never leave. I know this because I buried my placentas there in the garden. This is the ultimate commitment to place for a hippie mama. We named Lightcap Farm after the farm in Ed Abbey’s novel A Fool’s Progress.
My exodus happened quickly and quietly, like a successful water birth by a veteran mama. It was at least a shedding of skin. And the seeds were planted about nine months earlier, too. I started thinking about moving to Michigan “someday” when, in 2020, two WWOOFers came to work on the farm—Sara and Sam. They had just graduated from U of M, where my son attended then and still attends now, in the longest PhD program ever. It was the fire situation in the TNF that got us started in on our Michigan discussions around the round wrought iron table on the patio. It was incredibly gorgeous on my farm, until it wasn’t. That would be when the smoke would roll in or through, choking the air off the ridge, replacing it with an orange-gray noxious gas that seeped into the old buildings, which were all the buildings. There was no escaping it. Might as well light up a doobie or a cigarette—nothing was worse that the air itself.
And then there was the risk of actual fire. Severe. What had been a small fire or two most summers, a devastating fire a decade twenty years ago, had morphed into a nine-month fire season with annual devastation. The Paradise Fire was particularly sickening. Ashes of our neighbors—not just their houses but them! –were floating through the smokey wind down on us.
I had been so determined to remain on Lightcap Farm after my husband died in 2018. It seemed sacrilegious to do anything but stay the course and fulfill our dreams. He had bought the first property twenty years prior. He’d been building his dream when he met me. I joined him eagerly. But the land adjacent to ours quickly became my dream, and we bought it six years later. So now we had an entire slope atop the San Juan Ridge. Runoff from the back half went into the middle fork Yuba, and the South Fork got the front drainage. We liked to tell people that we were twice as careful about what we put on our land since it affected not one but two watersheds.
With the five buildings painted alike in gingerbread brown with white trim, the two parcels assumed a continuity that was lovely, a little like a hillbilly estate. A hundred years prior up until mid-20th century, the land had been a junkyard. We had hauled out dumpster after dumpster of trash over the years, and it finally looked like we were winning. And we’d cleared for fire danger of course, so the 7 acres had a park like feel, with sculpted manzanita, black oaks that stretched to the sky, sturdy cedars creating year-round shade and shelter for critters. We had three greenhouses for farming, since at 4200’ the weather was a bit iffy for early spring and late summer crops, which were herbs and vegetables. And we had Bonnie and Hayduke, two German Shepherds to guard and play and be generally adorable.
I wanted to stay there after Jack died, so I needed to find a way to replace some of his income. But I couldn’t quite part with the chalet for my own use and for guests from time to time. So I decided to Airbnb it, and to market it as a writer’s retreat. And it turns out, I loved being an Airbnb host. And the writer’s retreat was looking promising. Why not local retreats and workshops? I created Tribe of Whimsy to offer gardening and artistic events to my friends and neighbors. Author Pam Houston came to inaugurate the retreat and read from her new book, staying at the chalet with writer Kate Wisel and their entourage.
That was late February 2020.
It wasn’t just COVID that put my thriving, newborn plans into a coma. And it wasn’t just the fire danger. It was the combination. I struggled another year with cancellations and continued working three teaching jobs to pay for it all. And I had some colorful experiences with WWOOFers and writers (especially the lovely Paul Tran) over the next year. But as spring 2021 rolled around, something snapped in me. I’d had a dream. I’d made it reality. Now it was time for a new dream.
It wasn’t going to get better or easier on Lightcap Farm, and it just might take me down with it.
