Back when I first started writing the blog, I was advised to never, ever remove any material it. The advisor said that if one posts something on line, it should remain there to draw traffic, no matter what.
I didn’t really take that to heart, but I rarely do take anything off line. In the next few days, though, I’ll remove one of the essays on this blog. At long last, my sister and I found a buyer for our last remaining piece of undeveloped property in remote Alaska.
Back in 2011 I wrote about the opportunity my sister and I offered to buy remote property and, perhaps, make a life like ours here on the Zeiger family homestead. I mentioned it often, particularly to those many people who read and responded to an older post offering advice on buying land in Alaska (see Free Land in Alaska?) as a possible way to get started living the lifestyle we enjoy and advocate.
Ultimately, our patience (not to say our procrastination, though that’s far closer to the actual point) paid off. We’re selling the last remaining lot to someone who lives adjacent to it—someone who knows as well as we do, if not better, the value of the lot.
So, it doesn’t make sense to keep the old essay online. However, from a historical point of view, I’d like to keep it available on some level. For that reason, I offer the edited version below:
You Want a “Piece of This?” Originally posted March 2, 2011 on this blog.
“Our Website and blog seems to have a lot of appeal among “armchair homesteaders,” those who like the idea of living as we do, or even harbor hopes and plans to do so someday. It might be time to point out that my sister and I are offering an opportunity for someone to do just that, to develop a small plot of land in bush Alaska. We’ve got land for sale in Gustavus, Alaska, just outside of Glacier Bay National Monument.
How we got the land in the first place is a long story, one that we’ll no doubt need to include in our upcoming memoir [this eventually became Sacred Coffee: A “Homesteader’s” Paradigm] as it played a large role in bringing us to the Zeiger Family Homestead. The shorthand version is that we used to own several lots in Gustavus, which we’ve been slowly selling off. This one is the last remaining lot.
But my sister and I are idealists. We could have sold the property a long time ago if we weren’t so concerned that the buyer be happy with the purchase.
Years ago, as we sold off the other lots to neighboring land holders or their friends, one buyer contacted us, hot to purchase. He’d already cashed in his retirement savings, and wanted to pay cash for the lot! However, he didn’t feel it was necessary to go and see the property first. We disagreed, so vehemently that we eventually refused to sell to him!
Is it too much to wish the happiness that we’ve found on others? Is it too much to hope that no one should regret purchasing from us? Maybe so. It’s certainly not the way to wheel and deal in Real Estate, but we do sleep soundly at night. Whoever develops this land will certainly have their work cut out for them. It’s not for the faint of heart, or the undedicated. We want to make sure, as much as reasonably possible, that it will go to someone who can appreciate it.”
Now, we can say (without irony): mission accomplished. I feel a slight pang at losing property in such a wonderful community, but as happy as we are here, we’d likely never develop it. The new owner will appreciate it more than we ever could.