conserve resources.
As I stand on the other side of the counter, I feel caught in a web of bureaucratic requirements, even while I appreciate the value of having rules to preserve our diminishing wetland resources. According to Darcy’s rough measurements on my imperfect and outdated site map, my cottage will stretch four or five feet into that fifty-foot buffer zone.
This isn’t a shopping center.
I think of the hay bales protecting the pond behind the Cape Cod Mall when they expanded the parking lot to its very edge. I am not a developer with deep pockets and money to hire a sly attorney to get around the rules. I am someone who will struggle to pay the engineer, someone who isn’t even certain yet she’ll qualify for the home equity loan she’ll need, assuming the project is approved. I am someone who thinks about quail and groundhogs and turtles and foxes. I have no intention of disturbing any of them. I know my property; I know the bog. I know I can do this without hurting the land or its inhabitants. But the fact of my knowledge, my well-meaning, good-hearted awareness of my small ecosystem means nothing in the face of regulations. Regulations I recognize as critical, regulations I support, regulations I would happily enforce—on someone else.
“I guess I was hoping to get some indication from you,” I begin. “I mean—if there’s no chance the town will allow this, I don’t necessarily want to hire an engineer and begin this whole expensive process.”
“It all rests with the commissioners,” she says. “And a lot will depend on exactly where the wetland ends. Maybe there is a way you can attach the addition without infringing on the no-disturbance zone?”
“Maybe,” I say. I thank her for her time, take my wad of papers with instructions, and make my way downstairs to the Health Department.
Now that I understand the timing with Conservation, I realize I will probably have to purchase the cottage before I know for sure that I can move it—or use it. It looks like another one of those situations where bold action and deep faith will be required. The boldness that I mustered to buy my house almost thirteen years ago, even knowing that my job might disappear. The faith that I summoned to start my own business a year later, with a week’s vacation pay and just one client lined up. I remember the books I read about going freelance, advising me to save six or twelve months’ worth of salary before going out on my own. It is what I would have done, if I’d had the luxury of time and a habitable interim workplace. In an unlikely twist that signaled his imminent departure from the book business, the entrepreneur-owner of the company where I worked had moved the bookstore offices to his concrete plant. My asthma was kicking up every day on the job. I couldn’t afford to breathe in any more of that white dust that covered my desk or the diesel fumes that wafted into our space from the adjacent truck garage.
To begin a new venture from a position of financial strength makes sound business sense. If you are going to take the plunge, dive at high tide. It is counsel I have given others. The tide was low when I ventured out. You could smell it, even. There was the risk of plunging headfirst into mud. There was the chance that high tide would arrive in time to carry me in. You can dive, I realized then, when you know the water is high, or you can dive believing that the water will rise. If someone asked me now, I’d say wait for high tide if you can, but if you can’t, just make sure you have the deepest sort of faith in what you are about to do. The tide looks to be on the low side now. I don’t have three thousand dollars to spend on a cottage I may not be able to use. Or another thousand dollars for engineering plans for an addition that might never be built. On the other hand, the question of how far I am from the bog will have impact on any project I can contemplate, now or in the future. Clearly
As I stand on the other side of the counter, I feel caught in a web of bureaucratic requirements, even while I appreciate the value of having rules to preserve our diminishing wetland resources. According to Darcy’s rough measurements on my imperfect and outdated site map, my cottage will stretch four or five feet into that fifty-foot buffer zone.
This isn’t a shopping center.
I think of the hay bales protecting the pond behind the Cape Cod Mall when they expanded the parking lot to its very edge. I am not a developer with deep pockets and money to hire a sly attorney to get around the rules. I am someone who will struggle to pay the engineer, someone who isn’t even certain yet she’ll qualify for the home equity loan she’ll need, assuming the project is approved. I am someone who thinks about quail and groundhogs and turtles and foxes. I have no intention of disturbing any of them. I know my property; I know the bog. I know I can do this without hurting the land or its inhabitants. But the fact of my knowledge, my well-meaning, good-hearted awareness of my small ecosystem means nothing in the face of regulations. Regulations I recognize as critical, regulations I support, regulations I would happily enforce—on someone else.
“I guess I was hoping to get some indication from you,” I begin. “I mean—if there’s no chance the town will allow this, I don’t necessarily want to hire an engineer and begin this whole expensive process.”
“It all rests with the commissioners,” she says. “And a lot will depend on exactly where the wetland ends. Maybe there is a way you can attach the addition without infringing on the no-disturbance zone?”
“Maybe,” I say. I thank her for her time, take my wad of papers with instructions, and make my way downstairs to the Health Department.
Now that I understand the timing with Conservation, I realize I will probably have to purchase the cottage before I know for sure that I can move it—or use it. It looks like another one of those situations where bold action and deep faith will be required. The boldness that I mustered to buy my house almost thirteen years ago, even knowing that my job might disappear. The faith that I summoned to start my own business a year later, with a week’s vacation pay and just one client lined up. I remember the books I read about going freelance, advising me to save six or twelve months’ worth of salary before going out on my own. It is what I would have done, if I’d had the luxury of time and a habitable interim workplace. In an unlikely twist that signaled his imminent departure from the book business, the entrepreneur-owner of the company where I worked had moved the bookstore offices to his concrete plant. My asthma was kicking up every day on the job. I couldn’t afford to breathe in any more of that white dust that covered my desk or the diesel fumes that wafted into our space from the adjacent truck garage.
To begin a new venture from a position of financial strength makes sound business sense. If you are going to take the plunge, dive at high tide. It is counsel I have given others. The tide was low when I ventured out. You could smell it, even. There was the risk of plunging headfirst into mud. There was the chance that high tide would arrive in time to carry me in. You can dive, I realized then, when you know the water is high, or you can dive believing that the water will rise. If someone asked me now, I’d say wait for high tide if you can, but if you can’t, just make sure you have the deepest sort of faith in what you are about to do. The tide looks to be on the low side now. I don’t have three thousand dollars to spend on a cottage I may not be able to use. Or another thousand dollars for engineering plans for an addition that might never be built. On the other hand, the question of how far I am from the bog will have impact on any project I can contemplate, now or in the future. Clearly
Similar Books
