In the late afternoon sun, I sat on a flat, black granite boulder and gazed over the rolling plains of the South Park Basin, straining my ears for any sound. With the wind completely still and no birds in the ponderosas, all I heard was a slight ringing in my ears. Finally, after months of enduring the city life, I finally broke away to stay at a family friend’s cabin for a few days, where I could enjoy hours and hours of pure, unadulterated silence. 

One would think that after all of the bitching I’d done about the city life and commuting to downtown Denver for university, I’d been fully relaxed and filled with joy at Eddy’s cabin. In some ways, I certainly was. However, for some reason, there was a nagging feeling of dread in the back of my mind the whole time I was up there; the dreadful, almost nauseating feeling of worry about the future. 

So, as I sat on that black granite boulder, staring over the western landscape bathed in golden, evening light, that nagging dread floated to the surface. And with it, came the shouting thought, “You’ll never make it!”

Where on God’s green earth did that come from?!

Well, the answer is simple: earlier that day, while waiting outside with Toby for my grandparents to finish browsing a store in Cripple Creek, I found myself scrolling through Zillow, checking out the cabins and land lots surrounding Eddy’s cabin. 

In the early 1990s, Eddy’s wife bought the land their cabin sits on for $1000 an acre. Every year, the taxes cost less than $100. In 2001, it cost them about $40,000 to build the cabin,  connect it to the grid, and dig a well. 24 years later, Eddy’s two bedroom, one bathroom cabin thirty minutes from the nearest township (if you fly down the dirt roads and cow trails) is worth over $400,000, and Eddy pays almost $2,000 in taxes per year. Every property I scrolled through on my phone reflected that exact price. 

Meanwhile, I’m almost 24 years old with less than $200 to my name. I’m going to university, pursuing a degree with a median income of $60,000 for a Master’s degree, and $70,000 if I bust my ass for a PhD. If you take out taxes, my degree offers a net pay between $46,000 and $52,000 a year. I’d have to save all of my money for almost ten years to afford Eddy’s place at such prices. 

Simply put, the math ain’t mathin’! 

And that’s assuming I get a job, at all. Let alone get into graduate school and succeed.