A couple of years ago, I left our home in the suburbs to drive to an assignment 10 minutes away. I knew that the environment around our house was not what it once was – gone were the pastures, wide sidewalks, semi-rural life – so I left early. Good thing because just under an hour later I managed to extricate myself from the construction surrounding our subdivision without hurting anyone and landing in jail. After another half hour through another construction zone I arrived at my assignment a frazzled wreck. This misery mirrored my wife’s daily commute. When I called her to rant, we had our usual feverish exchange about having to get out of the city. She too had become increasingly more angry about the urban sprawl in which we felt trapped in too little space among too many people, vehicles, buildings, about the destruction of acres of land that was home to hundreds of living, majestic trees to erect yet one more condo, Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, charter school.  That night we decided to throw in the suburban towel and move somewhere, anywhere, that still had room to breathe.

Out of state was out of the question. We did not have jobs out of state and did not have funds readily available for such a move. So we compromised. We would stay in state but find a county that was more rural. Much more rural. My wife wanted land and a barn. I wanted land and a lake. The only child of immigrant parents, I escaped from our lives of breathtaking anxiety and volatile arguments about life, me, money into the safer arms of Father Knows Best and Leave It To Beaver. In my childish perception, a house where families were not crammed onto one floor signified stability. I wanted a house where I could say, “I’m going upstairs.” We both wanted a fireplace and a relationship-saving second bathroom.

I immediately found a 5-acre property for sale in a rural forest area about an hour and a half from our current home. Secluded, check. Land, check. Two-story house with a fireplace and thank you lord, 2 1/2 bathrooms, check. Barn, check. We pored over the pictures, which were mainly of the inside of the house. It looked interesting – to be honest it looked downright funky but definitely worth a look. So we contacted a realtor and made an appointment.

As we drove out to the property, the landscape became more and more rural. Holy cow, there’s a living cow! And horses, pigs, goats! Our wildlife in the suburbs consisted of 2 raccoons whom we treated like royalty even though they made a disgusting mess of our outdoor cat’s food and water. Don’t judge – that cat simply refused to live indoors. We passed a white sign with the name of the town painted in fat red letters, then a run-down gas station, a seemingly closed run-down restaurant, a Dollar store, a post office, some kind of “inn”, a small building labeled Child Learning Center, what might have been a tiny library, a biker bar, a couple of churches, and turned onto the road listed on the realtor’s printout.

We had to stop almost immediately. Traffic jam. Not cars but a pair of sandhill cranes with their red heads, tall gray graceful bodies, and their two young fuzzy long-legged colts, leisurely crossing the road, not in a hurry.  My wife identified them for me and explained that they mate forever. I had never seen a sandhill crane in my life.

Once they were out of harm’s way, we drove on, taking curve after curve, eyes on every sandhill crane family and every house number. Several houses were situated on lakefront properties. Hope bloomed in my chest. Maybe the house we were about to see was on a lake!

About 3 miles down the road we pulled up to a sign – Pavement Ends. Ahead was a bank of mailboxes and another sign bearing a sinister warning: No Outlet. Oh-oh. Where the hell was this place?

We ventured onto a dirt road that someone had tried to grade with incomplete success and encountered another traffic jam. A large tribe of goats had made their escape through a section of fence damaged by a fallen tree and were contentedly munching on vegetation on both sides of the road. In front of us, the realtor was waving her arms and pointing to a path through the woods. Deer!  A doe and her two fawns, bob tails and tawny ears twitching, watched us for a few seconds before bounding into the safety of a cluster of trees. We will never hurt you, I promised. 

Here the houses were much more spread out. We later found out that this unincorporated section of town is zoned for 5-acre lots. A half mile further down we finally found the house number we were seeking nailed to a weathered wooden post. A couple of signs tacked to a nearby tree announced that this was a sheriff’s office neighborhood watch area and offered a reward for information leading to the solving of crimes in the neighborhood. There must have been neighbors somewhere but we happily noted that their houses were not visible. No one was yelling, revving engines, running leaf blowers, sitting in beach chairs belching beer and blasting something that could barely be called music. It was so quiet – quiet enough to hear the distinctive chirps and calls of every bird, the rustle of every leaf, our own breaths as we took in this bit of nature that still had room to exist. I experienced a sudden intense feeling of grief at the thought that we would have to leave this place to go back to the suburbs. I knew that we were home.

The electronic gate stood open under a sizable solar panel. We craned our necks for a glimpse of the house. Nothing. No structures at all, only a dirt path carved through the forest. My wife grasped my arm. “Oh my God”, she whispered. “It’s beautiful.” We drove slowly along that path, careful to leave plenty of room for the silvery rabbit hopping to and fro in front of us, a tiny self-appointed usher guiding us to a clearing surrounded by tall pine trees, sweet bay, oak, cypress. In the center stood a gleaming, white 2-story house with bay windows and a red-accented porch decorated with a stone facade, hanging plants, and wind chimes. That porch was positively striking against the bright while house. A barn stood about a hundred feet away and off to the side was a smaller concrete building that turned out to be the well house. Well? It had never occurred to me that water would not automatically be piped in by the city. Clearly I knew nothing about country living. I had a flashback to the much more primitive well at the farm near Vienna where we stayed after our escape from Communist Hungary while my father tried to obtain visas to the US. My mother, with her child star background and lady of leisure aspirations, was less than thrilled that she had to draw water from a well. I envisioned myself carrying buckets of water to the house but substantive piping brought the water from the well to all the taps and toilets in the bathrooms and the taps in the kitchen.

As we stood in that clearing in the forest, my wife and I were immigrants too, escapees from the oppressive, suffocating urban congestion, but we would be drawing water from the well in much happier circumstances.

A sweaty guy without a shirt was driving a riding lawnmower. I rushed over to shake his hand and introduce us. I didn’t know how many others would make an offer and I was going to secure for us every advantage possible. A woman was stuffing two minuscule protesting chihuahuas into a van. They could have been hoers d’oeuvres for our brood. The van was running so the dogs would have the benefit of AC. I liked her immediately. I told her there was no need to sequester her diminutive duo, we had dogs too, but she insisted that they would be in the way. When she was done I hugged her and thanked her for allowing us into her home. It turned out that these simple gestures made a positive impression and did give us a leg up.

My wife, the outdoor girl, attached herself to the guy and took a tour of the barn and the property. I toured the house with the realtor. I tried to take her advice to imagine the rooms without the ominous dark curtains and bulky furniture that served as inexplicable dividers, sentinels against all but the barest natural light. Despite feeling like I was spelunking in an underground cave, it all seemed doable until we arrived at the master bedroom located smack dab in the center of the first floor. Where are the windows? I asked, reason crowding out the insane hope that the little curtains tacked to the walls hid actual windows. The realtor hedged and finally announced cheerily, this room has no windows but think how you can brighten it up with accent lamps!

Meanwhile, my wife found out that the owners of this property also owned the adjacent undeveloped 10 acres, of which half was a wetland that the owner called “the lake”. Ok, sure, a murky wetland teeming with water moccasins, alligators, and who knows what else was not exactly the placid lake of my dreams and yet all in all, heaven on earth. But a bedroom with no windows? There aren’t enough accent lamps in the world. We went home depressed. Back to the drawing board.

We looked at another half dozen properties but that white house with the red porch and barn on 5 acres in the woods haunted our dreams. We had fallen in love with the forest, the cypress and raw pine accents of the house, the loft above the 2nd floor, the bay windows and little sitting room upstairs with a view of nothing but land and woods. One afternoon a few days later, we lay on the couch bemoaning our fate, staring out the window at the house recently vacated by our beloved aging next-door neighbor. With its new babyshit brown paint, the house seemed to have crept closer overnight, As we lay there, we were assailed by kidney-rocking rap music and the steady shriek of sirens and unfortunate dogs left outside without attention and water. In a fortuitous moment of enlightenment I suddenly thought, why must we leave the bedroom where they have it? Why can’t we move it, say upstairs into that big space that would become sunny and airy once the oppressive curtains and furniture were removed? Yes, it would be weird to have a bedroom in the same space as a dining area and kitchen, but then nothing about us occupied the center of the bell curve. We couldn’t dial the realtor fast enough. Is the house in the forest still available? Yes? We want to take another look.

Two months later we closed on our new home. We made an offer to include the adjacent 10 acres but the owner declined. He was hanging onto that land for his daughter but if he decided to sell, we would have first dibs. His wife whispered in my ear, “Those 10 acres are yours. Don’t worry.”

So we packed up our home of 20 years and moved 4000 boxes, 2 pods, 14 truckloads, ourselves, our plecostomus Moby Dick and his 70-gallon tank, our 3 dogs, and our 5 cats to the country. I don’t have at my command enough descriptive adjectives to recount the fun of wrestling panicked, once feral cats into crates. The moving company brought the larger furniture in an 18-wheeler that immediately got stuck in the front yard and had to be pulled out by a neighbor’s tractor, leaving deep scars in the earth that took months to heal. I was nonetheless grateful that those poor moving men huffed and puffed and dragged our bedroom furniture, behemoth wardrobe, and kitchen appliances up the 13 cypress steps to the second floor with only minimal dents, scratches, and loss of wood. To make a long moving story short I’ll just say that I will never move again. Never.

If we brought in a Mount Washington of our stuff, the owners had to remove a Mount Everest of theirs. It took them a month after we closed and to this day we’re still excavating old tires, bed frames, metal parts of trailers, wheelbarrows full of glass, and other miscellaneous items.

After the first nauseating, malodorous bath and sip of water, we knew we needed a water conditioning system. And we could not mow all that land with our push mower and my mother-in-law’s ancient Huskee that was missing some essential parts. We needed a proper riding mower. And a tractor. And a UTV. And the barn needed work. And the stones falling off the chimney facades needed to be replaced. And the oppressive red walls in every room had to go. We would have to repaint the whole place. The previous owner had built every structure from the ground up. He did some things very well, some very badly. Fortunately, the proceeds from the sale of our old house enabled us to make those purchases and repairs.

Then one night we saw our first black bear. Words cannot describe our thrill. At fist we hid in the house, afraid of being attacked, and watched through the lens of our night vision monocular as a dark 4-legged mass with a large black head and tan snout ambled along the tree line about 60 feet from the front porch. Another night, a sow came with her 2 cubs. They became regulars. Eventually, we ventured outside and discovered that black bears are shy, civilized, never aggressive, not intrusive. Don’t let those who lack respect for bear habitats tell you otherwise. We don’t put food in outside trash bins. This is bear country and we are the interlopers. Of course they will forage for food in the trash, especially since we have so irresponsibly obliterated many of their food sources. When there is no food in the trash they don’t touch it. We put our food garbage out once a week on trash day when we know it will be picked up within the hour. We never approach and neither do they but we walk freely, albeit warily, around the property while they watch from a courteous distance with apparent understanding that we mean them no harm. We respect them too much to treat them like pets and they must maintain their fear of humans in order to remain safe, but in the past 2 years we have learned to live together in peaceful companionship. Bear, deer, sandhill cranes, wild turkeys, rabbits, an assortment of birds and harmless snakes, the occasional alligator, bobcat, coyote, and cottonmouth, and the ever-present squirrels share with us this secluded bit of heaven. We could not be more honored.

We even have a few human companions, good neighbors with whom we share a fierce love and protectiveness of this slice of forest down a dirt road less traveled.

About a year after we bought the house on 5 acres, the owner decided to sell the adjacent 10 acres. He honored the promise that we would have first dibs, but the asking price was outrageous. After months of constant worry that someone would buy that land and build a house next door, we negotiated a doable purchase price. At the closing, his wife again whispered in my ear, “I told you it would be yours. We wanted you to have it all.” And that is how we managed to acquire 15 acres in the forest that will forever be safe from development, hunting, raping of the land and wildlife habitats in any way.

I came up with the name Forest Ramblings-Footprints and Feathers in this way. Forest ramblings needs no explanation, but there’s a bit of a story behind footprints and feathers. My wife is the original barefoot girl. Sometimes she’s willing to walk around the property in flip-flops but she’d rather be barefoot. Her footprints side by side with those of wildlife and our dogs and cats make this a home. My Native American name is White Feather Creek. Given how many birds inhabit this place, feathers seemed like a fitting part of a title.

So, I will devote this section of Gadfly Journal to ramblings about life in the forest among the footprints and feathers of the wildlife, 3 dogs, 4 cats (our sweet Butch and our beloved pleco Mo left us last year), and 2 humans that comprise our society. I hope you too will be part of that society, perhaps only by reading but perhaps also by driving down the dirt road, through the gate, along the winding path to the clearing, and rocking on the porch with us in quiet companionship.

Drive slowly – the sandhill crane families and wild turkeys are abundant, deer and rabbits dash from the woods with no warning, gopher tortoises and snakes cross the road with no understanding of our potentially lethal vehicles, and black bear watch from the tree line. This is their home, but you too are welcome here. The gate will always stand open for you.

Internet & TV

I’m a geek. I admit it. In the suburbs I toggled our internet access from Brighthouse to AT&T Uverse and back again. The Uverse people’s lack of even a glancing relationship with basic math and their blatant lie that “fiberoptic runs right to your house” are topics for a different post. Back at Brighthouse (I simply refused to consider Spectrum), I fought like a lioness for the highest speeds we could get and reveled in the results of my anal daily speed tests – 70mbs (megabits per second) down, 12mbs up. At 69 down and 11 up I fiddled and tweaked and made ferocious calls to tech support until we were restored to 70 and 12.

During our first tour of our forest property I asked the owners, so who is your ISP?

What?

Your Internet Service Provider, who do you use?

Internet? Oh we don’t have internet.

My turn – what?? How do you send email, do internet research, shop online, read Facebook??

Oh haha we don’t do all that but we do text and email sometimes. We use our cell phones, There’s one corner in the upstairs sitting room where we can get a cell signal.

I glued myself to that corner but despite savagely jabbing at my AT&T wireless iPhone and waving it around like a frantic castaway on a desert island signaling passing rescue planes, I had no signal at all. I gave up and asked, TV?

Roof antenna. We don’t get too many channels but we can see the ones we get pretty well, unless it’s windy or raining.

Back home in the suburbs I started my research into rural ISPs. Brighthouse, nope. Uverse, nope. Even Comcast that I set up for my mother-in-law in another rural area and whose doors I swore I would never darken again, nope. There were 2 semi-viable options – HughesNet and CenturyLink. CenturyLink offered DSL, holy crap, so I called HughesNet first.

Hahaha said the rep, those speeds you saw in the ads don’t apply “out there”.

What speeds do apply “out there”?

25 down, 2.5 up. With a data cap. “

What??

The price was outrageous and the signal was via satellite. We didn’t have the best experience with satellite. So I called CenturyLink and talked to a nice guy named Ralph.

Hahaha, those speeds you saw in the ads don’t apply “out there”.

What speeds do apply?

8 down, 1 up, 2 up if you’re lucky. 

EIGHT and ONE?? Surely there’s some other option!

Nope. 8 down, 1 up. But we have no data cap.

What can you do with 8 down and 1 up?? Send an email once a month??

Hahaha, welcome to the country!

I hung up.

More research turned up something called bonded VDSL with better speeds than plain old DSL Armed with a small arsenal of information I didn’t fully understand, I called Ralph.

We don’t have bonded VDSL.

Yes, you do. I entered our new zip code on your website and it said bonded VDSL is available at our address.

Oh. Hold on… …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Finally, the techs said yes, you can have bonded VDSL. Wanna sign up?

Potentially, but I want 2 bonded VDSL lines.

What? Why?

Because with those “speeds” one line will totally bog down with all our devices. I want to divide them among 2 lines.

I don’t think we do that.

Yes, you do.

Oh. Hold on… …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Finally, the techs said yes, you can have 2 bonded VDSL lines. Wanna sign up?

Potentially but I want this modem and I want to buy it, not rent it. I gave him the model number of the modem my research told me would function best with bonded VDSL.

We don’t have that modem.

Yes, you do. I saw it listed on your website.

Oh. Hold on… …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Finally, the techs said yes, you can have that modem. Wanna sign up?

Potentially but I just want to make sure, the bonded VDSL lines will each do 12 down, 2 up, right?

No, we only have 8 down.

No, bonded VDSL in our area is 12 down.

Oh. Hold on… …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Finally, the techs said yes, bonded VDSL will give you 12 down. Wanna sign up?

Feeling like I was stepping barefoot into the wetland, I gasped yes.

Ralph put together a “package” for 2 bonded VDSL lines, 2 of the modems I specified (I had to insist that 2 lines would require 2 modems), and promised speeds of 12 down, 2 up. The tech would bring the modems. Ralph explained that the discounted bundled price included a 1-year contract with AT&T DirectTV. Oh-oh. That’s satellite, right? Yep, it’s great. At our house in the suburbs it was not great. One cloud, one drop of rain, no signal. One week later we bailed and went back to cable. Oh the technology is much better now, Ralph cooed. We would need some kind of TV service, fiberoptic and even cable were out of the question, so ok, fine.

Nice Ralph waived both the CenturyLink and DirectTV installation fees and made an appointment for a tech to come “out there”. I considered retaining Sherpa guides to assist the tech along his treacherous expedition through the forest to the edge of the known world.

A couple of days before the installation date I called to make sure all was well and spoke to Jose.

Wanna sign up?

I already signed up. Ralph put together a package and gave me an appointment.

Oh. Hold on… …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. Finally, no, you don’t have a package and there is no appointment.

What??

A couple of hours later, after a long and heated discussion about the prices Ralph quoted that seemingly did not exist and another protracted, harshly worded argument with a defensive supervisor about bonded VDSL and the preferred modem, we had a new and more expensive package and a new appointment. She had as much of a handle on VDSL as I have on quantum physics. I hung up with a robust migraine and a feeble sense of accomplishment.

When the tech arrived he brought one incorrect modem and equipment for one line. We had a fascinating conversation about the mind-numbing incompetence of the people who answer the phones at CenturyLink and then he left, no installation, no internet access. He did leave the modem, “just in case”, whatever that meant.

A few hours later the DirectTV guy arrived with more incorrect equipment and left, no installation, no TV. Before he departed he handed me a piece of paper on which my signature was to attest to my acceptance of a $75 installation fee. I refused to sign.

After several indescribable hours on the phone with CenturyLink and AT&T that left me hoarse and testing myself for stroke symptoms, we had 2 new appointments. This time the DirectTV guy brought the right equipment and got us up and running with a surprisingly decent signal that did not immediately disappear into the 1st cloud. However, when I read the paperwork I noticed that the contract was for 2 years. Wait, hold on, CenturyLink told me the contract was for 1 year. Yes, but at the end of the first year when your promotions “fall off” you have to renew for a 2nd year. What? And, then there was the $150 installation fee, $75 per tech visit. An energetic debate with a supervisor, during which I emphasized that neither CenturyLink’s lack of authority to waive DirectTV fees nor a fruitless trip out with the wrong equipment were my problem, got rid of the preposterous $150 charge but I failed to escape from the 1-year contract that was really a 2-year contract with higher rates in the 2nd year.

The CenturyLink guy brought 2 more incorrect modems so he left, no installation, no internet. He insisted on leaving the 2 modems, just in case. We now had 3 incorrect modems.

Two days later Fedex tossed a large box into a puddle by the gate. That too is fodder for a different post. The sodden package was from CenturyLink. What the hell would CenturyLink be sending me? Two more incorrect modems. I added these to the pile. We now had 5 incorrect modems.

Another miserable, interminable argument with CenturyLink produced a promise that they would send return labels for the 5 incorrect modems and a tech with 2 correct modems.

The new tech arrived with one correct modem, He had two incorrect modems on his truck that I would not let him install but that my spirited objections did not dissuade him from leaving, “just in case”. Do they get a bonus for dumping modems at people’s houses? No he maintained, he could not take away the incorrect modems because we would not get credit for returning them. While he stomped around outside and crawled around inside I took on the engaging task of picking ticks off his clothing in response to his disclosure of Lyme disease. We now had 1 correct modem, 7 incorrect modems, and no return labels, but we had internet access. The one correct modem blinked friendly verification of connection to the modern world, albeit only via 1 of its 2 DSL icons. What does that mean? I asked. Nothing important, the tech soothed. The 2nd supposedly bonded VDSL line dangled from the wall, an orphan with no home.

After the tech left, heart in mouth, I tested the speed on the one line – 7 down, 1 up. I grabbed the phone like a hitman grabbing his next victim. We don’t have bonded VDSL “out there”. You have basic DSL and the max download speed is 8, huffed the CenturyLink rep. Ahah, so it was important after all that only one DSL icon was lit. If the line was bonded VDSL both icons would be  lit. After a delightful SIX-HOUR squabble with assorted supervisors, there was a new promise of bonded VDSL, 12 down, 2 up, and a new appointment.

Another tech came out with 2 more incorrect modems. Neck veins about to pop, I protested that we needed 2 compatible modems for our 2 bonded VDSL lines. The tech verified that the now 9 incorrect modems were for plain DSL and would not work with bonded VDSL but that was not a problem because our lines were not bonded VDSL. No amount of arguing with CenturyLink increased our speeds or reduced the stack of incorrect modems adorning the window sill.

Two days later CenturyLink sent two more incorrect modems via Fedex. We now had 1 correct modem, 11 incorrect modems, no return labels, and no bonded VDSL.

A week later our first CenturyLink bill arrived. It was almost $1000 and included charges for 12 modems, installation fees, and both CenturyLink and DirectTV monthly rates that were double what we were promised. I melted cell phone towers regaling CenturyLink with threats of law suits but it was all to no avail. So I filed an FCC complaint. The result was a wretched conversation with a rude man from CenturyLink “Customer Relations”. After he made clear in acerbic tones that I was a moron who did not understand internet speeds and processes, he spit out a promise of bonded VDSL and return labels for the 11 incorrect modems. Neither materialized.  

This fun-filled adventure continued for about 2 more months until I posted a blistering dissertation on CenturyLink’s Facebook page. A rep named Paisley stepped in, got a hold of a tech named Mike, and they fixed it all – the volatile billing, the DSL-VDSL argument, the 8 down-12 down debate, the pile of incorrect modems, all of it.

I installed a mesh wifi system that gives us internet access everywhere in the house. It measures the speeds every afternoon and they hold steady at 12 down, 2 up. There was one harrowing month when during a bad thunderstorm the modems were zapped and had to be replaced. Many incorrect modems later and 8 down 1 up speeds that CenturyLink insisted were all we’d ever had, Paisley and Mike again waved their magic wands and all has been well since. Our smart home devices, our iPhones, iPads, laptops, and smart TVs are distributed between the 2 lines and they all work pretty well. Low upload speeds prevent effective video conferencing but everything else is doable. I on the other hand have CenturyLink PTSD. If the modems misbehave for even a fraction of a second I monitor them with paralyzing hyper-vigilance and suffer flashbacks to futile, circular conversations with inept CenturyLink reps.

DirectTV is now also working fairly well, the result of months of arguing that surely something could be done to prevent the upstairs wireless receiver from losing signal and rebooting every few minutes. It seems that this stupid pain-in-the ass customer was right to suggest that the receiver needed to be hard-wired to the wireless bridge downstairs or the bridge had to be relocated closer to the receiver upstairs. After at least a dozen techs made the trek “out there” and moved the bridge a foot this way and that but never upstairs, one finally listened and with a great deal of commendable labor moved it up next to the receiver. Now the receiver flexes its rebooting muscles much less frequently. Thank you Mario. 

Cell Phone

I had AT&T wireless since they were Bell South and Cingular, all in all over 20 years. When we moved to the forest we had no AT&T signal within a 10-mile radius of our new home. Once the CenturyLink mess was resolved and the Eero mesh system was installed we could use wifi calling inside the house but could not use our cell phones anywhere outside. Clearly this was neither safe nor conducive to running a home-based business that required many calls while driving. So I called AT&T wireless. Surely this megalith could offer some options. Various reps made various preposterous suggestions, none of which worked and most of which I struggled to understand while they bellowed into the phone in their broken English. I can never understand why people who speak a language poorly think they will be understood better if they yell. They also stressed during each call that if I bundled with Uverse I could save a fortune. No amount of repetition that Uverse is not available “out there” nipped that script in the bud.

So I called Verizon, which I had resisted due to their ludicrous monthly rates and early termination fees. Much to my amazement, Verizon on their own initiative set us up with a host of discounts that brought the monthly charges down to a doable level. For the past 2 years the service, signal, and billing have been stable. Inside the house, under our tin roof, we still only have a cell signal in that corner of the upstairs sitting room so we continue to use wifi calling. However, outside we have a usable signal where AT&T had none.

Kudos to Apple

I’m a member of the IUP, the iPhone Upgrade Program. The program enables members to get the new iPhone every year at a lower cost. When we switched from AT&T to Verizon, the Apple rep said I would have to use my annual IUP upgrade option to get a Verizon-compatible iPhone. That meant that I could not use the IUP to upgrade to the new iPhone that was expected in just a couple of months. Ridiculous. So I sent an email to Tim Cook. I did this once before when there was an IUP snafoo and had a resolution within hours. This time I received a call almost immediately from Keegan of the Apple Executive Relations team. There was no process in place to deal with an issue like mine so Keegan and his team created one. The resolution was too complicated to explain here but it worked. I got my Verizon iPhone without having to use the IUP and when the new iPhone became available I was able to order one via the IUP process. Keegan and I have stayed in touch. At upgrade time he emails me to ask whether I need his assistance. When I receive my new iPhone I email him to let him know all is well. Apple-Google wars aside, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find better service than that. I name all my Apple devices. That year I named my iPhone Keegan.

Old Dog New Tricks

So there you have it. During the past two years I have managed to adapt my geekiness to backwoods connections that are far from cutting edge but that align well with the more low-key, earthy, peaceful life of the forest. While I rock on the porch waiting for web pages to load on my MAC, I have so much more time to take in Mother Earth and her woods and wildlife. This old dog can live with that.

We have 3 dogs. When people ask, What breed are they? we answer, the We Need a Home breed.

Our girls Mariah and Coco are 11-year old sisters. My wife brought them home as puppies after finding them neglected in an outdoor pig pen across from her place of work. They’re supposedly a cross between Great Pyrenees, Bull Mastiff, Chow, and English Setter.

Huck is our 7-year old boy. He’s potentially part lab, part pointer, part whatever. We adopted him when he was being paraded around on our street on his way back to the shelter because he was too much trouble. He was 7 months old, confused, unable to bond. We named him Huckleberry Finn the Wanderer. The vet said he was probably done growing. He weighed 55 pounds. Huck attempted to eat our house but after hideously expensive and useless pet therapy, intensive training, Prozac, pheromone collars, pinch collars, shock collars, and a variety of baby gates and crates he has calmed down and is a lovable and loving, funny, smart, loyal 115-pound giant. The only remaining vestiges of the old Huck are his fierce dislike of 2-wheeled vehicles, people who raise their arms in our direction, and animals other than his canine and feline sisters and his feline brother whom he fears as though Grizz were a monstrous Attila the Hun instead of a cat a fraction of his size.

Our first project on the first day we moved to the forest was to install a dog run. Of course our dogs could not roam free in the wildlife-inhabited backwoods. We hired Clifford, a fencing guy from a neighboring state who was just establishing himself locally, to fence in a 20’x50′ area off the back porch. That was about the same size as our back yard in the suburbs, plenty of room for the dogs to play, run around, do their business. I envisioned them frolicking happily in the great outdoors.

Clifford arrived with an assistant, tools, a roll of chain link fence, connectors, latches, 2 chain link gates, and an invoice for $1500. A few hours later, he was done.

Chain link did not align with my vision of rolling hills behind rustic wood farm fence but it’s strong and durable, good protection for the dogs. Well, almost. Can alligators jump over fences? I asked. Clifford laughed. Of course! So can bobcats and coyotes. And snakes can slither in along the bottom or over the top. What?? His suggestion was to throw mothballs around the periphery of the run. 

Alligators, bobcats, coyotes, and cottonmouths aside, we loved the run, proud of our responsible doggie parenthood. We opened the back door, beckoned to the dogs, and waved our arms around the enclosed area like Vanna White demonstrating the magnificence of the Wheel of Fortune. The dogs stepped gingerly onto the grass, sniffed with disdain, and lay down on the porch.  These are the same dogs that leapt frenetically at the front door like inmates leading a prison break.

Go pee! I commanded. Reluctantly Mariah wandered out a ways and squatted. Huck lifted his leg in the same spot. Coco refused to budge. I dragged her out on a leash and after several minutes of energetic coaxing she finally squatted, 3 for 3 in the same square foot of grass. They then ran back to the door and gazed longingly through the glass at the living room couches. 

No way ladies and gentleman, you’re staying out here and enjoying the beautiful countryside. I tried throwing a variety of toys and sticks, only to be met by incredulous contempt. Fine. I went inside and closed the door.

Ten minutes later we peeked out the back door to ensure that they had not been devoured by something with murderous teeth or fangs. They had moved from the porch to lie in large holes that they dug in the earth. Gone were substantial patches of grass. The porch was covered in dirt. They panted, glared at me with accusing doggie eyes, stood up, dug some more, lay down. Growling, I let them inside. 

After the first month or so, in the wake of several bear, deer, sandhill crane, and wild turkey sightings, I told my wife, we finally have acres of land where the dogs can explore and get some exercise. We can’t confine them to 20 feet by 50 feet. We’ve got to let them out front. She protested but I prevailed. I promised to make sure the surroundings were free of wildlife before I opened the front door. 

I examined the tree line, cracked the door open, and read the dogs the riot act about running out without permission. The girls danced around my feet. Huck sat and quivered, waiting for a release word. Ok, I said. They raced to the woods with my wife and I sprinting and shrieking close behind. Fortunately, they stopped before entering the forest proper, sniffed, peed in 1000 spots, ran around the front yard. Huck even chased a stick. Success. No one was mauled or escaped into the perilous jungle. I snickered a wordless “I told you so”.

Not much has changed in the past two years. The dogs still hate the run and I still let them out front once or twice a day despite my wife’s objections, especially on mornings when I know we will both be gone for hours and I want to be sure they’ll do their business. If I let them into the run they attach themselves to the door, lie down in their dirt craters, or stand rooted to the ground while I pick my way over the treacherous, pockmarked terrain in my business shoes, begging them to pee.

I should say not much has changed until recently. One morning as I was preparing to leave for work, I scanned the tree line and seeing nothing, let the trio out front. I knew immediately that I had made a mistake. I heard terrified and terrifying scrambling up a nearby tree and watched in horror as the dogs tore into the woods to leap and howl at that same tree.  

“NOOOO” I bellowed repeatedly and to no avail. Throwing all caution to the wind I raced after them and saw the weaned or orphaned black bear cub that had been a regular for the past few weeks attempting to gain purchase up the trunk of a tall pine. He would make some headway and then slide back down while the frenzied dogs threw themselves at the tree, snarling and ripping at the bark. “COME HERE” I screamed while attempting to grab the girls by the scruff. They weigh about 60 pounds and are ordinarily more laid back so are easier to contain than 115-pound Huck but I nonetheless failed. I finally ran in the house to grab leashes, which I managed to slip around the girls’ necks. While I was busy with this entertaining task, the bear fell to the ground and boxed with Huck, both up on their haunches.

I dragged the girls into the house and ran back to make a futile attempt to seize Huck. The bear took off into the forest with Huck on his heels. No voice left, I gasped “COME BACK!” with my last remaining breath like like Kate Winslet calling to the rescue boat in Titanic. I then doubled over heaving and sobbing, wondering whether Huck was dead or shredded but savable, whether I was having a massive heart attack, and how I would tell my wife that Huck was lying eviscerated at the emergency clinic or pet morgue. 

They say God takes care of drunks and fools, Huck returned 5 minutes later unharmed except for a bit of blood on the top of his paw and a torn dewclaw, likely the result of either clawing at the tree or chasing the bear across some downed metal fence left by the previous owner. 

I managed to slip a leash over his neck and to hang onto his ruff when he freed himself. Leash secured for the 2nd time, I hauled both of us into the house. For the next 10 minutes I wheezed and tried not to pass out. My pulse was in the 150’s, dangerous for a person my age who has not been to the gym since we left the suburbs. 

Once I could breathe again I set the alarm, locked up the house, and went to work. Only my racing pulse and some suspicious-looking marks on my business attire attested to the near disaster of a few minutes before. 

We have since located the girls’ retractable leashes and Huck’s pinch collar. No, it does not hurt him. The prongs are rounded and dig in just enough to encourage him to listen. Once the worst of the trauma that still steals my breath and drives up my hart rate has passed, I plan to take the dogs out front on their leashes. We’re brainstorming outdoor containment systems that don’t involve traditional fencing and that will give them as much freedom as possible without access to the woods where bear and potentially coyotes and bobcats hide from even our high-powered binoculars. 

Moving to the forest has been a learning process, one that has fortunately not entailed any grievous injury or loss of life. All of us, dogs, cats, humans, are acclimating. After all, this is our forever home.