Here’s a picture of the fifty acres that may change our lives.
The gentle slope of the low rise gives way to several acres of flat, usable land, bordered by a neighboring vinyard. There is even more acreage stretching out behind this vantage point, and in the distance, (fewer than ten miles away) there is Lake San Antonio, from which the river valley takes its name.
The land is very nearly in Steinbeck country, about twenty-five minutes north of El Paso de Robles, California, and another twenty minutes west of Highway 101 in an area called Lockwood. I write “area” because we did not see an actual town. There are mountains to the west, the storied Coastal Range, and past them, the Pacific Ocean. Only twenty miles away as the crow flies.
I loved it the moment I saw it, and I know that Michael did too because I felt ill as I watched him walk around the little hill, staring off into the distance, plotting.
It would be something to live in such a place, to build something from the ground up, accountable to no one but our creditors.
I want this for him. I really do. Who follows their dreams anymore? Who follows their dreams?