Does anyone here live in the mountains? What's it like ? Lisa

-- Lisa (magpie210lk@yahoo.com), December 29, 2001

Answers

We live in the central sierra foothills and love it. My husband was born and raised here. I came from So Cal and would NEVER go back. Life is harder here than in the flat land. We only get snow a couple of times a year, but the winters are frosty-cold and the summers can reach over 100. We are lucky not to have to fight humidity during the hot summers. In fact, it rains off and on all winter, (once it rained for 30 days straight), but from about June until about October we don't get any rain at all. So we have to water our gardens daily by hand or sprinkler system. Gardening is a real challange. The gophers eat your crops from under the ground and the deer eat it from the top of the ground. Not to mention the many varieties of bugs. We have a good long growing season. We can plant as early as late April and harvest up until October. Some root crops will grow and thrive through the winter. Beets and onions for example. Our animals do well and because we don't get that much snow they don't require special winter housing. We have a very small town nearby but the majority of the small population lives on at least 5 acres, which is what we own. The land is covered by lots of trees. We have black oak, live oak, cottonwood, and several varieties of pine. Lots of herbs grow in the wild as do blackberries. There are coyotes, wild rabbits, foxes, racoons, bobcats, white tail deer, wild pigs and bears to name a few of the wildlife. This is a lovely place to live and in spite of the hardships we sometimes face I wouldn't live any place else.

-- cindy palmer (jandcpalmer@sierratel.com), December 29, 2001.

Cold at the moment, with a mountain goat driveway one must park at the bottom and walk or use an atv to get up, needles to say there are no unnecessary trips. Everything is stocked up to include cases of replaceables. There is a quiet you learn to enjoy beyond what you would think, the only time I can hear my neighbor is when does target practice. Out here you get in touch with things you would not believe, Ihave became aware that I sense when the furnace is going to start a heating cycle, I am assumeing that its the shift in the magnetic field when the electric motor starts. If someone comes up the driveway I "know" about it a minute or so beforehand but keep in mind that I live alone with no distractions. Sanity is easy to maintain when there are no other people around.

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), December 29, 2001.

compost bins are bear feeding stations, a garden consists of throwing some lettuce seed on the creek bed for the deer to graze and its difficult to manage livestock with 8 feet of snow on the ground. No rain, though. Hail, snow or sunshine. Life is just duckie in the high country.

-- Just Duckie (Duck@spazmail.com), December 29, 2001.

I heard wolves two nights ago, and every dog in the neighbourhood responded. I prefer the sounds of the wolves, and they are generally more predictable than rural dogs. I've lived in the mountains most of my life, but not at high elevation. I live in a coastal watershed, and although I'm damn near in the Alaska Panhandle, we have mild winters because of the coastal influence. I don't have an american thermometer,or a conversion table on hand, but we get to -30 centigrade with the additional substraction of wind-chill when the inland plateaus get a super cold "arctic" high pressure system. It howls down the valley. Alot of our whether is coastal. We live in rainforest. There are waterfalls everywhere. And lots of rainbows. And of course rain. Lots of rain. And did I mention rain. we had a particularly rainy year this year so I'm a little bitter. but I love the mountains. I climbed only one this summer. The alpine flowers in miniature, tucked in cracks and gullys, pure water pouring from ice fields, mountain goats-white specks in the distance but if they could talk they could tell one another that I have a copper bracelet on. Bears. Lots of bears. And fish, quite a number of them too. Yell at the top of a mountain and the sky consumes your voice into it's vastness. Stand at the bottom of a large waterfall, and shout as loud as you can into it's pounding roar. Lots of freedom. That's some of what it's been like for me.

-- roberto pokachinni on B.C. N.Coast (pokachinni@yahoo.com), December 29, 2001.

I am at 7000 feet in the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona. It is wonderful! Yes, it is harder to garden and do the animals. But, the peace and wilderness is totally worth it! Because these are non- active volcanic mountains, the dirt is dead. So, I have spent the last 16 months building up the soil in the area I have deemed "my garden" and this spring I will start planting. Yes, I will have to fight off deer, and the gophers, but you know, if I was in Florida, I would be fighting off molds, and raccoons etc. I have only exchanged one for another. I will never want to leave the mountains! IMHO sissy

-- Sissy Sylvester-Barth (iblong2Him@ilovejesus.net), December 29, 2001.

Hi Lisa, I don't live as high up as some, 1300 ft., but I am up on the saddle ridge of a mountain overlooking a lake. At night looking up at the stars they are clear without much city lights to wash them away in streetlight overload. The tips of the fir trees around my house look like they point inward to the stars from all directions. Lightning flashes and I see it between the trees, white-cold, the trees turned black in front of it. I am at the end of a 1/4 mile shared drive, off a country road, off a country road, etc., so the deer are my neighbors. If I think its a hard year I plant a garden for them and they don't usually bother mine much. It is a comfort in a hard winter when I am outside trying to deal with some problem, to have 3 or 4 of my deer neighbors suddenly and silently come out in front of me, stop and look at me without fear, as though exchanging greetings, and slowly walk with me for a while before going and doing deer things. I agree with Mr. Hearn; the silence is special, and you get tuned into your place in ways you might not have predicted. There are wild birds that talk to me expecting me to comprehend, and I try to, and don't feel too foolish about it. After all, they are my neighbors too. Our winters are not too rough here, I'm just not too good at winter so it can seem overwhelming when the truck gets stuck going up the driveway, or the horses break the fence down in the freezing rain at 1AM, but stuff happens anywhere. Here I am free. I can ride my horse into the forest from my house and see an eagle or baby ospreys on the way to work. Its a good way to live. :) Leslie

-- Leslie in MW Oregon (leslie@webolium.com), December 29, 2001.

We are at about 2,300 ft. Now I know those rocky mountain folks will argue that "they don't live in no mountains!" but when you have lived in the flat lands your whole life, I feel like we are living on top the world!

I can't imagine living anywhere else! The view is breath taking and it amazes me how things grow up here. All the trees look like someone came along and shaped them. Gez, and we use to pay someone to make our trees in Florida look this this and here nature just makes this way -- go figure! We have deer, an occasional bobcat just passing through and birds like I have never seen before. So far no sign of bear.

For the downside: It takes some muscle to get back and forth from the barns or garage. Seems all we do is go up, down, up, down, up, down. We have been very fortunate that we have been blessed with dirt instead of rock in the garden area. Most folks here are plaqued with rock; although the basement of our house is one solid rock and part of the foundation. This house isn't going any where -- ahh, although if we ever have an earthquake we are probably goners..LOL! Another downside for me is that I tend to get kind of neervous riding through some the mountain roads - even the nice paved ones. Guess I am just not quite use to it yet. This is our first winter here and no snow or ice yet, but I can imagine things tend to get kind of tricky when it gets slick. I keep seeing these houses way up with driveways going straight up and wonder how in the world they are going to get up there in the winter -- or better yet, how they stop coming down!

Another down side is that our mailman won't go everywhere because it goes get kind of steep. Our drive is not too bad and we have to go to the main road to get our mail (about 1/2 mile). If your considering building, you can't just pick any old piece of land. You have to be able to actually put a house on it and it does get expensive to bring in electric and heavy equipment; although, in Gatlingburg they build houses right on the sides of the mountains - and I mean right on the side with the front of the house on a road and the rest of the house hanging off the mountain side on pillars. Guess it does show if you have enough money, you can build anywhere.

All in all, I don't regret for a moment moving to the mountains. Every day we see something new and changing. I keep hoping we never live so long as to take it all for granted.

-- Karen (db0421@yahoo.com), December 30, 2001.

Hi Lisa, we live in the Smoky Mountains of East Tenn. Well, technically we live on a large hill facing the Smokies. Uncle Sam prohibits anyone from living on the tallest mountains around here, as it's a National Park! :) Our house and land face South and I have my own little micro-climate for gardening up here. When the folks down below get the first frosts, we don't have any up here. It's great. Don't think this is the same for the Rockies, but when there is extreme weather coming from the South West of us, tornadoes, the mountains seem to break up the storms or divert them away from us. We have never had a tornado in our county. Like Mitch said, the downside can be the driveway. We have 3 switchbacks in ours, and it can be a challenge getting up in the snow. We just purchased a 4 wheel drive early this year, so I'm anxious for snow to try it out! We've had to walk the driveways a few times when we couldn't make it up, with a few stops just to rest! In the Spring of this year, we moved away for a short time, but I was so homesick for the mountains, we moved back. Just something about them that gets in your blood. It's so quiet and secluded up here, even though we have neighbors just down the road at the bottom of the hill, we don't even think about them being there most of the time. Gardening on a hill can be great exercise (read challenge, hee hee), but I always tell Dave, that I want to be an 80 year old lady and still be able to carry my tomatoes up the yard to the house! You just have to adjust and go with the flow on some things, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.

-- Annie (mistletoe6@earthlink.net), December 30, 2001.

Lisa, we moved to the Lower Rocky Mountains here in Northern NM, 5 years ago. My husband and I often comment about how glad we are that we did it! Never take it for granted! Although it's a life quite different from City life, and the commute to work is 1.5 hours 1 way - it's a humble life. Snow this AM was about 6" with more coming and I still ventured out to work. Just make sure to have the emergency box, chains, cell phone, warm clothes... You never take ANYTHING for granted. Especially when Mother Nature's calling the shots! I often don't have a phone (lately it seems temperature related as it goes out around 8:pm and doesn't come back until around 9:am the next morning). Have a generator, and water stored up just in case. Our neighbors are like family - we all take care of each other. We even celebrate the New Years together with a pot luck and pit fire. We live next to Nat'l Forest, so it seems like we have tons of land. Walks into the forest are great! We live in the meadow on top of a ridge at 8800'. Watching storms move in is incredible! I work for a 'techie' company and folks there find it hard to imagine what my life is like. It's inconceivable for some to think about having your grocery store 60 miles away, with a little "Country store" that has high prices and usually never what you need, 4 miles down the hill. A hill that has a +1000' decline down switchbacks, and at the moment, mostly ice! But for us, right now - I couldn't imagine it any other way!!!

-- Michelle in NM (naychurs_way@hotmail.com), December 30, 2001.

The other posters have said it all. I love the mountains. We have been coastal dwellers most of our lives and I didn't know how we would adjust to the mountains, but we love it. We did own a piece of property that was all uphill and downhill and that was too hard on the legs so we now have a property that is more gentle on the legs, but not flat. The best thing about the mountains is the beauty of them. You can become mesmerized by the play of light and shadow on the mountains all around.

-- Mary in East TN (barnwood@preferred.com), January 01, 2002.

9000-ft in WY. High enough to get a sunburn in Winter and snow in Summer. Not a place for the lame, feeble or those unable to cope with loneliness, or altitude sickness.

Hard to grow anything except inside a hothouse. Raised bison and sheep all my life.

-- matt johnson (wyo_cowboy_us@yahoo.com), January 05, 2002.