HOW TO BARTER FOR EVERYTHING

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You can buy vigas at wood yards in town, or you can do things the hard way and cut them down yourself. We did it the hard way, but we bartered for the person to run the chain saw and fell the trees exactly where she called it on the forest floor. My friend Jackie, an ornery, independent woman who learned her timbering skills working for the Forest Service and on her own 30 acres, cut us 40 vigas (20 for us, 20 for Tom) in two exhausting, all-day trips to the cutting site on the far side of the mountains. In return, Mark and I spent two weekends helping her tear down a mountain cabin she had bid on (its 99-year forest lease had expired) for material for the house she was building. She even gave us half of the oak flooring as a bonus.

The acquisition of all these house-building skills was leading up to the granddaddy of all trades—the birth of our number one son. We really didn't need a complication of that magnitude in the midst of building a house, but I wasn't getting any younger. Having a kid also meant I couldn't work as much on the house and for a living (I worked as a seasonal employee of the Forest Service as fire lookout and patrol), but common-sense considerations such as these don't necessarily stop anyone from having babies. I hooked up with a maternity center, where midwives supervised my prenatal care, and where I planned to have the baby when the time came. Fortunately, one of the doctors who supported the maternity center by being on call for hospital deliveries was a friend of ours. I'd gone to college with his wife, and Mark and I used to baby-sit their kids at their house in Albuquerque. When I ended up in the hospital with a Cesarean section, my doctor friend, who'd already been up all night with other screaming mothers, accepted repairs on his house for the safe delivery of our son, Jakob. I only wish the hospital had been so kind.

We eventually moved into our house in Placitas and found the time to acquire additional skills for barter. Jackie, my tree-felling friend, had been leading hikes in the Sandia Mountains for the continuing education program at the local university. When her full-time job with the Forest Service prevented her from offering the hikes anymore, she turned them over to me. After a few years I began teaching cross-country ski classes as well. I met all kinds of people in my classes and bartered with them for their services—massages from Rose, baby-sitting from Carol (Max, our second son, had come along by then), and a hernia operation for Mark (that was two year's worth of hikes and ski trips with the doctor and his wife).

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