"Perpetual Guest"
When it comes to land, a good friend of mine has a saying. “Better get yours while you can. They ain’t makin’ any more of it.” Truer words may never have been spoken. There was a time in this country, particularly in the Southeastern quadrant of it, when land was, well, dirt cheap. Literally. Once upon a time, vast parcels of land were sold for pennies on the dollar, won and lost in card games, and bartered for goods and services.
Those folks whose ancestors acquired large sums of real property – and managed to hang on to some of it and pass it down through the generations – are today among the wealthiest and most fortunate individuals. The suburbanization of America since the birth of the Baby Boomer generation has been nothing short of staggering. For more than fifty years, whole chunks of the population have fled the metropolitan centers to live in suburbia. As the demand for more and more land upon which to develop suburbia rose, so too did its value and its price. Demand has outpaced supply, and today the same acre that might once have gone for a simple will preparation or the forgiveness of a petty poker debt now goes in many instances for tens of thousands of dollars or more. Land has become today’s gold.
My land holdings, and indeed my empire, consist entirely of eight-tenths of an acre in Baldwin County, Alabama. If the sun never set on the Union Jack, then I guess I should consider myself darned lucky the sun hits my little fiefdom at all before going back down. A land magnate I am not, and my prospects of becoming one are about as good as my prospects of throwing a 27 up 27 down perfect game on Opening Day at Turner Field in Atlanta next season in front of a sold out crowd that includes among it attendees the President, the First Lady, and all the Heisman Trophy winners – living and dead – from The University of Alabama. Alabama’s never had a Heisman Trophy winner so that ought to give you an indication of my prospects in this regard. It just ain’t going to happen.
One of the greatest assets a decent parcel of land can bestow upon its owner, aside from the appreciation potential and the timber value, is the completely unfettered access to hunting it provides. I consider myself mighty fortunate to belong to a good hunting club on an excellent lease, but I must contend still with a slurry of rules and other members and their guests, not to mention the ever-present possibility that the owners could wake up one day and decide to cut all their timber or worse, outright sell the place and leave us without anywhere to hunt at all.
The landowner has no such problems. He can do with his land what he pleases, and can hunt when he wants, how he wants, and with whom he wants, so long as he can afford the property taxes. The State of Alabama even has more desirable hunting regulations for private property than public property.
When you don’t own your own property in the country, but like to hunt and are very, very lucky, you end up getting a lot of invitations to hunting camps by folks who do own property in the country. This allows you to enjoy exquisite company in a whole lot of different places every season. I am blessed to be among these lucky commoners and have dubbed myself and others of my ilk Perpetual Guests.
The perpetual guest enjoys the best of both worlds. He gets frequent – albeit not permanent – access to exquisite privately held land. Private land typically is very well managed and often has onerous game management standards designed to insure that everyone has an opportunity to enjoy really great hunting year in and year out. Well managed private land often receives nomenclature such as “honey hole,” “petting zoo,” and “game preserve.” The flip side to all of this of course is the corresponding responsibility of owning a tract of land. Someone has to maintain it, run prescribed burns through it every few years, pay the property taxes annually, keep it thinned out to knock back the pine beetles, oversee the cutting of timber, clean it up after hurricanes blow through and knock down a sizeable portion of the merchantable timber, and maintain the insurance in case someone gets hurt on the place. But not the perpetual guest. He has no such worries. His duties end when he helps sweep the camphouse, bag the trash, and lock the gate behind him.
Along with the freedom from the responsibilities of owning land, however, comes an inversely proportional lack of benefits that flow from owning land. The perpetual guest owns nothing and cannot rely on a hefty influx of income every twenty years or so from cutting timber from his land holdings. Nor can he sell his holdings and realize the capital gains. The perpetual guest is, to a large extent, wholly dependent upon invitations from others to do any serious hunting, especially if he does not belong to a hunting lease of his own. This makes planning hunting weekends quite tenuous. While he would never stoop so low as to invite himself, he cannot help being silently disappointed when an invitation does not come, even though he recognizes he’s already received more than he deserves.
There is a dark side to this relationship, too. If a perpetual guest spends enough time hunting a particular piece of property he begins to establish a certain illicit bond with the place, like a lecherous infatuation with a married woman. The perpetual guest has no ownership interest in the property, has no right to be there any time his host is not present, and rarely if ever has the chance to spend extended periods of time there. The perpetual guest nonetheless in some quiet, philandering way begins to think of the place as his own in some respects. He knows it isn’t and he knows he should not harbor such thoughts but he cannot help it. After all, he knows his way around and could find his way blindfolded in the dark if he had to. He knows all the roads, all the fields, the best places to hunt, where the turkeys roost, where the deer bed down, and when the water’s high. He has spent a great deal of time and has made priceless memories there. The movie of his life that runs constantly in his mind contains panoramic backdrops filmed on location there. He begins to feel an emotional connection to the place. This connection is strengthened by the fact that he spends his time there in the company of the dearest of friends; clearly so or he would not be there as frequently to begin with. All this combines to tempt the perpetual guest into feeling as if he has rights, some stake in the property.
But it’s not the land and the improvements after all that lend such feelings of attachment and fondness. For at the end of it all, it’s just a piece of land, an excerpt of the earth, carved out by lawyers and their dotted lines and archaic descriptions buried in dusty books at the probate clerk’s office. The perpetual guest is grateful not simply for access to land he does not own, but for his trips to such special places, because they allow him to spend time and make memories with the closest of friends in the warmest of places. It is because of all this, the perpetual guest is perhaps the most fortunate of all.
(c) Roger Guilian 2006
Those folks whose ancestors acquired large sums of real property – and managed to hang on to some of it and pass it down through the generations – are today among the wealthiest and most fortunate individuals. The suburbanization of America since the birth of the Baby Boomer generation has been nothing short of staggering. For more than fifty years, whole chunks of the population have fled the metropolitan centers to live in suburbia. As the demand for more and more land upon which to develop suburbia rose, so too did its value and its price. Demand has outpaced supply, and today the same acre that might once have gone for a simple will preparation or the forgiveness of a petty poker debt now goes in many instances for tens of thousands of dollars or more. Land has become today’s gold.
My land holdings, and indeed my empire, consist entirely of eight-tenths of an acre in Baldwin County, Alabama. If the sun never set on the Union Jack, then I guess I should consider myself darned lucky the sun hits my little fiefdom at all before going back down. A land magnate I am not, and my prospects of becoming one are about as good as my prospects of throwing a 27 up 27 down perfect game on Opening Day at Turner Field in Atlanta next season in front of a sold out crowd that includes among it attendees the President, the First Lady, and all the Heisman Trophy winners – living and dead – from The University of Alabama. Alabama’s never had a Heisman Trophy winner so that ought to give you an indication of my prospects in this regard. It just ain’t going to happen.
One of the greatest assets a decent parcel of land can bestow upon its owner, aside from the appreciation potential and the timber value, is the completely unfettered access to hunting it provides. I consider myself mighty fortunate to belong to a good hunting club on an excellent lease, but I must contend still with a slurry of rules and other members and their guests, not to mention the ever-present possibility that the owners could wake up one day and decide to cut all their timber or worse, outright sell the place and leave us without anywhere to hunt at all.
The landowner has no such problems. He can do with his land what he pleases, and can hunt when he wants, how he wants, and with whom he wants, so long as he can afford the property taxes. The State of Alabama even has more desirable hunting regulations for private property than public property.
When you don’t own your own property in the country, but like to hunt and are very, very lucky, you end up getting a lot of invitations to hunting camps by folks who do own property in the country. This allows you to enjoy exquisite company in a whole lot of different places every season. I am blessed to be among these lucky commoners and have dubbed myself and others of my ilk Perpetual Guests.
The perpetual guest enjoys the best of both worlds. He gets frequent – albeit not permanent – access to exquisite privately held land. Private land typically is very well managed and often has onerous game management standards designed to insure that everyone has an opportunity to enjoy really great hunting year in and year out. Well managed private land often receives nomenclature such as “honey hole,” “petting zoo,” and “game preserve.” The flip side to all of this of course is the corresponding responsibility of owning a tract of land. Someone has to maintain it, run prescribed burns through it every few years, pay the property taxes annually, keep it thinned out to knock back the pine beetles, oversee the cutting of timber, clean it up after hurricanes blow through and knock down a sizeable portion of the merchantable timber, and maintain the insurance in case someone gets hurt on the place. But not the perpetual guest. He has no such worries. His duties end when he helps sweep the camphouse, bag the trash, and lock the gate behind him.
Along with the freedom from the responsibilities of owning land, however, comes an inversely proportional lack of benefits that flow from owning land. The perpetual guest owns nothing and cannot rely on a hefty influx of income every twenty years or so from cutting timber from his land holdings. Nor can he sell his holdings and realize the capital gains. The perpetual guest is, to a large extent, wholly dependent upon invitations from others to do any serious hunting, especially if he does not belong to a hunting lease of his own. This makes planning hunting weekends quite tenuous. While he would never stoop so low as to invite himself, he cannot help being silently disappointed when an invitation does not come, even though he recognizes he’s already received more than he deserves.
There is a dark side to this relationship, too. If a perpetual guest spends enough time hunting a particular piece of property he begins to establish a certain illicit bond with the place, like a lecherous infatuation with a married woman. The perpetual guest has no ownership interest in the property, has no right to be there any time his host is not present, and rarely if ever has the chance to spend extended periods of time there. The perpetual guest nonetheless in some quiet, philandering way begins to think of the place as his own in some respects. He knows it isn’t and he knows he should not harbor such thoughts but he cannot help it. After all, he knows his way around and could find his way blindfolded in the dark if he had to. He knows all the roads, all the fields, the best places to hunt, where the turkeys roost, where the deer bed down, and when the water’s high. He has spent a great deal of time and has made priceless memories there. The movie of his life that runs constantly in his mind contains panoramic backdrops filmed on location there. He begins to feel an emotional connection to the place. This connection is strengthened by the fact that he spends his time there in the company of the dearest of friends; clearly so or he would not be there as frequently to begin with. All this combines to tempt the perpetual guest into feeling as if he has rights, some stake in the property.
But it’s not the land and the improvements after all that lend such feelings of attachment and fondness. For at the end of it all, it’s just a piece of land, an excerpt of the earth, carved out by lawyers and their dotted lines and archaic descriptions buried in dusty books at the probate clerk’s office. The perpetual guest is grateful not simply for access to land he does not own, but for his trips to such special places, because they allow him to spend time and make memories with the closest of friends in the warmest of places. It is because of all this, the perpetual guest is perhaps the most fortunate of all.
(c) Roger Guilian 2006
posted by Days Afield Host | 10:31 PM
<< Home