One Hot Check

Mary and I had finished a summer of backpacking in Colorado with church youth groups from across the USA. We wanted to buy one acre of land for a base camp with a shed to store our equipment over the winter. We loved our jobs at Vail ski resort. Mary as an Emergency Room RN at the Vail hospital and I as a night snow cat groomer on the Vail mountain.

North of Pagosa Springs, in the Weminunche Valley, we stopped to talk with a rancher. Mr Poma. “ Can we buy 1 acre of your ranch as a base camp for Christian youth backpacking in the summer?” After much laughter and we did not get shot, he said to visit his son, Lou, in Pagosa as he was a realtor. We met with Lou and rode horseback into the 40 acre remote spot on a 2000 acre “ranch”. We said wow! We don’t have any money. “Make an offer.” So, we made a really low ball offer. We need “ earnest money” with your offer. I had no idea what earnest money was. We had just finished a summer of backpacking with youth groups. We had an old truck (1965 GMC ) and $10 to buy gas to get back to Alma, CO, our home, a mining shack from the 1800’s. Lou said “ write me a hot check”.  So, we wrote a check for $1,000 as “earnest money” and said don’t even try to cash it. He did not. We drove away, never to hear from Lou again. Three days later, Lou called and said the “rancher” had accepted our offer of $40,000 down and the balance over 10 years. Ha! So, we called college friends, parents and anyone we knew and asked if we could borrow some money and we probably could not pay them back! In a month, we came up with $ 40,000. We had bought 40 acres in SW Colorado in a remote part of a far away ranch. Oh my.

Sonlight had a base camp.