It was raining an inch-and-a-half an hour.

We'd walked the hundred acres in the downpour.

My wife found a 4-leaf clover on the way into the land.

We found a roaring brook, a hemlock grove, a stand of hickory.

And then my wife took this shot of me out in the rain. Yes, that's a hair-tie on the windshield wiper -- I haven't bothered fixing it yet.

We are JUBILANT -- we have searched the North Country over for LAND! And we have found a place that may really be the inheritance of our children. A place to honor the memory of my dead mother. A place where we can raise hell on a full moon and assemble after the Sunday Mass -- where the hooch flows wild and the stove burns warm in the -35f winter blowdown. Where winterkill and floodwater are the law, and no man dares approach us, us who are lords of the heavenly blackfly-and-blizzard country....

May the Good Lord hear our prayer that the seller take our offer. May we be so blessed as to take stewardship of a chunk of God's perfect creation, to bless it with the reverie of friends and the conviviality of long winter nights, nights of ale and pork and long-pickled apples and boiled eggs by the bonfire....

Good HEAVEN do I feel good now, friends -- I have fought for years for a chance at such a future as this... and now with ale in my veins and a tear in my eye I raise up my prayer. My God am I hopeful.... hopeful that the long search might really be OVER!