I once paid forty two thousand dollars for a view that I ended up hiding from behind a set of heavy gray curtains and I think about that money every time I see a house perched on a cliff or a ridge. I bought that house because I wanted to be the kind of man who woke up with the sun and watched the fog roll through the valley but I forgot that the fog is wet and the sun is a bright white glare that makes it impossible to see a laptop screen or a dinner plate.

I sat in my kitchen and I washed dishes and I looked at the lake through a tiny window above the sink while the massive expensive deck sat empty and hot and lonely just ten feet away. It was a mistake of the soul and a mistake of the wallet and it took me three years to realize that I had bought a painting and I had no chair to sit in while I looked at it.

The View Tax vs. The Reality

The first mistake we make is believing that proximity is the same as presence and we think that if we own the dirt that looks at the water then we will somehow be part of the water. We pay the view tax at the bank and we sign the papers and we feel like we have captured something wild and brought it home but the wild does not want to be in your house and it fights back with wind and heat and bugs.

I spent my first summer on that ridge trying to eat dinner on the deck and I spent most of those nights chasing paper napkins across the yard or swatting at flies that wanted my steak more than I did. The view was there and it was beautiful and it was a thousand shades of orange and pink but I was too busy squinting to see any of it.

“Claire F works as a playground safety inspector and she once told me that the prettiest equipment is almost always the stuff that stays empty because it burns the hands of the kids who try to play on it. She says we build for the eyes but our bodies are the ones that have to live in the mess.”

– Claire F, Safety Inspector

That is exactly what we do with our homes and we build these great big glass walls and these wide open decks and then we realize that a human being is a soft and fragile thing that does not like to be baked at five in the afternoon. We build a stage and then we find out that the stage lights are too hot and the wind is too loud and the actors all want to go back to the dressing room where there is air conditioning and a comfortable couch.

The Silent Thief: Glare and Heat

The second mistake is the glare and it is a silent thief that steals the very thing you paid for. You buy the west-facing lot because you want the sunset and then you realize that from four o clock until seven o clock you have to wear sunglasses inside your own living room or you have to pull the shades down.

There is a deep irony in paying a premium for a vista and then spending your life pulling a cord to hide it so you can see the television or talk to your wife without rubbing your eyes. I have seen million dollar homes where the owners sit in the dark because the light is too aggressive and the sun is not a friend but a trespasser that ruins the furniture and fades the rugs.

I have seen people spend twenty thousand dollars on outdoor furniture that they never sit on because the wind makes it feel like they are sitting on the wing of a plane. They look out the window and they see the trees swaying and they stay inside where it is still and quiet and they leave the view to the birds.

And then there are the bugs and the heat and the cold and the way the world changes every hour while we stay the same. We are creatures of habit and we want our comfort and we want our views but we rarely find a way to have both at the same time. We treat the outdoor space as a separate kingdom and we hope that the weather will be kind to us for the six days a year that it is perfect. We under-invest in the transition and we build a door and a wall and we hope for the best but the best is rarely what we get.

The bridge between the house and the world is usually a thin one and it is often broken by the very elements we want to enjoy. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to fix my mistake and I looked at umbrellas and I looked at plastic screens and I even thought about building a stone wall that would have blocked the lake entirely.

I realized that the answer was not in fighting the view but in framing it in a way that let me breathe. This is why people are turning to

Outdoor Glass Enclosures

and other ways to wrap the vista in a skin that protects the person while celebrating the place.

The War with the Ridge

You stop fighting the wind and you stop hiding from the sun and you start sitting in the light instead of under it. I remember the first time I sat in a well-made sunroom during a storm and I watched the rain lash against the glass while I was dry and warm and I felt like I had finally won the war with the ridge. I was not looking at the view through a tiny kitchen window anymore and I was in the view and I was part of it and I was not suffering for it.

There is a technical side to this that people miss and they think that any glass will do but they forget about the frame and the seal and the way the metal meets the wood. You need a system that works together and you need walls that talk to the roof and a floor that does not leak the heat into the ground. When you find a single source for these things you stop having to stitch together a solution that will eventually fail. You want the glass to be a lens and not a barrier and you want the structure to disappear so that the only thing left is you and the trees and the water.

I think back to that bank teller and how she smiled when I signed the papers for that house and I wonder if she knew. I wonder if she had a house on a hill too and if she spent her nights in a back room because the living room was too bright to bear. We are all trying to buy a little piece of the infinite and we are all trying to find a way to belong to the landscape without being destroyed by it.

It is a noble goal but it requires more than just a down payment and it requires a plan for how to actually live in the beauty you have acquired. The property taxes on a view are a recurring cost that you pay whether you look at the grass or not and the grass does not care if you are looking.

I once spent an entire afternoon watching a red-tailed hawk circle the valley and I realized that he was the only one who truly owned the view because he was the only one who was built to handle the wind. I was just a guest and I was a guest who was poorly dressed for the party. I had the invitation but I did not have the coat and I spent the whole time shivering on the porch.

We need to stop building houses that turn their backs on the world and we need to start building spaces that invite the world in on our terms. We can have the sunset and we can have the morning light and we can have the sound of the rain without the dampness in our bones. It just takes a shift in how we think about the edge of our lives and where the house ends and the world begins.

We spend our lives working so that we can one day sit and look at something beautiful and it is a tragedy to get there and realize you are too uncomfortable to stay. I sold that house on the ridge eventually and the person who bought it was so excited about the view and I did not tell them about the glare or the wind or the way the curtains had to stay closed.