Life in the Mountains

By Micah Olsen

Introduction

I lived up in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the San Francisco Bay Area for a few years and now live in a rural semi-mountainous area near Seattle. I often get asked about what it's like. Sometimes it's from people who are tired of city living and looking for alternatives; sometimes it's from people who just wonder about what life is like up here. Thus, I've put this web page together as an easy way to satisfy people's curiosity.

In addition, if you're interested in buying a home in the mountains, check out my companion page on Mountain Home Buying.

Positives

There are a lot of positives for living up in the mountains. Though I've lived in the cities and suburbs all my life, I'm now so used to the positives of mountain living that I would have a serious readjustment problem were I forced to move back out of the mountains. There's a serenity here that would be difficult to find in any heavily populated area. These are my favorite things about mountain living.

Beauty

When you live in the mountains, you're surrounded by beauty. Worst case, you'll "just" have a view of unspoiled widerness, and be surrounded by Redwood trees. Many homes have picturesque views of nearby cities, undeveloped rolling hills and parks, and/or the Pacific Ocean. You're likely to see wildlife wandering around, too, especially deer. As my wife says, it's like permanently living in a Tahoe vacation home.

Quiet

Especially at night, it tends to be very, very quiet and peaceful. If you leave a window open, or go out, you're likely to hear an owl, or deer or birds rustling through the underbrush. The only other sound you're likely to hear is the wind blowing through the trees. This aspect of mountain living is the thing visitors are most likely to comment on when visiting our house.

Of course, some mountain areas have tons of motorcyclists whizzing by, especially on the weekends, and some sections of some mountain roads have a lot of traffic. So YMMV depending on location.

Space

One thing I've hated about homes in suburbs is how tightly packed together they are. If anything, the trend has been to pack the homes even closer together in recent years as land prices have skyrocketed and people have overbuilt on lots. I prefer to be able to stretch my arm out a window without touching the neighbor's house. In the mountains, the smallest lot is typically an acre and several acre lots and up are not uncommon. And, since the land is not nearly as valuable as in the valley, you can get a home with a lot of land for about the same price or less as a comparably sized home and a tiny lot in a suburb.

No Solicitation

Since the housing density is so low, solicitors usually don't bother us. It's great not to have to be bothered by Jehovah Witnesses and the like. On the other hand (or maybe just as good depending on your point of view), there's not trick or treaters.

Isolation

Though it would not be for many people, the previous two items are part of a strong plus for me: isolation. We have no visible neighbors and overlook a park. In our Bay Area house, the only sign of people we can see is the town of Half Moon Bay about seven miles away as the crow flies. In our Seattle house, we just see mountains. I love being by myself or only with my family, especially after a day in the valley.

However, for people who like more human contact, there are plenty of homes that are built in clusters within the wilderness -- in fact that's easily the most common situation. There are even a couple of dense communities ("dense" by mountain standards) for those who want it.

Air Quality

Every once in a while, the local papers will run an article stating that some government agency says the air quality has really improved. Then I look down at the valley, and wonder just what they're measuring. (The "best" article was the one in which the reporter stated amazingly that the air quality in the Bay Area used to be so bad that there were days when you couldn't see the mountains on the opposite side of the valley. Apparently, the reporter never bothered to look out the window, especially in winter when you often can't even see the bay, let alone the opposite mountain.) Since I came to the Bay Area in the late 80's, the air quality has gotten visibly worse, but most people are so used to it, they don't notice anymore.

When I moved up to the mountains, that point was really brought home. If you look down at the valley, you can see the grey haze that pools in it up to about 1000-1500 feet. Above that level, the air is very pure (visitors often remark on it when they come to our house). The "fresh pine scent" that the redwoods provide in the summer adds a lot, too.

On the other hand, some mountain communities located in valleys are choked with wood smoke in the winter, so this aspect can be a negative in some areas.

Parks

If you like hiking or biking, mountain living is paradise: No matter where you live in the mountains, you'll have lots of parks close by. Added bonuses are that (1) parks that aren't that far for you are far for people in the valley, (2) there only seem to be a couple of parks up here that most people go to. The result is that it's not that difficult to get to parks that almost no one visits. We often hike in parks that are so little used, we will see only a couple of people over several hours. Even in some of the busier parks, we may see only about a dozen or so people in that time frame.

Maintenance-Free Yards

One of the really nice things about living in the woods is that you will likely have a near zero-maintenance lawn. No worry about having to mow the lawn or weed the yard; God will take care of it all for you. (However, you should be careful about having brush right near the house in case of fire.) Of course, the downside of having no yard is that you will have no yard. You should consider this carefully if you might want to use a yard or if you have children. (I've wondered whether it's possible to make a mountain lawn that's still near-zero maintenance by clearing an area and seeding it with sorrel. If anyone has tried this, I'd love to hear about it.)

Negatives

Of course, all this wonderful mountain living comes at a price. Here are some of little extras that come with mountain living:

Long Commutes

This is the negative item everyone thinks of. Actually, my commute isn't that bad. From our houses, we can reach a great many companies in 30-45 minutes, which seems only about 15 minutes over many suburban commutes. However, a great many mountain folk have longer commutes, especially if their main mountain road washes away (which isn't uncommon) and takes months to repair.

Mountain Roads

Mountain roads are un-level, twisty, and windy. I think they're fun to drive, but many of our friends complain, and would find having to drive such roads regularly unbearable (even wimpy mountain roads, such as the Bay Area's Skyline Boulevard). As mentioned above, the roads have a tendency to wash out every once in a while: a potential major hassle given the few roads available to get to/from the valley. In addition, the road may be out for a good part of a day or so due to smaller disasters. On our road, we've been blocked by mudslides, refrigerator-sized boulders, fallen trees, accidents, and, once, a moving van stuck in a hairpin turn. Drivers are also regularly provided with opportunities to test their reaction times and defensive driving skills due to stupid behaviour by deer, bicyclists, and other drivers.

Virtually Nothing is Delivered

In the mountains, you can't just call up your neighborhood pizza store and have them deliver to your house. If you want something, you need to plan ahead before going home and pick it up yourself. Also, unless you're careful, the food will be cold by the time you get home. (We carry insulated delivery bags in our cars to be able to have warm takeout at home.)

Expensive Paper Delivery

One of the only things that is delivered up in the mountains are newspapers. However, you may pay a premium if you want to get it. In California, we paid about twice the cover price to get The San Francisco Chronicle.

Expensive Contractors

Likewise, it's tough to get any contractors to work in the mountains since it's so out of the way of the usual routes. Even when you do find someone, they're likely to charge a lot for their inconvenience (and, I suspect, for the fact that they know there aren't going to be many bidders). Besides high fees, many contractors like to charge you for the time coming to and going from their business to your house.

Limited Gardening

The West Coast is blessed with great weather for growing many different plants. However, in the mountains, your yard is likely to be cold and shady, surrounded by tall redwood trees. It's actually possible to grow quite a bit (we've even had some success with indeterminate tomatoes), but you have to be careful to pick cold-tolerant species, and you have to be willing to experiment a lot to figure out what works.

(You'll also have a challenge keeping your beautiful plants from turning into stubs. See the section on deer below.

Extreme Weather

Weather in the mountains is virtually always much more intense than in the valley. If it's a bit windy down below, it's fierce at our house. If it's raining in the valley, it's storming where we live. I love fog, but people who hate it don't belong in the mountains. Also, it tends to be 15-20 degrees colder at our house than in the valley. (Trees surround our house; sunnier mountain areas are not as chilly.) This means our house is usually pretty nice during summer heat waves. However, it can get pretty cold in the winter, and we've even had the heat on in August.

Power Outages

Those intense storms result in trees falling, and power lines breaking. And, when they do, we're the lowest priority for getting them repaired. We usually expect to be without power a couple of days at a time once or twice each winter. Our record for being without power is 8 days.

Heating Costs

Since it's so much colder up here, heating can get expensive. We usually pay $100 or so per month in the winter to heat our house with propane. The situation is many mountain homes is exacerbated by home builders who build as if they are in the valley. Often they insulate the homes for mild valley winters rather than colder mountain winters. Plus, often they save a couple of bucks and build the home to use electric rather than gas heat (very costly for the buyer!). Even if you have gas heat, there are no natural gas lines up here, so you must use a more expensive alternative: propane.

Wireless TV

Some of the denser communities have cable, but a great many mountain homes do not. When my wife called the cable company in California to inquire, they told her that if she imagined a circle with a two-mile radius centered at our house, the inside of that circle would be the area that does not get cable in our area. I then called them, and asked how much it would cost to have them string the wire for two miles. (I figured that if it was cheaper than a satellite setup, it was worth considering.) The estimate: $62,000. Aren't monopolies fun?

Thus, in California, we relied on the old-fashioned antenna signal-delivery system, and have re-gotten used to fuzzy pictures and ghosting. We don't watch a lot of TV, so this isn't really a big problem for us. However, we did like to watch a couple of shows on a local Japanese station, and the picture quality for that station varied from week to week between almost perfect to barely perceptible.

In our Washington house, the only station we could get with an antenna was PAX. As much as we had to wonder if that was a message from God, we've moved on to Satellite TV...

Sharing Your Yard with the Wildlife

A lot of things live in the mountains, and when you're the only home around, they all seem to share your opinion that your house is better than the alternatives; much better than some old tree or hole in the ground. We've been visited by a lot of our interspecies neighbors, and spent a lot of time trying to evict them. Here are a few creatures we've come into contact with:

Dampwood Destroying pests: Dampwood Termites, Fungus, Moss, and Dry Rot. There are probably more dampwood termites around here than anything else. If there's a stump or log around your house, you can be pretty certain it contains dampwood termites. Fungus, moss, and dry rot also abound. These pests look at your house and think, dinner. We have found that it's important to get our house checked by a termite inspector annually (who also checks for the other home-destroying pests), or we may not have a house left in a few years.
Swarming Dampwood Termites. From late September to mid October, dampwood termites swarm to build new colonies. (If you ever hike at this time of year up here at dusk, you'll see tons of them flying around.) Not only is your house is a great place to set up a new colony, but, in addition, they are attracted to light, of which your house is about the only source around. The end result is that you can have a bad problem with them getting into the house, crawling and flying around before they die.
We've tried to make sure that our house is well sealed to prevent this. (We've especially checked for gaps at the walls around beam ceilings, and window and door frames. Plus, we screened our window weep holes.) Also, keeping our house dry by running a dehumidifier makes a big difference in discouraging and killing them quickly.
Carpenter Ants. Carpenter ants aren't as bad as termites, because they don't eat the wood, they just use it to set up house. Thus, they do damage a little slower. On the other hand, they seem to be more likely to set up shop in our house than termites, and I don't know of any way to discourage them. (Any ideas?) We've tried putting out boric acid and poison to kill them, but have had to resort of fumigating the areas they're living in to get rid of them.
Rodents. Small rodents abound in the mountain, and like everything else here, they want to live in your home. Mice only need a hole 1/4" in diameter to get in. Rats only need 1/2". Both are quite willing and capable of climbing sheer shingle walls, jumping from trees, and digging several feet underground to get where they want.
For example, one mouse liked to hang out on our master-bedroom balcony's railing, the only external access of which was to climb a two-story shingle wall. We also had a mouse climbing the outside walls to live in a small external outlet that was missing a small plug on the bottom. (An electrician told me this was common and he often finds fried mice in these external outlets.)
If you live in the mountains, and there are any 1/4" diameter or larger holes in your house, you are guaranteed to have a mouse and/or rat problem. The only plus is that they don't like to go into the living areas where you are; they'll likely stay in the foundation, attic, and garage unless they get desperate for food or water. Even if they stay there, though, they will do a lot of damage over time by chewing up your phone and electrical wiring, and raising their young in your insulation.
Putting out poison can help reduce the population temporarily, but, no matter what the boxes say, rodents do eventually figure out that it's poison and then avoid eating it.
The only permanent solution is to ruthlessly plug up all the holes, preferably with cement and/or very fine chicken wire. We have thoroughly gone through our attic, garage, and foundation (inside and out) as well as examined vents and walls looking for any possible holes and plugging them up. It took several long sessions, in which each time we thought we had found all the holes, until finally it looks like we did get them all. (Crossed fingers)
By the way, if you have really big gaps under your foundation (6-12" or so), you'll have bigger things living under your house.

Sharing Your Home with the Wildlife

There are also various critters that will wander around your yard in the mountain. Most you can admire or ignore. Here are a few you might take notice of.

Deer. Deer are cute to have around (and, boy are there plenty of them!), until you try to grow something. Then they'll consume virtually anything they can get to, even native plants. (To you it's a garden, but to them it's an exotic salad bar to be inhaled.) We've had to resort to growing things in places they can't get to (behind tall fences, on balconies), or growing stuff they won't touch (typically smelly plants like herbs.)
Gophers. Gophers can really tear up a yard or garden with all their tunneling. I've heard a lot of people complain about them, but we don't have them (yet?), so I don't know much about them.
Banana Slugs. Banana slugs are big 6-inch long bright yellow slugs. We think they're cute, but some people don't like them. If you're one of those people, you don't want to live in the mountains: they're everywhere. Luckily, they don't seem to be the voracious eaters that non-native slugs are; you'll likely see them trying to gum some leaves of your plants, but they don't seem to get very far. (I received a note from Danielle Barnes telling me that "they only eat decomposing organic material, so they are no threat to your garden, unlike the European snails and slugs accidentally imported to the area." I've certainly seen a number of banana slugs that appear to be eating leaves, so either my banana slugs are reading different books about what they're supposed to be doing, or they're gumming the leaves for some different purpose, such as getting water. In either case, I agree they are definitely not a threat to your garden.)
Mountain Lions. Mountain lions are increasing all along the West Coast, and I expect they'll get to our area someday. Usually they don't like to encounter you any more than you want to encounter them, so you're unlikely to see them. I wouldn't keep pets out at night, though. We have smaller predators (coyotes, bobcats, etc.) too, but they are just as shy and, usually, much less dangerous.

You get used to many of the negatives listed above, or you work around them. I've found it's more than worth it to be able to live up here.

You can send me mail at mic-h@mic-hworld.com.
(Please replace the dashes with the first letter of the alphabet. Sorry, I'm trying to minimize my spam.)

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