how i built wildspring guest habitat by michelle duarte

How often have you been on vacation in a really cool place and thought, “If only I could find a way to live here?”

My sweet new husband and I did that all the time. We lived in L.A. and liked to travel to peaceful places like Sedona or Big Sur where time seemed to slow down. Where life was more entwined with nature than stuck on the Hollywood Freeway, inching along behind a homie with a bass box in his trunk so loud it made your fillings itch.

We’d sit in some darling little bistro, usually over a margarita, gazing at all the happy people on vacation like us and dream of ways to move there, make a living and get a life. When we traveled, we liked to stay in guest houses or cabins, trying to get away from the herd of elephants that always seemed to stay in the room above us or the pack of hyenas in the room next door. So it quickly occurred to us that we could find a home with a guest house and rent that out.

The more we thought about it, the more the idea grew….from one guest house, to a couple, to yurts, to cabins… first sort of rustic, almost like a nice campground with our own bathrooms. Then we kept upgrading our “what ifs” and started dreaming about making it real. All the time thinking about the kind of place we liked to stay in.

And that was the start of a long and bumpy journey to a new life.

First we had to figure out where.

We knew it had to be by the ocean. Big Sur was too expensive. The California coast was beyond our reach because of both cost and a killer coastal land-use process there. It’s hard to get the right kind of land in Washington – so much of it’s tribal. That left Oregon (unless we were willing to try the East Coast weather. Uh, no).

So I started the online search, researching the land-use laws and looking for affordable, suitable land. That took almost a year. We burned through a lot of money in the process because we didn’t have a clue and trusted realtors who, it turned out, knew less than we did.

We found our present place in Port Orford, on the south Oregon coast, loved it, made an offer without even seeing it. The sellers changed their mind and took it off the market. We went through a few other places, and in each case got stopped by Oregon land-use laws. What we wanted to develop needed to be on quiet, secluded land, not traditional commercial zoning; that made it very challenging to find a municipality whose code allowed us a reasonable avenue.

We almost bought a beautiful old Christmas tree farm in Florence, but the neighbors got up in arms because they were certain we would turn it into a commune run by the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Google that sometime!). That process took almost $20k out of our funds…sigh… We also explored an 80-acre piece of wilderness, as well as a handful of places along the coast.

Finally, this place came back on the market and we made an offer within two days of it once more showing up on the Internet.

Success!

The next year and a half became both an inspirational story and a cautionary tale. There were heroes and villains, incredible examples of serendipity and amazing good fortune, as well as crazy-go-nuts moments when we learned how much critical information we didn’t know or plan for, where people we trusted boasted we were their retirement plan, when we had to start over again and find new people, and ran out of money (three times).

Through it all, we kept evolving our ideas into what we enjoy now – and you can, too: WildSpring Guest Habitat. A small eco-friendly resort overlooking the ocean in Port Orford, Oregon, offering luxurious accommodations in a naturally beautiful setting. We just celebrated our sixth anniversary. We are now a Select Registry Inn (only one of 400 in all of North America) and we’ve been recommended twice in the New York Times and four times in Sunset Magazine. Woo hoo!

To this day, we hold margaritas in great reverence.

P.S. And, as an FYI, we learned an important 8-step program to make your dreams real:

1. Research everything. Know your stuff. Assume everyone else is wrong (or so skewed by self-interest they might as well be).

2. Lose your fear of risk.

3. Lose your fear of debt.

4. Commit your whole heart and soul. Never give up.

5. Work your ass off.

6. Be willing to let go of even your most cherished plans to make room for something better… eventually.

7. Trust that it will turn out perfectly.

8. When things go really really bad – and they will – remember: If life was meant to be easy, you never would have developed a sense of humor.