I Built My Dream House in the Woods. My Neighbors Hate It.

Dear Sundog: I’ve always been an environmentalist and lived as close to nature as possible. Years ago I was lucky enough to buy a parcel that borders on public land near a river. I’ve designed and built a dream house that allows me to feel like I’m a part of the natural surroundings. The house is not visible from the river; I intentionally left the bottomlands untouched. My house fits the landscape and accentuates the natural features, and is honestly nicer to look at than the junk cars and trashed mobile home that I hauled away years ago.

People have historically crossed this land to reach the river. They park at a dead end which is technically my land and walk through the floodplain. When I first bought the land, which used to be part of a ranch, local kids would ride dirt bikes and shoot paintballs down there, and I spent a lot of time and money cleaning up after them and blocking the unofficial roads. I’ve restored ecological systems and habitat for wild animals. I’ve put up signs making it clear that it’s OK for fishermen to walk through my land to reach the river and for mountain bikers to connect to the larger trail system. And yet people keep tearing down the signs, and driving four-wheelers into my woods, and destroying the place I’m trying to restore and protect. They complained to my face and in letters to the newspaper that I was ruining a public place—even though I own it.

They’ve gone to the zoning board to complain about me, accusing me of technicalities over parking spaces, setbacks, even water quality of the nearby stream. I’ve done everything by the book to protect nature, and still people treat me like I’m trying to sink the Exxon Valdez here. I feel my next step will be to block access completely: build a fence and put up No Parking signs. My vision for this place did not include a damn parking lot! I feel my next option is to start having cars towed, which I think will be the beginning of a long war with strangers that I’m not sure I can win. Am I the asshole?
—Nature Is My Back Yard (NIMBY)

Dear NIMBY,

I’m sorry people aren’t respecting your property, especially when you think you all share values, that you should be on the same team. I also appreciate you building something that will blend into the landscape, instead of plunking down a scale-model Parthenon with marble columns and double-decker five-car garage to house your collection of off-road motorhomes.

I’m not the type of purist who wants no manmade structures in nature. From the adobe pueblos of New Mexico, to the whitewashed villages of Andalusia, to the mountain-top temples of Nepal, civilizations have long created architectural styles that don’t merely complement nature but, as Sundog would say, enhance it, by demonstrating the potential for humans and non-humans to live in harmony.

But, NIMBY, I’m going to venture that the kids racing their Razrs across your floodplain give zero shits about the temples of Nepal.

The first issue, I suppose, is legality, and you seem to be aware that the law is on your side. You can fence it all off, or even hire an armed militia to patrol your personal border. This nation’s legal system protects property rights—and you will be breaking no law.

However, the deeper issue may not be trespassing: it’s that you want people’s approval for the architecturally and ecologically sound decisions you’ve made. The bad news, NIMBY, is that you’re not going to get it. Based on your letter, I’ve made a few assumptions about your socio-economic status. Although you bought a ranch, you’re not running cattle on it, nor earning a living by extracting some resource like timber or minerals from it. Second, even if your new house is modest and small, it surely cost a lot more money to build than the existing mobile home that you hauled to the dump.

I’m going to also assume—merely because your land is near a river where people come to fish—that it’s shared something with the large swaths of the rural U.S. that abut recreational activities: in the past 20 years it’s become more crowded, popular, expensive, and filled with wealthy newcomers who don’t work in the traditional industries of mining, logging, farming and ranching.

I would invite you to interrogate your own belief that the work you’re doing on your property is for the benefit of nature. Nature may be somewhat indifferent. You are doing this for yourself, for your own sense of belonging on the land, and also for other humans, so that they might share and understand your vision. But how is preserving nature (from other people) all that different than locking up the land to build your own private paradise? These days, land conservation can feel a bit like feudalism, in which the wealthy hoard land for themselves. Of course, in old Europe the lord earned income by stealing the labor of his serfs who farmed his land. These days the lord doesn’t bother trying to make a buck on the earth; he earns his income in some distant industry—finance, technology, medicine, media, consulting (whatever that is)—while keeping the land “pristine.”

Are you the asshole? That depends on who you ask. Protecting trees and animals will make you a hero to a certain slice of the population. But if you block local people from the paths they’ve walked for generations before you arrived, well, yes, they’ll think you’re just another rich outsider locking up the land.

There is no easy decision. You believe that by cleaning up and protecting the natural world, you are implementing a more enlightened land ethic than the Genesis story in which Man holds dominion over all other species, and is free to use or misuse the land for whatever purpose suits him. But may I suggest that the land ethic of cultivating your own private garden is equally colonial, rooted perhaps in another Old Testament idea that Man is sinful but the Garden is perfect without him. Your house indicates that you are able to see beauty in nature not despite humankind, but because of it. I wonder if you can apply the same philosophy to the humans wandering through the woods that you now call your own.

Mark Sundeen once built a handsome shed that integrated with the natural landscape. Thus far it has attracted no trespassers or looky-loos.