I have a small lot 1/4 acre. And im at the edge of city limits. But my house is elevated. The lot is half way up a good size mountain. Access is a narrow street. Many empty lots up here. The hillside is terraced. 3 house on my level 4 house below me, 3 houses above me. The 2 house on my terrace level- their roofs are at the same height as my front door. To the east is the catholic cemetary. Up atop a tall hill. Hidden from view by denae fir & pine. To the west of me is empty lots and no road access. To the south lay the "mountain" and the top terrace of homes. The national forest starts where those land owners property line ends. And west of the home directly above me. Are empty lots without road access- so the forest has encroached to become his western neighbor and my western neighbor. Directly north of me is the catholic church and a normal subdivision. Houses built close together. Cars parked on the streets etc. that elevation is about 800' below me. So really all I see is tree tops and a church roof.
It has the feel of being remote. But its not. Interstate 90 is about a mile away. At night you can see the headlights. When the wind is blowing this way- you can hear the traffic.

Still. The elk & deer graze the cemetary and regularly come down my driveway- through my backyard on their way back up into the drainage & forest. Only my front yard is fenced- for my dogs. The backyard has a drive through shop. A concrete pad past the shop. The forest encroaches all around that pad- creeps in on the back wall of the shop. In summer. The critters like to lay down on the cool concrete. Its a gentle slope up the hill to the drainage. That is the 2 vacant lots west of me. Thats where ive cleared the brush and encouraged a small meadow. Have a couple game cams in there. Out on the far edge, under some native maples. I keep a salt lick out on a stump. Some seed feeders up in the trees. The meadow grows in with fireweed, wild sweet pea & deer clover.

When I found this house back in 2012. I knew instantly this was the right land for me.

I mentioned im on the edge of city limits. Its right at the edge of Wardner & Kellogg. A pair of towns that butt up against eachother. The Original name of the town- no lie- Jackass Idaho.
Legend has it. An old prospector William Kellogg was leading his mule up the drainage, rhe mule stumbled & kicked over a gold nugget. That began the gold rush- it became more silver minning- back in the mid 1850's. That drainage is the valley between kellogg peak & Wardner peak. One of the upper channels in that drainage is the one I described in the above paragraph.

Down bellow me. Where that subdivision lies. That was once a marshland/ meadow about 500' above the valley floor. A depression era reclamation project. Milo Creek watershed district- filled in the marsh- (now the subdivision) and created an underground viaduct that is part of the water districts water supply. When the spring melt comes. You can hear the water rumbling through the system. Its pretty cool. Sounds like a huge waterfall. My house was built around the same time the milo creek project was finishing-1934. Before the milo creek project. The road below- that leads up to my section of the neighborhood- it was Milo Creek. It emptied the drainages out of the narrow valley between the 2 aforementioned peaks. Bill Kelloggs Jackass kicked over that nugget on a hillside above Milo Creek. Nobody living can tell you anymore where that nugget was found. Probably it was in my front yard- i just got here 160 years too late. Lol✌️