Nevada County, California from August 2018 to February 2019
In the beginning of August 2018 we drove to Nevada County, California from a month stay in Santa Cruz. On our way there, before we got into the county, our van overheated and blew a gasket and hose in Auburn, California. It took a few hours to deal with and we had to call somebody to pick us up. We stayed at a woman’s house in the downtown Grass Valley area. It was a pink house from the 1800’s gold era, Victorian style. The woman was obsessed with gold and had a Santeria priest renting a section the house. The priest was into some dark energy, as was she, which is why there were all the negative entities. Although, he did warn us about the toxic dust in Nevada County, which comes from the gravel roads being spread everywhere. The gravel comes from the areas that had the tailings from the gold mining in the 1800s with the mercury and arsenic, etc. So, when you drive on the gravel it spreads the toxins into the air.
In order to leave that eerie house, we stayed with another woman, who Shantparv(Peter) had known from years prior on the island where we used to live. She had several acres and had been a pot grower for roughly 20 years. She had a pot garden and a small food garden. She offered us to stay in a 12 by 20 foot trimming shed with a half loft that had been insulated and had a little heater in it. The windows had not been done correctly, and were put in, in such a way that they didn’t fully kept the rain out. So the walls had gotten bits of moisture that went in and created a mold which was making us sick. We wound up actually sleeping in a tent on the deck. We were there for two months, as we looked for our own place. Not knowing it would be so complicated to find a house to rent. Once the rainy season began, we couldn’t stay there much longer due to the mold. Plus, it was getting depressing. Because, while staying there we found that there were garbage bags full of dead rats and human manure from previous tenants that had been sitting around the land for a few years. The 12 by 20 foot cabin didn’t have an actual bathroom, only a composting toilet, located on the porch opposite from out tent. Despite Peter’s efforts to help with property maintenance, as per request, Bobby’s expectations shifted, and she began billing us for rent, ,negating the value of the work done, and making our situation untenable.
We stayed at another friend’s house for a week or two, and then started house-sitting. We were bouncing around, staying in different houses house and pet sitting, each for a week or two at a time. We also stayed for a few days at a time at the co-housing with a friend, because they had a spare space for guests, but it had rules around how long you could be there, and that was always limited to 3 days, every so often.
During all of this time, we did meet a couple that are very intuitive, who did warn of the spiritual and other energetic problems in Nevada County. Boy do I wish we had heeded that. But, we stayed and learned the very hard way.
Right around Christmas, we decided we were going to leave Nevada County and move to Ashland, Oregon. Two days before we were set to go, a woman called and said she had a friend from San Francisco who had a place for rent. She lived in San Francisco and had 10 acres on the ridge, where she did not live. She said we could stay in her house for the first month until the current tenants moved out of the rental house, because she did not live there anyway. We moved into her house there a day or two later. The third house on the property had a landscaper guy living there. Initially, he was friendly enough.
Shortly after moving there, we met a SC, who came over and was very friendly telling us about what a great sauna that place had, the best on the ridge. She lived just down the road, so we could be friends, and maybe sauna together. Then, she wanted to bring her friends to sauna, regularly. While living there she was mostly a friend in the winter, a little in the summer, but usually around the sauna, and she never visited us after we moved.
After a month, we moved into the rental house, which was right by the road and really didn’t have any privacy. The windows had no curtains. On the backside that didn’t face the road, the landscaper continuously walked within three or four feet of the deck and would look in the windows. However, the windows didn’t have curtains, or rods, or blinds. He didn’t really have any concept of boundaries, or respect any requested. So, the first thing was to cover the windows for some level of privacy.
We were 25 minutes out of town, and it was winter. So when there was ice on the road, or there were mudslides, the drive was not the greatest through the Yuba River canyon. Getting our son to school, which was a homeschool adjunct school two days a week, plus his wilderness school another day, was another challenge. We were driving about two hours a day, just for that alone. After much trial and error, Peter was able to get a job doing low level carpentry for $20 an hour, which was a cut in his pay and skill level, plus more driving. He also did things on the landlady’s property for $50 an hour, still a cut in his pay, and less than the other guy had charged her, but it helped. The labor was taken out of our rent.
This was all very challenging, but we were glad to have a place after being on the road for 9 months. The land was beautiful, and we thought we could really make something great of this.
This was beginning of our time in Nevada County and on “The Ridge”.
