It took us ten years to find the land we were living on. It was in the same town Thom and I had grown up in. There was something special about the rolling hills, the eagles by the river, and the mountains in the distance. This part of upstate New York was our home. Our existing house was just too big for us empty nesters. We wanted something half the size, and thankfully, our property could be subdivided to accommodate a new build.

The Original Lincoln Logs is a company in Chestertown, an hour’s drive toward those mountains. We’d been there twenty years ago, and another twenty before that. Building a log home had been our forever dream, and we had decided to make it our reality.

Weeding through the printed designs they had laid out in stacks on a table, we collected several with the style and size we were looking for. Right away we were especially interested the Stony Creek model. The floor plan would need to be modified, but we loved the exterior with the two front porches. The footprint and design was all we needed to begin looking for the perfect location to build our cabin.

We fought our way through the grapevines with a hundred-foot tape measure to stake out our prospective foundation on the spot we had in mind. After dinner that evening, we took our pewter goblets, a bottle of red zinfandel, and a cast iron bench from the yard at the big house to the hillside overlooking those four wooden stakes so we could see how the place felt.

Just out of sight was the river. The gathering geese were honking through the October air. The railroad tracks that shadowed the river eventually lead a freight train out of the darkness. It rumbled a bit louder there near the bottom of the hill than up top where the existing house stood. But it was still far enough away, and it added a little something of interest to the location as its headlight flickered through the tree line across the river valley.

As the moon rose slowly behind us that night, we watched the shadows from the woods stretch down the hill towards the foundation of our dreams below. It felt right, perfect even. We sat there long after the last cup of wine poured out of that bottle…long past midnight. Finally, the autumn chill drove us back inside, ending our celebration of the right location.

That iron bench still sits on the hillside. Since that night, we’ve taken many a wine walk up to sit in our spot and take time to enjoy our satisfaction in the progress we were making. Our surveyor even included the bench on the map for our subdivision. “I thought it must be something special,” he’d told us. And that it is.

It takes time, a lot of planning and a lot of work to build your dream. So first, make sure the location feels like home. Spend time there, at different times of day and night. See the sunrise and watch it set. Get to know the energy of that place on earth you plan to be a part of before you turn your dream to reality.