I'm saddened by the near hysterical fear some people seem to have of water...yikes! I mean I get a comment like "yeah, waters cool, but remember to talk about and be mindful of water safety, etc" - but a few posters seem REALLY negative about water. Well, "different strokes...etc" I guess.
OP, I totally get what you are asking.
We live on a granite ledge, that puts us about 50' above a beautiful, mid-sized lake. It takes about two minutes to walk down the trail behind our house to our dock and kayaking is one of our favorite family past times. Being close to and on the water is so completely soothing for us. What's nice about our location, is that across the lake from us there is only Boy Scout and Conservation land...so we can't see any houses and don't really get boats and things like that down here....all we see from the back of the house and back porch, is the lake and then, on the other side of it, rolling hills as far as the eye can see. Being relatively high up on a ledge, looking out the back of the house through any windows or from the back porch, all the trees you see, you can only see from half way up the tree and beyond, you can't see the bottoms of the trees and this makes the home feel like it's a tree house. We actually call it The Tree House. It feels fun, tucked away and safe....the feeling of safety, feeling tucked up and away is really nice. At the same time, the fact that there is SOOOO much sky, over the lake and all around us, means BIG "star factor"....the night sky here, because we are so far from anything, is CRAZY awesome and my daughters love for an curiosity about the stars and the whole universe have budded from a very small age because of our long evenings spent outdoors, looking up at the sky, while we lay in each others arms.
I highly recommend SKY....we can think better on the lake, with all that sky above us. We get so many awesome birds, hawks and bald eagles floating around in lazy circles...and the sunsets, sun rises and snow, etc are amazing here. Sky makes us feel very energized and happy...it's funny, but this patch of sky we have above us, because there is no one else around us that we can see, only woods, really feels like OURS...it feels like it is looking down on us, it's a part of our story here.
But that's the back of the house....off the ledge..overlooking the lake...that's the BIG OPEN SKY side. Out the front of our house is a different story entirely!
The front is flat, if not slightly sloping land....as we sit in a clearing, the dirrent surroundings for about 50 feet is "forest floor-ish"...but then it's woods. Deep, beautiful, old woods. Trees, trees trees......all tall and skinny, because there are so many of them, that in competing for light, they had to shoot up so tall....but mixed into all these tall, skinny trees...when you go deeper, are beautiful, twisted, huge old trees. The kinds of trees you could go into with a good book and rest in, comfortably, for hours. Pine needles litter the ground, there is so much moss that you don't need shoes. The reason for the moss, is the series of small brooks that serve as run-off for higher ground...drier times of year, they are smaller, but they become much larger (though never dangerously fast or deep or anything) during times of year that are wetter, or when spring comes and snow melts. The woods being so nice and fertile, they are an awesome place for foraging different edibles from fiddle heads, to autumn olives and a range of herbs. We have SO many newts here, because of the water, and our chickens make some of the finest eggs I've ever seen for all the newts, frogs and other such things that they consume. We love being out in our woods....which spread out around us for miles (again, lots of conservation land, cliff trails, etc) and find great comfort in laying on our backs, looking up at light filtering through trees.
So out the back of the house we have big sky and stars, birds and views of rolling hills and clouds. Out the front of the house, the nestling coverage of trees, the beauty of flowing brooks and all the life that springs up around them.
If I had to do away with one....geesh, that would be hard....but if I had to choose, I'd choose the front. I'd choose thick trees, deep woods and brooks. But I'm SO glad I don't have to make that choice.
Here is a list of things about our property that I couldn't live without:
- Our floor plan: house begins with kitchen, which is open to a huge living room...that whole side of the house is open from floor to ceiling and the second story is a huge loft that opens to that space. I don't know how I ever had a single clear thought in a more closed off floor plan. This floor plan allows for our entire "family" space, to be open and means that our relatively small house feels HUGE.
- Privacy. This has come to mean more to us than perhaps anything else. We cannot see anyone elses house and no one else can see us. We live at the very end of a long dirt road....that is connected to a series of long, dirt private roads. When we are home, we are alone. There is no noise that is not ours. We can do whatever we'd like in our yard and play silly games and the kids have whatever magical kingdom they can imagine outside. We have wild bonfires and just look at the stars and the kids can run around in the yard chasing firebugs and it feels really idyllic because we're alone.
- The lake. It doesn't matter how stressful a day my DH has had at the shop....when he comes home and we take some food down to the dock and then hop into the kayaks and go silently sailing, fishing and relaxing past the singing loons (our pair for this lake had a baby this year, AMAZING!) and the silent, waiting herons....well, it's hard to be very stressed about anything at all. The quiet lapping of water on the deck poles is enough to lull us to sleep, when I take the kids down to read books on blankets and pillows near the water. The kids absolutely love the kayaks...and nothing is more beautiful than being out on the ice in the winter time. The end of the lake we live on, gets very shallow during the winter, only about three feet deep at most parts, with sand bard and everything near the marshy end...and it's so much fun to skate and explore out there without worry about crashing through the ice. Any time of year, the lake is freaking awesome. We dont have to worry about flooding, because we're raised up on a ledge above it...and I highly recommend seeking out a situation like that, raised up above a body of water.
So, yeah. That is a description of our location. I looked for......EVER.....for our house. It was, almost literally, my full time occupation. We waited, waited, looked and looked....we passed up so many houses that I was like "man, that was the one...we shouldn't have passed, that was THE house for us" - but I knew in my heart there was another place, some other house that we would just "know" when we walked into it.
I didn't even see the inside of the house, before I call my husband and said "I found it"...and I was right. I drove up....and it actually felt like I was driving home. In m very bones, I could feel the thousands of times I would drive up to this same house. It was a foreclosure property, that last sold (five years ago, maybe six now) for close to $300,000.....we bought it for $100,000 and the bank paid the $5,000 in closing costs. We stole this house. It was just meant to be. I had to work my butt off to get this loan approved...the private roads, the bank that owned the home...so many things caused hiccups and problems and more than once (or twice, or four time) our mortgage broker (a family friend) said "I don't know that underwriting is gonna be able to make this happen guys" and I was like "yeah, whatever Jay, what do I have to do, what do they need" - the hoops I jumped through were crazy....June 18th, I drove up to this house and said "we're putting in an offer today" - it was almost October before our closing date.
My DD was a baby when we moved here and has only known this place. My son was born here, in the kitchen. It's just our house. Like it was always our house. We found our corner of the universe.
So, OP, I tell you all of that....because of all of the perfect houses that I walked from, that I realize now where not perfect. Decide what you want, build your ideal home in your head.....and then find that house and freaking make it happen. If you find yourself torn between SKY and WATER...like I definitely was in different ways...scrap both houses and find the house with BOTH.
I didn't think this house existed outside of my dreams. It's just a little 1450 sq ft house...but it holds all of our dreams and wishes and there isn't a thing about it we would change. FIND YOUR HOUSE! I'm so excited for you!!
Unedited post, sorry.