Lakes and springs… and bears! Oh my!
After looking for almost a year, we finally found a property that we were seriously interested in. The lake was a beautiful quiet private spring fed lake. The property abutted the State Forest on one side, so there would never be a neighbor there. The lot was 10 acres with a forest of mature trees with a carpet of sedges under them. The driveway meandered down through the forest to a gulley and then up towards the building site. Problem was, there was already a house on the property!
Unfortunately, the existing house was small and poorly conceived, with a garage and living space on one floor, and a loft on the second floor, with hardly any windows or connection to the lake. Our initial plan was to move it to the back of the property to use as a vacation rental unit and build something new on the site. We made an offer, which was accepted. We were elated!
As we looked into the zoning issues and had a hydrologist come out and evaluate the site, we realized that plan was unworkable. The site had undisclosed springs and wetlands and there were new set back requirements which made a new building on the site, or changing the footprint of the existing one, impossible.
Reluctantly, we had to let the property go.
We kept looking. On one parcel, we were walking around with the Realtor when we heard a strange mewing sound, almost like a cat. While we all thought we’d heard that sound before, we couldn’t place it. We started stomping through the brush towards the sound, with our Realtor leading the way. Suddenly, the Realtor came crashing back through the woods at speed. He had found the source of the sound—a baby black bear up a tree, bawling away for his mother. We wasted no time clearing out! The last thing we wanted to do was run into angry Momma Bear, who was undoubtedly not far away. But, as memorable as that encounter was, we weren’t interested in that particular site as it turned out, and the search continued.
A downtown Hayward wall mural that is reminiscent of our encounter.
Not long after, late into the fall of 2011, our Realtor called. He had another site for us to review. The pictures were just of woods and one picture of the lake shore, so it was hard to get a sense of the place. We drove up the next Saturday morning early and met the Realtor at a local breakfast spot. He told us this lot was exceptional. The owner had sold off other lots on the ridge between two lakes over the years, but had always kept this lot to potentially build on. But now, he was older and ready to let it go. We drove to the site just minutes away. We were hardly out of the car when we knew we had found something special.