This House Is Not a Motel

 

This is the house of my future. It is an old house and it needs serious attention, some of which I will give myself, some of which I won't have the patience or skill and so the attention will come from other sources. It is an old house and it sits on a beautiful lot and that beautiful lot might be the first and foremost reason to give the house the attention it needs.

The house stands as a threshold between the Great Rift Desert of Idaho (now protected as the Craters of the Moon National Monument) and the foothills of the Pioneer Mountains, a marginal space best suited to coyotes, sagebrush, broken hay derricks, and long sleepy afternoons. It's quiet here. Slow.

This is an attempt to document the progress of the house and some of its surrounding property. The house is attached to another 65 other acres of hay fields and in time those fields might be my future, too. But now is not the time.

The title of this documentation project is named after a song from 1967 by a band named Love. The song has nothing to do with renovating an old home in south central Idaho. It's a scary song and it's also beautiful, and faced with the frightening but inspiring prospects ahead of me it sounds about perfect. The title also offers two opposing ideas, that of permanence and transience. A house is not a motel. After ten years and eight houses I look forward to the task of building a house.

Love: A House Is Not a Motel