The sci­ence-fic­tion of the 60s and 70s by Asi­mov pitied those prim­i­tive worlds that were en­ergy-con­strained. The fu­ture would have ter­raform­ing, fis­sion plants in space, en­ergy from magma, an en­tire planet en­closed in domes with con­trolled light­ing and air con­di­tioned to an un­re­mark­able tem­per­a­ture.

Some other smart aleck from the 70s once said that “plan­ning would be con­trary to our na­tional ge­nius.” I sup­pose that we can blame it on that - we just didn’t plan for this. We all thought our fu­ture would be more like Asi­mov’s sto­ries and less like Frank Her­bert’s Dune. You know, the parts where peo­ple on the dry planet spend their time har­vest­ing the dew and ri­ot­ing over the water con­sump­tion of new non-na­tive trees. We just didn’t plan on the lack of a magic bul­let for our prob­lems.

Most nights about this time, I sit and look out at the bowl to the West and think about how lucky I am. I came up here to run this for­est back when peo­ple were still hot on the idea of bio­fu­els from trees and the tem­per­a­tures in the city were only 110ºF. Every­one agreed that it couldn’t get hot­ter than that, al­though of course it did. I look down through the Qwik­Gro pines at the few re­main­ing lights in the val­ley and won­der how long they’ll con­tinue to flicker on.

When I first moved up onto the moun­tain, I missed the con­ve­nience and close­ness of the city. Hav­ing a drink with friends after work, tak­ing long show­ers with­out check­ing the level in the tank first. And it took a lit­tle while to learn to sleep through a windy night. I put two con­crete foun­da­tions as deep as I could dig but the other end of the cabin is mounted thirty feet up two pine trees stick­ing straight up out of the steep slope below. At first a wob­bly cabin on a near ver­ti­cal side­hill seemed like a joke. But as tem­per­a­tures rose and the aquifer level fell in the city,  I started to get some neigh­bors.

A few years after the tree farm went bust, I was tromp­ing through the woods one day when I found the spring. It ain’t much, but I fig­ured it would be much bet­ter than col­lect­ing the three and a half inches of rain water a year from my roof. If I could get some help lay­ing the ir­ri­ga­tion pipe that is.

So when some friends wanted to build a cabin near me, I said great - let’s put it just up­hill of mine. And be­fore we start build­ing let’s tap that spring and lay some pipe straight down the hill. And let’s just build a kitchen cabin be­tween us - I hate it when bears break in and wake me up look­ing for food. (Be­fore I kept a box of fire­crack­ers near my bed to throw at them when they did. But it was a pain.)

They say mon­archs make the best urban plan­ners and luck­ily I’m king of this side­hill. Align­ing each of my new neigh­bors to branch off of the main artery of spring water has sprouted all sorts of fruit: from the blue­grass on the kitchen porch keep­ing the cooks com­pany down to our gray­wa­ter drip ir­ri­gated tomato gar­den.

Our mu­tual/ver­ti­cal arrange­ment would have seemed bizarre to those used to sin­gle fam­ily houses aligned in hor­i­zon­tal rows. But with about thirty build­ings on this lit­tle hill­side now it’s clear that some­thing about our re­aligned lives works for us here. Bet­ter than the hard­pan down below any­way.