The Train

If you're looking for property in the beautiful Clark Fork River Valley, you'll be hard-pressed to find it without BIG POWER LINES running near or through it, ROAD NOISE from Highway 200, or the TRAINS (up to 22 per day).

Highway noise was unacceptable to us. We really didn't want power lines either, if we could avoid them. But we liked the lonesome, intermittent sound of a train winding its way through a serene river valley.

At Shorthorse, there is NO highway noise. Nor are there any overhead power lines within sight. But our house is about 200 yards from the railroad tracks. The house sits up on a bench; the tracks are down below, with a thick screen of pines, firs and tamaracks hiding them from view. The trees also temper the sound, which isn't unpleasant to us anyway. Beyond the tracks is the Clark Fork River. The opposite bank of the river is mountainside. This topography lends itself to long echoes. You get to hear every train whistle twice: once in real time and a shadow of it a second later when it bounces off the mountainside.

Our first night there, in the 5th wheel, we lay awake waiting and listening for the far-off approach of a train. We were aware of only two that night. Since then, we don't even hear them anymore!

We like the trains. When we're awake, we enjoy the low, powerful, rumbling of these occasional visitors passing through. Each train has its own personality, defined by the whistle, the engineer who stylizes his whistle blows, the speed of the train, and the cargo it's carrying.

The area immediately below our home is officially known as "Childs Siding." Sometimes when we hear trains idling, switching, and hissing down there, we're drawn like little kids to jog down the hill and get a close-up look. It's better than a Lionel train set!

Maybe when we get settled, I'll bake cinnamon rolls on a dark winter morning and race down the hill to give them to the engineers sitting down there in their locomotives, waiting for a train to pass from the opposite direction.

A House for Dog Kids

Our dogs share our lives, and thus our house. When we designed the Shorthorse lodge, we wanted it to be dog-friendly and unfussy. We also wanted easy maintenance and tough. I didn't want us heartbroken and cussing the dogs the first time we got toenail scratches on brand new doors or floors.

So here are some of the features we incorporated to make it a "dog house."

1. Ceramic tile floors in high-traffic areas. The tile is a slate-type gray, with matte finish and semi-rough surface for paw traction. Dogs love lying on cool tile floors on a hot day.

2. Cultured stone up to the window sills in the living room. Wouldn't show scuffs, claws, and dog goobers. The window sills would be stone (toenail-proof). We anticipate the dogs will be standing on them a lot, barking at the wildlife in the yard.

3. A "dog-proof room" that also serves as the laundry and mud room. We can shut them in there if we really have to on some rare occasion. Vinyl floors, easy-care cabinets, storage for dog food bins, and...a four-foot steel groming tub, complete with ladder and sprayer! The tub will also serve as a utility tub for washing horse blankets or whatever.

4. Two doggy doors in the breezeway; one accesses the laundry room, one accesses the back yard (which will be fenced with 5' chain link).

5. Hardwood flooring in two rooms, but it will be casual, almost pre-distressed.

6. A built-in dog bed nook in the living room. That was the architect's idea. Our dogs prefer to be on our bed, couch, or floor next to us, but maybe we can make this built-in thing work once in a while.

7. Front porch and back patio made of stamped concrete instead of wood or Trex. Again, scratch-proof and chew-proof.

8. Furniture that is "pre-distressed" and rustic.

9. Rustic doors, sort of Shaker style, that won't look ruined if they get scratched.

10. A three-stop elevator to help our elderly dogs get up and down the stairs (okay, so it's for us when we're lazy or lame...but the old dogs will use it too, as soon as they learn how to push the buttons).

Top photo of four dogs: our kids Grasel, Atlas, Lizzie, and Kosmo. Lizzie is a year-old pit bull. The other three are Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs. Kosmo is about 10 years old. Grasel and Atlas are littermates, 11 years old in this photo. We lost our little girl Grasel in May 2007, about two months after this photo was taken. Her ashes are waiting to be freed at Shorthorse, when we finally get moved later this year.

The Weather and Climate

"Montana? Sure hope you like wind and lots of snow!!"

We hear this a lot from our skeptical friends in Yakima when we tell them our plans to move. Then we have to explain the following: Sanders County is known as the "Banana Belt" of Montana. It's in the extreme northwestern corner of the state. As Jake Spoon would say, "You can smell Canadee from there." Sanders County is a large piece of real estate encompassing the WETTEST area of the state (Heron, on the west end of the county) and the DRYEST area (Hot Springs, on the east end). It also has the HOTTEST average temperature (our town, Thompson Falls, in the middle) Snow can be light, moderate or heavy, depending on the the annual whims of nature. But every summer we have quite a few days of 100+ heat. The saving grace is that it cools off so much at night. Typically a midsummer morning can start at 45 degrees and zoom to 102 by 3 p.m.

The real secret, however, is the LACK OF WIND. We might get some pleasant, playful gusts in the early evening, but basically there is NO APPRECIABLE WIND in Sanders County. 3 to 5 mph is a high average! The next question our skeptical friends will ask is, "Just how familiar are you with the area?" They think we've been sold a bill of goods, weatherwise, by the local Chamber of Commerce. It's nice to be able to say, "We've owned the property for four years."