My mom created just such a corner in a sleepy little town in the far reaches of North Idaho. Stop in on a normal Saturday and you’ll find dozens of visitors, each with the same reaction upon stepping through the small wooden door into the cozy, warm room: mouths open, eyes pan slowly, side to side and floor to ceiling.

“Wooow… can you believe this?”

Shelves are neatly packed with bolts of colorful patterned fabrics. Antique wooden cabinets showcase fine Delft china. There are sturdy old-fashioned toys, bins of specialty hard candies, books and cards and calligraphy supplies, needlepoint, embroidery, appliqué, quilting, sewing, watercolor, basket making, canning, and housewares.

A smorgasbord (here’s a short video) of color and texture, old and new, simple and luxurious, rustic and refined.

There’s something for nearly everyone. But my mom tells me it resonates particularly well with a new generation of moms who want to sew for their little ones, and who are rediscovering Grandma’s hobbies.

She doesn’t advertise. They tell each other.

And the farther you walk through the space, the more layers you discover. At the heart, you’ll find my mom behind the counter cutting fabric for a customer - that chatter of the metal scissor blades opening and closing is one of my favorite sounds on earth.

At the back, you may find my Grandma Jan carefully threading yarn through the heddle of one of the huge wooden Swedish draw looms, perhaps teaching a class. Behind her, the entire wall is cross-hatched with dark wooden cubbies, each cradling a stack of richly-hued yarn spools, making one large mosaic.

The store is called Gathered.

Think of it as a three-dimensional reflection of my mom’s passions and curiosities. Over the past few years, she and my dad have travelled all over the world, visiting friends and helping serve our church. Everywhere she goes, she collects - ideas, but also inventory. You’ll find things from Germany, Wales, South Africa, Sweden, Argentina, and beyond.

When we first moved to town, the building (which sits at the main intersection) was known as The Kozy Korner. It was an eye sore. Stucco smeared across the walls and painted purple, a sagging roof. Inside, drop ceilings grimy from decades of what you’d expect in a greasy small-town diner, and a maze of dark, creepy hallways.

We bought it for $110,000.

The best-located piece of real estate in a town hardly anyone paid attention to.

In just a few months, we stripped the interior, laid a new wood floor and exposed the beautiful timber roof trusses, and added bathrooms. The exterior got a major overhaul as well. Like most of the projects, we did almost all the work ourselves, saving a lot of money and making creative choices as we went.

We didn’t set out to build a detour, but a destination.

Doing something like this as an island unto itself would probably be financially irresponsible, but Gathered is no island.

It is only one piece of a whole ecosystem of old buildings our family and community have restored over many years: the 1920s Ford garage turned bakery and creamery, the old train depot turned boutique hotel, the mercantile turned butcher shop and second-story offices. If folks have to make a drive, you better make it worth it. But the remoteness is part of the appeal, the mystique of creating “hidden gems.” It took years of work and saving, one project making the next a little more possible.

I haven’t lived in Deary for seven years now, but the ten years I did were deeply formative - and endearing. It’s my second home (maybe still my first?).

If you visit, not only will you meet the places, but the people who’ve restored them and who love them.

Here’s to creating more hidden gems in places you wouldn’t expect, to spreading joy, bringing back rural commerce, and building vibrant community.

How many other ugly old buildings are still waiting patiently in your town?

—isaac

Some of the most marvelous days of my childhood began in the sun-drenched plum-colored kitchen of a four-story home nestled at the base of the West Elk Mountains. By the time we moseyed down the creaking wooden staircase - the same stairs my dad descended from his third-story bedroom each morning when he was a kid - the grandparents were already halfway through their day it seemed.

Grandma Debbie saw me first, a cheery smile across her tan face. “Good morning, sweetie! Did you sleep OK?”

Beyond her at the stove stood Papa Lynn, spearing sizzling strips of bacon with a fork, squinting through a plume of smoke ascending to fill the room. Toasty rays of Colorado sun streamed in through the row of windows panoramically framing the mountains.

“Well good morning Isaac. I wonder if there’s still time to go flying today? We’re cutting it close. I thought maybe you’d decided to sleep till dinnertime. Come on, grab a plate. Waffles are ready.”

The raucous sound to be expected of an army of children echoed and shook all through the vast house. Far above us in the distant reaches of the fourth story, several of my older brothers exercised their liberties with foosball, pool, and baskets of games, trinkets, and model airplanes filling the attic, all exactly as they were in the 70s when my dad and uncle were little boys. By the time the breakfast rotation was over, I was pacing back and forth impatiently, ready to get outside.

If this grand house was a world of its own, the landscape it sat within was an entire universe of treasure and adventure. Trails, four-wheelers, the thin black strip of runway, and three massive airplane hangars at the end of it, packed tight with everything a kid could dream of: bright orange railroad speeders (track inspector vehicles), an old army Willys Jeep, antique cars and family memorabilia, gliders and planes, homemade dirt bikes, and Papa Lynn’s pride and joy: two vintage bi-planes - a 1943 Stearman PT17 and a 1939 Staggerwing “S” model, both of which he meticulously rebuilt and which he takes into the air on special occasions.

Colorado is known for its colorful landscapes and characters, and my grandfather, Lynn French, is one of them. Now well into his eighties, he still carries the youthful grin of a child, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. His tousled strawberry blond hair seems to glow in the mile-high sun. Like so many young adventure-seekers in the 60s, he left behind a normal childhood in Illinois, and made his way west. He taught skiing in Crested Butte in the winters and worked in a coal mine in the summers, paid his way through law school in Denver, before settling down in the Gunnison area in the 70s.

To the uninitiated, his sharp wit and dangerous knack for teasing can be polarizing. Everywhere he goes, he provides a generous and effortless stream of dry, humorous remarks which appear to be completely innocent. To Papa Lynn, teasing is a language of affection - and sometimes criticism. Those who know him well can discern the difference, and we increasingly cherish this unique gift in a world oftentimes superficial and bland.

I guess it’s contagious. Those who know me and my brothers well would suddenly understand we come by it honestly - if only they could meet Papa Lynn. (Actually, he’s typically on his best behavior during first encounters. We’ve learned this the awkward way after warning friends what to expect, trying to explain his endearing ways in advance, only to be left shaking our heads and smiling when they tell us after meeting him: “Your grandpa is the sweetest, most charming, gracious guy I’ve ever met! What was all that about?”).

When my dad was five, Papa Lynn bought this chunk of bare land just outside the tiny ranching community of Crawford. A lifelong and enthusiastic private pilot, he carved a long runway down the lush alfalfa field, which ends abruptly at the edge of the Smith Fork Canyon. Today, the runway is lined with homes and hangars owned and occupied by mostly retired pilots, for whom flying is now a hobby.

Between his rural law practice and his duties as county judge, he taught both my dad and Uncle Wes to fly before they learned to drive. Uncle Wes, whom we idolized as children and are still deeply fond of, went on to fly F-15s in the Air Force.

My dad took a different path, married at eighteen, and became a plumber. Raising and homeschooling ten children with my mom, and managing a small business and homestead, he gave up flying for a few decades but picked it back up when we moved to Idaho.

A few of my brothers Papa Lynn also taught to fly. In fact, Gabe has an airstrip and a hangar at his house in Idaho, and shares a small plane with my dad.

I’ve long carried a dream to fly, but life has a way of forcing too many important decisions that take your time and attention all at once when you’re young. One day, though. The dream, of course, was born during those long warm days spent in Crawford, usually one week a year, or sometimes every other year whenever my parents could afford to get away. Flying, cherry picking, jeeping and camping in the mountains. For a kid from Texas, those trips to Colorado were like visiting a wonderland.

(My childhood friend Noah - who also loves flying and adventures of many varieties - once told us that, based on my detailed descriptions to him as a kid, he thought my grandpa’s place in Crawford must literally be heaven on earth.)

But there was another very different wonderland, twenty-five hundred miles east, that I came to love for much the same reason.

The edge of Branch Lake

A little white summer cottage in Maine, in the middle of a gently-rolling meadow at the edge of Branch Lake, forty-five minutes inland from Acadia National Park. This house is much smaller, looks entirely different in shape and style, but carries the same quirky qualities as the one in Colorado. It’s full of character you could say, just like its owner. And running right through the middle of that meadow is… a runway - which also serves as a driveway. Papa Lynn believes in having multiple ways to access wherever he lives or spends time.

My first experience with Maine was also my first commercial flight, and it was a memorable one. After more than a dozen delays in Dallas, we finally took off around midnight and touched down in Boston just as the sky turned pink. This was a year or so before GPS and smartphones, and my mom and I spent six hours hopelessly tangled in Boston’s maze of streets, stopping a couple times for directions from locals, only to be yelled at in a furious accent that sounded as alien to my naive southern ears as any foreign language. Somehow, we finally found I-95 north and escaped into the glorious summer countryside of New England, stopping for a snack in Portsmouth, New Hampshire - a town famous to us from one of our favorite books, The Ox-Cart Man - before continuing north.

The northeastern late-afternoon light bathed that grassy meadow in a magical aura when we finally pulled into the runway/driveway. Papa Lynn and Grandma Debbie welcomed us warmly with hugs, laughter - and of course a little teasing about the delay, which Grandma Debbie chided him for.

Thus began my love affair with Maine - and all of New England. Watching the red ball of sun peek above the Atlantic from the top of Cadillac Mountain, kayaking and sailing in the bays, eating fish and chips at The Chart Room, picnicking with cousins, getting lost in hordes of tourists in Bar Harbor with ice cream cones dripping from our hands, climbing over the rocks above the lapping waves at Bass Harbor Light in the glow of sunset, and collecting enough painting material to keep my ravenous appetite occupied for several years.

Years later my love grew even more when I first experienced autumn in that wonderful world all of its own. Papa Lynn generously offered Helen and me the little white cottage for our honeymoon, which we readily accepted. Each day we watched the trees adjust one or sometimes three shades brighter, until their leaves shimmered like flames ignited by the October sun. We explored the charming coastal towns of Belfast, Rockport, and Camden, hiked Acadia, and spent the rainy days cuddled up by the woodstove. The wide picture window in the cozy wood-paneled living room frames the long meadow rolling down to the edge of the trees and lake beyond like a Hudson River School masterpiece. Oh yes, and we paddled in the glassy water of a few late afternoons, surrounded by the nearly perfect reflections of maples, birch, oaks, and huge chunks of granite.

Worlds of wonder

In my six-year-old imagination and my twenty-nine-year-old memory alike, Papa Lynn creates worlds of wonder wherever he goes.

Crisp, pine-laced air, sunbaked juniper, and mountain wildflowers. Valley views toward Needle Rock and Lands End Peak. Summer storms bruising the sky before giving way to the bronze light of late afternoon.

Blinding sun sparkles, the briny smell of ocean, and wild blueberries carpeting the meadow enveloping the little white cottage. Winding roads cut like tunnels through groves of hardwood, leading to small harbors crowded with lobster boats.

And in both, airplanes, hangars full of old artifacts and machines that move, and long runways to land, take off, or take an evening walk. The little things, too. Case upon case of seltzer water and orange soda squeezed into old fridges, reading glasses on every surface (never more than an arm’s length away), and always a beloved, reclusive cat. Magdalena, Keekus, Pickles, Tequila (the first), and now Tequila (the second) - he has a complicated relationship with the current batch of great-grandchildren.

To Papa Lynn I owe an immeasurable amount - including my existence - and I love him dearly. Both of his worlds have helped make me. As an adult, some part of every place I’ve helped make began in them.

On our journey home from three months in Mexico in a few weeks, we plan to go through Colorado, to visit the big home at the edge of the runway of the Crawford Airport. Papa Lynn hasn’t been feeling well, and we’re overdue a visit. I can’t wait to spend a couple days with him and Grandma Debbie, maybe take the boys up in the air if he’s up to it, and run up and down the creaking wooden staircase, just like I did when I was a little boy.

This time, the little blond-headed boys shaking the house are my own.

—isaac

“How do I start?” “Where do I begin?”

Some version of that question has come to me too many times to count over the past year or two.

I have plenty to say about building a nature hotel - I’ve been teaching free workshops on this every ~week for the past year or so (those will likely end soon, btw, in case you’ve been meaning to attend one).

But that’s only one dimension of the question. I believe people are hungering for beauty in every part of their lives - their work, their hobbies, their homes, their neighborhoods, their families - and though I certainly do NOT have it all figured out, I have a deep longing to help answer that.

There are things about what these projects have really cost - including mistakes I’ve made - that I haven’t felt ready to share, but I’m beginning to believe they’re an important part of whatever I have to say.

An incredible series of doors has opened that I wasn’t even knocking on. And after a lot of prayer and consideration, I’ve made the decision:

I’m writing a book.

This might be the hardest project I’ve ever taken on, and I’m asking for your help. If you’ve followed any of the projects, places, mistakes, ideas, or stories I’ve shared over the past few years, what would you want to know that hasn’t been addressed? What would actually help you make something beautiful of your own?

I will read every response. Nothing is off limits.

Thank you so much,

Isaac

P.S. I have one sponsor slot opening up in my newsletter which reaches 66,000 highly-engaged readers every single week. For brands interested in reaching this audience, get in touch by responding to this email.

A bunch of farmers and artists, bakers and musicians, fresh sourdough and ripe fruit, espresso, old buildings, and the marvelous chaos of people bumping into one another. Oh, and plenty of noisy, messy, wonderful children.

Art, commerce, and community, all in one place.

What’s not to love?

But since moving to Texas seven years ago, I’ve hardly been to a farmers’ market. I’m sorry, no offense, but Waco’s version is no match for the one I grew up going to and selling at - in a sleepy town roughly a tenth the size of Waco up in the Idaho panhandle. The college town of Moscow.

I miss those summer and fall Saturdays between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. I spent Monday through Friday gutting it out on construction job sites, dreaming about Saturday morning, when I’d get up at five-thirty and pack for market.

Once a week May through October, the market takes over leafy main street for several blocks. Friendship Square sits at the center, with kids splashing in water fountains, parents sitting on shaded benches. A few hundred locals pull wagons, push strollers, and ride bicycles from the neighborhoods around town down the crowded car-free street.

Beyond the fond memories, I owe a lot to that street for an education in making things and selling them.

cheese, popsicles, soda

I was fourteen when my mom and I started making brie, camembert, and yogurt with leftover milk from our beloved first jersey cow Bluebell, and we needed an outlet. That first year we drove all over the place, selling wherever we could get a foot in the door. Moscow main street on Saturday mornings, Coeur d’ Alene on Wednesday evenings (a 2-hour drive north), Hayden every other Saturday I think it was, and the indoor winter market at the 1912 Center.

With the encouragement of locals consistently buying our table clean, we expanded our experiments to include one-year-aged Gruyère, cloth-bound cheddar, and my one and only original hit: Orchard Blue. Every day for months, I’d wash each wheel with our own apple cider, pressed from fruit picked a stone’s throw from the “creamery” shed next to our home. Slowly, the wheels turned a delicious amber hue, and by the next spring the inside was pale golden, crumbly and lusciously creamy from Bluebell’s rich milk. The flavor was wonderfully complicated, classic jazzy blue notes mixing with a punch of cider reminding you of September’s harvest and the change of the seasons.

Our faithful customers bought us out Saturday after Saturday.

Then came the popsicles, followed by the soda company. Home-brewed root beer and citrus soda sold from an antique galvanized wash tub filled with ice. The details of that enterprise, including a bit about the explosions we (and a handful of customers) endured, were documented in this short piece.

Not every venture survived, but a few bucks of profit were put in my pocket, and each added a brick to my entrepreneurial education.

When I think back on those days, I have to smile.

I also have a lump in my throat remembering my friend Nels.

For years, he occupied the tent next to ours. His sourdough was out of this world: fresh and tart, moist and chewy. The almond croissants, melting immediately upon entry to the mouth, were a close second. We’d joke with each other between customers and talk culture, politics, religion, and food each week. At the end of the market we’d always barter bread for cheese, cheese for bread. It was a match meant to be.

Nels passed away from cancer a little while after I stopped going to farmers market. He made my life - and all who knew him - richer.

I miss him, and I miss that place.

I wish I could taste a little bit of that here in the middle of this long trip to the desert.

And I did.

the mennonite, mexican market

Saturday morning, we awoke to beautiful weather. Helen suggested we take the boys to the farmers’ market - which I had no idea existed before this suggestion.

A little while later, we pulled off the crowded, industrial main road known as “the corridor” onto a side street, then into a field at the edge of an apple orchard, the trees loaded with fruit only a couple weeks from picking. I was startled by the number of cars parked.

In this stage of parenthood, I often forget that it takes about three times longer to fully unload the crew than I seem to remember, so each time I wander off holding Lucas’ hand, then realize we’re alone and run back to the car to check on progress.

Once logistics had been handled, we all walked together towards the small river. A long arched bridge crosses it, emptying you right into the market, set up in the grass under huge trees. I planned to spend a few minutes there, getting the kids some fresh air.

Just when we got to the good stuff, Benjamin decided it was time to nurse, so he took Helen back to the car for a while.

That left Lucas and Ezra with me, and like everywhere else we go these days, I got to see the market a bit from their eyes. They shrieked and laughed and begged and grabbed nearly everywhere we went. Handmade swings, bouncy balls, elote cups, grape juice and nuts. Mucho pesos were spent.

I even found a sourdough baker. Fresh and tart, moist and chewy. Nels would’ve approved of her crumb. (Of course he would, he was always lifting others up).

After an hour which felt like fifteen minutes, we were finally forced to leave (a price must be paid when nap times are ignored), two thirds of our crew screaming as we hauled bags of fresh sourdough, vegetables, cut flowers, and quite a few trinkets, along with three little boys and a stroller and a diaper bag and some peach tea back over the bridge to the car.

Just when I think I’ve figured out this unique Mennonite / Mexican culture, I’m humbled.

Farmers and artists, bakers and musicians, fresh sourdough and ripe fruit, espresso, old buildings - or just grass and trees - and the beautiful chaos of people bumping into one another.

Oh, and plenty of noisy, messy, wonderful children.

—isaac

Whenever I wasn’t on a job site, I was usually at our community coffee shop, designing buildings one step ahead of the crew, chasing down bank loans, and ordering, ordering, and ordering some more materials.

There were a handful of regulars, and one was a quiet young man about my age, his headphones on, head down in his laptop. I could tell he was on a mission.

Then came the curveball.

Right after we opened live oak lake, Airbnb suspended us without warning. Overnight, I had to learn how to promote the business myself, so I got on Instagram.

That’s when I started seeing that young man’s videos online.

His music sounded unlike anything else out there, and I loved it. But even more interesting was the way he shared it. Every video felt so fresh, humble, joyful. He was bypassing the labels and building a direct connection with people.

Live Oak Lake took off on Instagram, and we hardly needed airbnb anymore. His music took off even more. A lot more.

His name is Forrest Frank. One of the biggest touring artists in the world today. His testimony and music have profoundly influenced me.

So when the most recent tour was announced in December, I immediately bought tickets, knowing they’d go fast. As life goes, we ended up here in Mexico. I decided to give mine away, so I made a video. Several hundred people wrote in with stories. Picking was extremely hard (you can read some of them here). I wish I had a hundred more.

A few days ago, it was time to pick, and my first call was to a woman named Bernadette. She’d nominated a boy named William, the best - and only - friend of her late son, Zach, who’d battled cancer for four years after being diagnosed at five years old.

William had faithfully prayed over him, sat with him, even called him his brother.

She was overjoyed. I sent her three tickets for William and his parents.

Then I called Michelle, who’d sent in another of my favorite entries, and gave her a ticket for her nephew, who’d been through a lot this past year.

With one ticket remaining, I called Jenny.

She’d nominated her eight-year-old son, who’d recently lost his grandpa, watched his mom undergo a hard surgery, and still found ways to care about and pray for the people around him.

I told her about the other children I’d given tickets to and explained I only had one left. My heart sank a little, knowing he probably couldn’t go unless his parents could afford the outrageous resale prices for tickets of their own.

She went quiet.

Then she asked, “Did you just talk to Bernadette?”

Jenny was William’s mother.

Out of nearly four hundred entries, I had picked the same boy twice, completely unaware.

Two nights ago, at the final stop of a sold-out tour, Jenny sent me a few clips of William worshipping God, hands in the air, alongside his mom and dad, and 40,000 others. Makes me wanna cry.

I’m so glad Zach’s mom put his name down.

—isaac

The snow fell silently one Saturday afternoon in December, nothing to do but keep the wood stove stoked. Then my dad’s phone rang.

On the other end was our neighbor Loyal, a ninety-year-old farmer with a slight frame, snowy white hair, and icy blue eyes. He lived alone on several hundred acres he’d been farming for more than fifty years.

One of his barns was threatening to collapse under the snow. Could one of us come help? Without a second thought, my dad suited up and drove over.

A few hours later, the roof cleared, he noticed another structure nearby: a long, open-sided shed sheltering something peculiar - a battered, sixty-one foot wooden rail car, only barely recognizable to the discerning eye.

My grandpa Lynn is a devoted student of trains, and my dad had grown up around them. He’s always possessed a keen interest in history and a sharp recognition of opportunity in things others might dismiss.

As he approached, history didn’t greet him. The smell did. Twenty feral cats had turned the dilapidated car into their kingdom.

He stepped inside, plugged his nose, and slowly took it all in. The interior wasn’t much better. But half an hour later, he found the clue. In the gable at the end of the passenger section, beside the broken clerestory windows, faint paint flakes of three numbers:

3 0 6

My dad had read the local train histories. He knew what this was. This was Washington, Idaho & Montana Railway Car 306.

Everyone else had assumed it had been destroyed. Someone had even claimed they’d seen it cut in two and buried half a century prior.

But it was still alive, in hiding - just a few miles from our home.

After some digging, we found a photograph taken the day the car rolled out of the American Car & Foundry Company in St. Charles, Missouri, 1906. The WI&M had purchased Car 306 new. It was what railroad men called a combination car, built to carry passengers, freight, and mail at the same time.

In those days, timber was the heartbeat of the region’s economy, the reason this area was settled in the first place. Railroads were the arteries, carrying timber out and bringing workers, families, food and supplies in.

When the railroad pulled up its tracks in the 1950s, the previous owner of Loyal’s farm bought it for scrap and somehow managed to drag it ten miles to his property, using it to store grain and feed hay to his cattle.

Trying to contain his excitement, my dad offered to get it off the farmer’s hands on the spot. Loyal seemed a little perplexed that anyone would want such an enormous, impractical eyesore. But he was grateful for the snow-shoveling help.

They shook hands, and my dad wrote a check for the asking price: $3,000.

It took two years and more than a few dead ends to find someone with the guts to attempt to move it.

I was in Texas when they began inching Car 306 out from beneath the rickety shed that had protected it for half a century. On a cold and drizzly day in February 2020, a semi truck (nearly as old as the train car) hooked onto the trailer beneath it and began chugging.

All 110,000 pounds of steel and wood groaned under the strain, then slowly, began to move. Its long nap had finally ended.

For three hours, Car 306 crawled behind the truck along icy, winding backcountry roads. One wrong move or broken beam could have ended the entire dream. On the final climb up the slippery hill on our property, a bulldozer pulled from the front to give that extra oomph the truck needed. And then, at the crest of the hill tucked into the edge of the trees, Car 306 completed its final journey.

But its new life had just begun.

My brothers and I had quietly suspected - some perhaps even secretly hoped (hi Gabe:) - that the move would never actually happen. Now it was all there, sitting on our place. It was time to go all-in.

Within weeks, the world shut down.

My friend Stephen found himself out of work, and I was ready for an adventure. We packed our bags and headed north, camping along the way at Grand Canyon and Zion, both nearly empty as lockdowns swept the country.

After driving through the final night, I slipped through the back door of my parents’ home in Idaho. My mom had no idea I was coming home. I’d been away in Texas for a long season, and the surprise was glorious.

Then my dad drove me over to see the car. I confess that I developed an immediate and rather sour attitude. It was wet and bone-chillingly cold, the car was in the middle of nowhere, a 20-minute drive from our warm house, and its condition appeared less than attractive. Part of me wanted to turn right around.

But another part of me knew better.

Beneath the decay, there was a sense of possibility I don’t think I’d yet experienced.

My brothers had already done one of the most important jobs, timber-framing a roof to get the fragile car out of the inclement weather. I’d sketched the structure back in Texas, borrowing its shape from traditional depot architecture.

For the next six weeks, I worked on Car 306 night and day. It started to feel like an old friend.

As the snowy fields thawed into mud and then began showing the first shoots of green, we scraped and sanded every inch of the car, inside and out. I used epoxy to fill the rotten spots in the window sills, but miraculously almost all the wood was salvageable. That shed roof had saved its life.

A few weeks later, we painted her a rich forest-green.

We carefully refinished each surface, removed the windows, rebuilt the frames, and installed new glass. I soaked the brass hardware in acid and scrubbed it until it shone again.

My dad and brothers ran new plumbing and wiring. Our friend Joe hand-forged a copper chandelier to match the one visible in the original photographs. Gabe pulled strings with the small construction business so we could run materials on credit cards and a small operating line of credit.

My favorite detail was hand-painting the original gold lettering back on, placing every letter and number exactly where it had appeared 114 years earlier.

Slowly, the old combination car took on a new combination.

The mail compartment became the master bedroom.

The cargo area became a luxurious bathroom.

The passenger section became a reading lounge, complete with a gas-powered potbelly stove and a small kitchenette designed to disappear into the original woodwork.

My mom handpicked antique pieces from the local area and furnished every square foot in her warm, old-fashioned style.

Today, you can settle into one of the plush chairs with a book and stare out through the row of windows at miles of rolling hills and pine trees, just as passengers did when this car rode the rails a hundred years ago.

Five months after we began, Car 306 was finished. We’d spent $147,000 and brought every detail back to life.

We listed it on Airbnb, and bookings began pouring in from all around the country.

About a month later, another call came.

Just a few miles away in Deary (population 550), the old train depot came up for sale - the very one this car would have stopped at countless times. Someone had wrapped it in vinyl siding and a metal roof probably sometime in the 70s. Like the shed over the train car, the ugliness had preserved it.

We found a way to buy and restore it too, turning it into a two-unit stay with a train lounge and library for guests.

But there’s one last piece to the story.

While driving up north one spring day, my dad spotted an old yellow caboose on the side of the road. Of course, he pulled the car over.

The wooden body was badly rotted after decades under the rain and snow, and someone had been using it as a dog kennel. But its steel frame remained intact.

He bought it for $5,000, and we moved it to Deary beside the depot - a piece of cake after Car 306 - and spent a few more months bringing it back to life.

Almost a century after it was scattered, the railroad family was reunited. We’d saved a piece of history - three of them. Looking back, Car 306 was the birth of so much of what I believe is my life’s work: blending art, building, history, hospitality, and storytelling to create places that move people. The best part, though, was how it brought our family together. We’ve always been close, but Car 306 brought out each person’s unique gifts in a special way, and I’ll always remember those precious short months in the middle of a crazy, uncertain time.

And Loyal couldn’t be prouder. In fact, I ran into him at the bakery when I was in Deary a couple months ago, joking with his lifelong friends over coffee, their weekly 7am tradition.

His blue eyes were smiling.

—isaac

P.S. If you want to come experience any of these stays yourself (and get $100 off), you can book here. Our family would be delighted to host you.

P.P.S If you enjoyed this story, I made a 15-minute video on Car 306, with so many rich visuals and restoration details (including a full cost breakdown). I also made a 10-minute video on the depot and caboose.

P.P.P.S. For anyone wondering (I see you:), the cats are all safe. We re-homed them to a warm barn nearby, where they reside to this day.

Five hours of winding, pothole-scarred roads through the Chihuahua desert later, we arrived in Juarez.

I don’t mean to disrespect anyone who calls it home, but I think Juarez is one of the worst places I’ve ever been - a swirl of smog, concrete, noise, and tension permeating everything, even the air.

I’d spent four months preparing for this day. Assembling every document I could think of, double and triple-checking the requirements online, and multiple conversations with Jake and Ahavah, who’d learned the process the hard way.

When their seventh child was born here earlier this year, what should’ve been a routine passport appointment didn’t go as planned. Without any good reason except that their situation seemed too unusual, the consular agent they got suspected they were trying to smuggle a baby that wasn’t theirs out of the country, and so ensued a three-week headache of DNA testing, multiple trips to Juarez for interviews, and even an afternoon spent in jail. Yes, you read that right. Only after our US congressman back in Texas intervened did the embassy let up and finally grant them the passport.

So I wasn’t going to take any chances.

Friday morning, seven o’clock, we left our phones and luggage at the hotel lobby and walked down the street toward the U.S. Consulate General. Jake had explained to me every step of the process in wonderful detail, but I was still unprepared for what I saw.

Thousands of people spilled around the corners of the city block.

Young and old. Parents holding babies, little kids clinging to their legs or holding their hands. Some in wheelchairs, others leaning on walkers. Still plenty of others perfectly healthy and strong. Everyone clutched a worn folder bursting with documents.

Each face carried the same quiet expression: hope mixed with uncertainty.

Because we already had an appointment with the American Citizen Services, we were instructed to cut to the front of the main line. It felt strange threading our way through the crowd, so many reverent eyes following us. Out of thousands of people, we were the only Caucasians I saw. Helen pushed the stroller with our not-even 2-week-old Benjamin sleeping peacefully inside under a thick wrap of blankets, totally oblivious to the world around him.

The crowds, the language barrier, and the chaos of a third-world country private security force made getting inside a bit of a project. But we made it.

An hour or so later, we walked back through the maze of buildings and security, layer by layer. There were smiles on our faces, and a heavy weight had lifted from my shoulders. Benjamin was a confirmed U.S. citizen, his passport on the way.

The officers we met were courteous, efficient, and kind. Perhaps our friends’ bad fortune had smoothed the road for families like us. Their hard-earned advice had certainly made a huge difference.

Outside, the morning was heating up. We picked our way back through the same sea of waiting faces toward our hotel. There were even more of them now.

I had a lot to think about on the drive home.

Turns out most of those people had been waiting years just for an interview. Some have family already in the States, others hoped to be the first in their family to make it. They’re doing it the right way, the slow way, and most will be told no - for a paperwork error, missing document, or an officer having a bad day. Some will come back and try again anyway, and some won’t have the means to. They’ll return to their corner of Mexico - or stay in Juarez.

I was born on the other side of that line. So was Helen. As best I know, Benjamin is the first in any branch of our family for generations to be born outside the United States. His passport only took an hour and a half, and a stroller ride through that sea of longing faces.

But it was enough to renew my gratitude for the imperfect but rare gift of freedom and opportunity I inherited simply by which side of the line I was born on.

Thank you all for your prayers. And thank you God for the good favor we’ve received.

—isaac

Maksim Guseynov, a middle-aged dad with thick glasses and a sturdy build, rose from one of the wooden chairs and bowed politely. His wife Julia stood in the doorway, her tired hands resting on the shoulders of her second youngest son wearing an apron. In one sweet moment she took it all in: Maks, the guests, and the fruit of days spent laboring in the kitchen, months spent saving up to buy ingredients, years spent hoping and dreaming, even when they’d lost nearly everything — including each other.

Maks was smiling too. He greeted the guests in his low, unhurried voice, then prayed for the food. All at once, six Guseynov children appeared through the doorway, sharply dressed, carrying baskets of fresh sourdough and plates of Borsch Perestroika — a deconstructed version of the soup every child of his generation would know intimately, its name borrowed from Gorbachev’s last attempt to save the Soviet Union.

His peers would be happy to never taste the dish again. Maks, however, had chosen to redeem it.

He’d spent ten months perfecting the recipe. This was the story of his childhood, and of the Soviet Union his family fled as religious refugees after the collapse of communism. Every dish that night carried a history lesson inside it. Eastern European food is survival food, and Borsch was born from whatever remained in the cellar long past harvest, sustaining families through long winters.

Years earlier, Maks’ grandfather had walked out on his family. His eldest son, Maks’ father, was six years old. In her greatest hour of need, Maks’ grandmother Valentina made a promise to God: if He’d take care of her children, she’d spend the rest of her life serving Him. Through years of immense hardship and famine, neighbors and friends brought food and help to her door. It was always just enough.

In 1998, when he was nine, Maks and his family — including Valentina — fled the shambles of their homeland for a new home, Sacramento, California. Arriving in America at age sixty-six, Valentina became a masseuse, offering her service to weary working-class families and tired mothers of her community. She charged $10 an hour, and sent every dollar she could to missionaries back in Ukraine. In time, Valentina also found a missionary in Azerbaijan to reach the man and relatives who’d abandoned her years before. She made up her mind at once to send money to support their efforts to help him and his Muslim family. This carried on for years.

All the while, invisible seeds were being sown deep in her grandson. But like a pine cone, they would need fire before they could open.

Shortly after moving to the free world, Maks met Julia, a fellow Ukranian refugee, in church. They were ten and eight at the time, and years later would marry. The wound his grandfather had left, and the undaunted love his grandmother had answered it with, shaped them profoundly. They adopted three parentless children, and had three more of their own. Maks collected and restored vintage items on the side to supplement his sales job salary and make ends meet. Julia nurtured her lifelong love of cooking and used whatever ingredients she had and every meal she prepared as an opportunity to hone her craft.

But life hit them all at once.

Just six months pregnant with their sixth child, Julia suddenly went into labor. Maks rushed her to the hospital, but by the time they arrived she was drifting in and out of consciousness. The doctors performed an emergency procedure and the baby was born, un-breathing. Julia and Isaiah laid five feet apart, being resuscitated on separate operating tables. Maks stood outside the operating room window and prayed fervently as he watched the doctors work on his dying wife and child. Then slowly, Isaiah turned pink and began to breathe. Julia hemorrhaged, and as a last resort, the doctors gave her an emergency transfusion. Her body rejected it, triggering a condition she would battle for years. But she lived. And so did Isaiah.

During this time, Maks had to quit his job to care for his wife and the kids. Their finances already stretched paper thin before all this happened, they found themselves almost entirely dependent on the generosity of others. Friends appeared with meals, money, prayers, and practical help. A month after the birth, mother and son were finally allowed to go home. But just two weeks later, a sheriff deputy knocked on the door and ordered immediate evacuation. The largest wildfire in California’s history — the Caldor blaze — was headed straight towards their small town. The Guseynovs hastily packed a handful of necessities and drove south to family who took them in.

Perhaps the most traumatic incident, however, was yet to come. Two years after the fire, the family was in southern California taking a much needed vacation. Three days into the trip, staying on the fourth floor of an apartment building, Maks suddenly heard his eldest daughter scream from the bedroom with a sound no parent should ever hear. He ran through the door and saw her standing by a busted open window. Their two-year-old son Isaiah had pried through a faulty window stopper. He was gone. Less than a minute later, Maks was downstairs, numb and completely unprepared to face the worst moment of his life.

The boy was seated on his bottom next to a bush, eyes wide, only a minor scrape and nosebleed giving away the fact anything at all had happened. Minutes later, dozens of emergency vehicles and medical personnel swarmed around them. They loaded him into an ambulance and rushed him to a waiting helicopter. Maks and the boy took off headed to San Diego’s best trauma hospital, but twice, due to unusually thick fog, the helicopter had to make emergency landings — the second time for good in a high school football field. They boarded another ambulance the rest of the way to the hospital, where a team was waiting. The fact the boy was even alive was alarming enough, but twenty minutes later, after a full examination, the doctors were dumbfounded. No broken bones, no signs of trauma. Fifty minutes after falling forty-five feet from a window, the boy was cleared and released.

Two hours later he was back on the beach with his siblings, sucking a lollipop.

When they reviewed security camera footage from the building, they found the answer. The boy had fallen directly onto a small, miraculously placed bush, which cushioned, flipped, and landed him upright.

Both parents would carry the weight of that afternoon long after the boy had forgotten all about it. But something else came from it. Maks made his own covenant with God: if he was ever in the position to carry another family through hardship, he would consider it his greatest privilege.

As life steadied, they began to dream. Julia loved fine dining, and Maks loved history and storytelling. They knew they’d never financially survive trying to start a restaurant, but even if they could, it would pull them away from the family they were trying so hard to build. That’s when the idea struck: instead of opening a restaurant, what if they opened their home? Instead of hosting these dinners for their own profit, they would host them for others in need.

Then the world shut down. Like everyone else, Maks had a choice to make: spend his life dying on any number of hills — politics, outrage, fear, tribalism, endless arguments — or simply ask: what has God already placed in front of me?

Then and there, he made up his mind to stop fighting battles he could never win. And so in 2021, A Hill to Dine On was born, messy but breathing.

The Guseynov family has since hosted almost a dozen charity events, including three of their flagship dinners: one French, one Japanese, and their magnum opus to date — the Soviet special.

The dinners are anything but easy. They take months of preparation and planning, and no detail is left to chance. For example, each menu card for the most recent dinner took ninety minutes to hand embroider in the same Ukrainian cross-stitch pattern Valentina’s generation carried out of the Soviet Union — all thirty of them stitched by a church member and her family, on a camping trip.

Last year, a record snow fell the entire week of March leading up to the pre-scheduled Japanese dinner. Maks and his boys shoveled no less than 15,000 pounds of snow from their porch and pathways, managed a 4-day power outage, then shuttled guests thirty miles each way in their trusty Toyota Land Cruiser since the roads were impassable for inexperienced snow drivers and cars. He told me he was lucky to get three hours of sleep a night that week.

Invites are passed friend to friend. No hype or hoopla.

Every member of the family carries a vital role, their unique creative gifts intertwining to present the highest-possible, Michelin-star-worthy menu and service right from their own kitchen. It’s an experience guests would gladly pay hundreds of dollars for. To date, they’ve raised over $100,000 for families going through acute trials, including a child’s heart transplant, exorbitant birth expenses, and treatments for a paralyzed little boy, whose family’s insurance fell short. Maks weaves the needs they’re raising funds for into the historical tidbits he serves with each dish.

—

This spring evening on the back deck, while he tells of his family’s final years in Ukraine — the hunger, uncertainty, border crossings, and hope — the guests savor tender strips of wild salmon he’s seasoned and cold-smoked using a family recipe carefully passed down across two continents and three generations.

The seeds Valentina planted over a lifetime have finally opened.

After the food has been served, the dishes cleared away, and laughter and tears intertwined with rich conversation, stars appear. Maks stands again, his wife and children gathered around him, to thank each guest for their generosity, and for making the journey to be there. Most had arrived strangers, some from thousands of miles away. They are leaving friends.

The candles have burned low, but no one is in a hurry. The children bring out a final course: simple cherry crepes they’ve affectionately called Babushka, Blin — made the day before by none other than 94-year-old Valentina, the woman who started all this, decades ago in Ukraine, with just a vow and the determination to keep it. She still has that bright, unquenchable smile on her face.

Maks tells me that among her beloved community of Ukrainian refugees, she’s a bit of a celebrity. Nearly everyone knows her, and most have received one of her massages. She’s still giving them, and the price hasn’t changed in nearly forty years: ten dollars even.

And every dollar is still sent back to Ukraine — to help those who need it more than she does.

—

Maks and I had followed each other for a couple years without ever speaking. A few weeks ago, I received a message out of the blue with the preview of this little video a guest made from the most recent dinner. I called him up on the spot — the first time we’d ever talked. And there I sat on the deck of The Nook, two days before we would leave our home for three months of mission service in Mexico. For two hours I barely said a word. As the call drew to an end, his words, spoken with the same undaunted radiance of his grandmother, gripped me: “There’s no waste in suffering, if it can become a tool to help someone else. In God’s kingdom, the way up is down.”

P.S. If you enjoyed this piece, I’d deeply appreciate you sharing it with a friend or coworker who might as well. And as always - your direct feedback is welcome and much appreciated. I read every reply.

—

If you’d like to keep up with the Guseynov family, follow Maks, Julia, and the dinners on Instagram. (Helen and I are actively planning to attend one with my parents — hopefully soon!)

All photos courtesy of Maksim Guseynov. Photo credits to Angie Francisco, unless otherwise noted.

What a miracle we have to celebrate this week. A tiny, enormous one. And part of the sweetness of it comes from a tough choice we made a couple months back.

You’ve heard me talk about my friend Benny - host, chef, gardener, tour guide, and one of the kindest, most lovable humans you’ve ever met. He makes everyone feel like you’re his best friend. I met him eleven trips to Mexico ago, in April 2024, on a weekend missions trip I almost didn’t go on.

Helen and I instantly fell in love with the people here, including Benny.

But after a few of these 13-hour drives across the border into the desert with two little restless toddlers strapped into their car seats, I must confess that I began to harbor a bit of reluctance. No one ever forced us to go - we always volunteered because we felt attached to these dear people. But I was battling my own selfishness. I’m just being honest.

Then something shifted in me after our trip here in January, the longest one yet.

My in-laws, who help pastor our church and have led this work in Mexico, felt called to move here to Chihuahua for the summer. When I heard it, I knew we had to go with them. Not because they asked, but because I knew we were needed. I realized how small my sacrifice had actually been - a tiny fraction of what our parents and grandparents gave up when they left comfortable lives to build the place where we were raised. Everything changed after that. I got excited about Mexico.

Then came the bigger decision: where to have the baby.

Helen was due July 10th, right in the middle of the trip. I wanted her to feel completely comfortable, and was ready to bring her back to Texas for a month if that’s what she needed.

Some friends of ours from Texas had a baby here in January. They ran into a bureaucratic nightmare getting the passport sorted, but after multiple attempts they got through it, so we knew it could be done. Our midwife wasn’t an obstacle - Helen’s mom, who delivered both our other boys, told us she’d happily deliver it in Texas or in Mexico, where she’d already be for the summer.

So the decision was ours.

A few days later, Helen came to me with her mind made up. God had given her these verses which settled it deep in her soul:

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you… When you pass through the waters, I will be with you... Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43)

She radiated with confident faith that God had spoken a promise over this birth in Mexico, and we could trust Him. I was already fully on board. It felt like a privilege, not an encumbrance - a step of faith in solidarity with a group of believers rising up like a road in the wilderness, a river in the desert, serving those who so desperately need it.

So this past Saturday - six days before her due date, after spending the night in Benny’s beautifully restored home - Helen began having contractions. She thought they might pass, but just after we climbed into bed to sleep, they kicked into high gear.

When the clock struck 10:48 pm, July 4th, our baby boy was born. He cried immediately - the sweetest sound a parent can hear at birth. Fireworks exploded in the skies of our home country, celebrating her 250th birthday hundreds of miles north, while we celebrated our third son’s first breaths. A wave of gratitude and awe washed over me in that little bedroom in the desert of Mexico.

He was born at home - away from home.

Lucas and Ezra are already deeply in love with their little brother, though Ezra especially has to be restrained for fear that his affection becomes dangerous. I can’t wait to see all three of them one day soon, dressed in matching overalls and boots, just like my older brothers and I were as kids.

We named him Benjamin Wesley.

Wesley, in honor of my Uncle Wes - and the Wesley brothers, whose lives and message helped change the course of Europe and the rest of the world forever.

Benjamin, in honor of my brother Ben - and my dear friend Benny.

—isaac

P.S. Helen is recovering wonderfully, and we’ve already scheduled our appointment with the embassy in Juarez. We appreciate your prayers that everything goes smoothly with the process of obtaining his US passport. I’ll keep you updated.

The desert is coming alive.

We’ve begun a singing ministry while we’re here with our friends Josh & Jessie, along with many other young and old folks, visiting the local nursing and disability homes.

I’ve served in enough of these places to know what awaits when the doors open. Grief, grime, the smell of sickness, and hovering sadness. But on Saturday evening, forty-some young and old smiling faces marched through those doors, ready to sing with all our hearts.

Helen led the music with such a radiant smile - true to her name. With only two weeks till her due date, she’s somehow still mothering two toddlers, leading worship in church, cooking and hosting, teaching English songs and learning German ones, which most of the Mennonites in this region speak. I’m trying to slow her down, but that’s just who she is.

Funny enough, she and I first fell in love singing in hospitals and care homes back in Texas years ago. It’s been a regular mission for young people in our church for years, and I can testify from experience that the mission is as much for us as it is for the residents. I’m still smiling just thinking about the way some of those faces lit up when we began to sing.

We walked through those same doors lighter than we came, but somehow fuller with joy after giving it. As the sun set, our band gathered back at my friend Benny’s place for snacks and games. I took the opportunity to film a quick walkthrough tour of his meticulously restored 103-year-old Mennonite home.

The garden and orchard around it are coming along. He planted just in time for the rain. And while digging the root cellar, he discovered a spring, which he can use for irrigation in the dry months. A timber-framed aquaponic greenhouse and chicken run are next. He’s already been hosting reservation-only dinners from his outdoor kitchen. When you come stay, he’ll cook you his signature grilled Picanha and pineapple, Arrachera tacos, and the freshest fruit and vegetables harvested just steps away, all while hearing the story of Mennonite and Mexican life and history here in Chihuahua.

Keep us in your prayers if you would. We rely on them more than you know.

—isaac

P.S. I’m working on a special story I plan to share with you here next week. It’s about a family who’s working to serve some of the greatest dining experiences I’ve ever seen right from their own back deck - raising more than $100,000 to help struggling families. I think you’re going to like this one…

A few years ago, this couple had lost two of their three children. With just one biological daughter remaining, they decided to adopt. Both adopted girls came from horrific backgrounds, and hearing just a fraction of what they’d gone through - much of which only surfaced months or years after they’d been adopted - melted me.

They came from starkly different places, but neither could communicate or relate to others normally when they were taken in.

One girl had been left in a room by herself most of her first six years. She had a vocabulary of only a few words and mostly grunts. The other had been forced to watch horror films on repeat from infancy. She was living a nightmare when they got her at three years old.

This couple prayed fervently for God’s healing and grace and loved these girls as their very own, in the big ways and the small. They began telling and reading them Bible stories and other books, and slowly, things began to change. Words came, and with them small measures of love and trust. The wonder of little children - imagination, joy and all - gradually came alive. They still have ground to gain, but the girls that sat at our dinner table were not the girls their parents described when they were first brought in.

Then there was music. These parents enrolled the girls in voice and piano lessons, and began singing with them almost religiously. They credit music with playing a key role in the healing. Of course, they couldn’t help but give glory to God for all of it, and told us how after one particular prayer, prayed together with their grandparents, nothing had been the same since.

I sat there listening, amazed at how the smallest and simplest things we take for granted can be so life-changing. Some miracles happen immediately, and some happen one bedtime story at a time.

I realized it doesn’t matter if our mission field is a foreign country, a neighborhood, or just a living room. There is brokenness, dysfunction, and suffering hiding in plain sight, no matter where you are this side of heaven. And there is healing, too. In bedtime stories, fervent prayers, and at dinner tables.

I’m so grateful my parents never failed to invest their time and attention into raising and loving us. Those kids’ books we read every night were teaching us much more than how to read. They taught us how to imagine, how to hope, and how to see the world around us. But perhaps more than anything, they taught us that we were loved, and that our parents cared.

—isaac

Saturday evening, after two tiring days on the road, we pulled into the gravel yard of a plain concrete house surrounded by concrete fence and tall evergreens, a few miles north of Cuauhtémoc, Mexico. I hadn’t felt what it’s like to move into a new home since Helen and I returned from our honeymoon nearly six years ago. That night, we wheeled a couple suitcases down our walk to the freshly-painted red door with a hand-written sign taped to it reading, “Welcome Home!” Our friends had renovated the small house, moved all our gifts and furniture in, and set it all up. I’ll never forget that feeling, like our life had just begun.

There’s something about a new home.

We stretched our sore legs, unbuckled our two boys, and made our way inside. Our friends David & Lisa had left a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a little candle burning brightly on the table. After surveying the rooms—one purple, one blue, and one cream—we went back to start unloading our belongings. A bit more luggage than that October night six years ago, yes.

After unloading everything, we got back in the car (much to Ezra’s dismay) and drove half an hour north to our friends’ Jake & Ahavah’s. They invited us into their cozy home for dinner. The boys had reached their car seat survival range, and their cramped legs ran free in the huge yard outside with their friends.

I wanted to stay up all night rearranging furniture and unpacking everything, but we knew we had to be up at 7:00 the following morning to prepare and drive to church, half an hour away. The service was wonderful, full of faith, testimony, worship, and the Word. Our friends Benny & Erna invited us to lunch at their home with another couple we know, John & Amelia. Benny is the one who restored the 100-year-old home I told you about last year. He just finished it and is now putting the garden in. Every little detail has been perfectly restored—he even saved some of the original mud bricks and left them exposed behind glass in one of the wall cavities. I’ll make a video for you soon.

Later in the afternoon, we resumed the process of making the house our own. Helen’s 36-weeks-pregnant nesting instincts are strong, and together we unpacked the suitcases, rearranged the furniture, and she made our room beautiful. We finally dropped into bed a little before midnight, just as the rain began steadily, lasting nearly all night.

I walked outside this morning to the gravel yard several inches deep in water. This much rain in the desert is rare this early in the season. After family time together, Helen and I ran several errands, and later in the afternoon, drove to the city to grocery shop. As I write this, we just finished stocking the kitchen. My wallet is significantly lighter than it was this morning.

But we are ready now—ready for our baby, ready to start cooking meals, ready to have people over and show hospitality. We’re ready to call it home, and welcome others in. That’s a great feeling.

Lucas & Ezra are pleased as ever with their new surroundings. Lucas spends much of his day riding his little red strider back and forth through the house down the slick gray tiles. I’m glad I thought to bring it. Ezra spends much of his day bent over in his baggy overalls driving everything from toy tractors to packing boxes and wheeled luggage down the hallways, singing “beep-beep” and distributing small toys wherever he goes. Between the two motorists, we’ve had a few traffic incidents already, but nothing serious. Thank you for your prayers. We hope we can love and serve others well. But so far, we’re the ones who’ve been loved and served.

—isaac

p.s. thank you to everyone who’s booked a stay at the nook while we’re gone. If you’d like to experience it, there’s still plenty of openings. And remember, you get the full set of construction plans for free with your stay ($897 of value alone).

I’ve had so much on my plate that I’ve spent hardly a minute processing that fact. But Friday morning early, we’ll buckle our little boys into the car, already packed with luggage, lightbulbs (I just can’t handle the blue LED ones down there), and a few other things to help make our house a home. We’ll head west through the dry, scrubby Texas hill country, up onto the high plains, then south to the suffocatingly-hot little town of Presidio, cross over the Rio Grande to Ojinaga, then a long stretch through more cactus, rock, and rugged mountains. Finally, fourteen hours of driving later, we’ll top up in the Cuauhtémoc valley.

We’ve done that drive almost ten times already, always knowing we’d retrace it just a few days later. On Friday, we’ll know and feel something else: the acceptance of a foreign country as our new home—for the summer at least.

But we won’t be lonely foreigners.

Helen’s family arrives a day or two ahead of us, along with another family we’re close to. We’ll be greeted by a small bunch of folks who, over the past two years, have become dear friends. Benny & Erna, David & Lisa, and others. I’d never have picked this place, but God did, and we feel incredibly excited and humbled to be a small part of the promising little church mission He is planting in this great, dry desert.

It was at the end of our longest trip there, back in January, that my heart changed. I went from enduring these little ventures to an unexpected excitement that I get to serve in some small way—almost overnight. I can’t fully explain it, but neither can I deny it. I just know that God knows what He’s doing. That’s enough.

It’s going to stretch us in more ways than one. Different culture, language(s), landscape, living standards. Our family is also stretching in size. Baby #3 is due July 10th, and we’re planning to welcome her/him (surprise) down there! Helen’s mom is a wonderful midwife who delivered both of our first, and there’s a good medical system as additional support if we need it.

Even while accepting that we’ll miss a hundred small comforts of home, I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving The Nook empty and alone all summer. And that sparked an idea: what if I opened the door and invited some of you to experience the most personal space I’ve ever made?

That’s what I’m doing.

I’ve spent the past few days dreaming and preparing little surprises for you to discover. Handwriting notes. Picking handmade snacks. Curating a record collection. There’ll be piles of books to get lost in, and a few writings and drawings in progress.

For all the videos I’ve made and words I’ve written, you won’t really understand until you come. Come and experience the trees, the light quality, the limestone and white oak and cowhide. All the tiny details I spent months poring over, inspired by my grandfather’s shed office where I spent countless afternoons as a kid. His care for that little one-room, cedar-clad space shaped me more than I ever realized at the time. What if The Nook could do that for you?

When you come, bring a journal. I’ll leave a few extra in case you forget. And I’ll leave my pencils and paint brushes. Come notice, sketch, write, create. Or simply be.

The tension of leaving home and so many friends behind, venturing deeper into new territory, and learning to trust God in ways I haven’t yet is real. But so is the peace knowing we’re in God’s plan, and the faith for what comes next.

Friday we hit the road, and behind us, The Nook will be waiting for whoever might need it.

Onward.

—isaac

P.S. We’ve already filled a number of nights, but many are still available. If you’d like to come, check your calendar and submit an inquiry with your preferred dates. I’m also giving away the full building plans as a PDF—the same set folks pay $900 for—so you can build your own someday.

Not to make plans, but to find and express the point of view only you have. Everyone can learn. It has made more of a difference in my life and work than any other single skill.

Let me show you.

The mid-February morning was cold and sunny as I pulled off the road at the spot I’d passed dozens of times before without second thought, shut the car door, and shook hands with the realtor. We slipped on our mud boots and fought our way about a hundred yards through a thicket of trees carpeting the odd-shaped, 5-acre sliver of land. Just an hour before, still in bed, I’d refreshed Zillow for the hundredth time and seen the new listing pop up. So I called the listing agent, with a feeling I needed to see this place right away.

At the heart of the small parcel, obscured from the road by all the brush and a falling-down shed, was a small, swampy pond. Countless dead hackberry trees clogged the shallow parts. And yet standing there, I felt something run through me.

A cabin appeared in my mind’s eye, nestled on a grassy knoll just above the water’s edge, sheltered by the massive Live Oak whose unkempt branches sprawled out like a huge umbrella. I envisioned the lights glowing through the glass front, reflecting across the water, and a handful of other cabins tucked into the trees all around the heart-shaped lake—which itself could be dug out, trees cleared, and reshaped into something charming. I just stood there taking it in, trying my best not to let on too much to the realtor what I was feeling or seeing.

In that instant, I knew I had to build it, no matter what. I was convicted.

That was the defining moment not only of Live Oak Lake, but of pretty much all my work (and a good part of my life) since. It all started with a simple, clear vision.

That vision was the product of a lifetime of sketching, of noticing. A lot of folks drive past a lot of swampy ponds and never think anything at all. Drawing invisibly trains us to see not only what is there, but what could be there.

When I was little, Grandma Jan gave me and my siblings art lessons each week. I can still see her—scone in one hand, a bowl of steaming potato soup in the other—bent over, gazing back and forth between the reference photo and my drawing. Sometimes for minutes without saying anything, just eating her lunch, all the while me feeling more and more uneasy at what might be wrong. Then her weathered hand would decisively descend to overtake the pencil and she’d make a few fast, broad strokes here, a pause, and a few more there. “There, that’s better.” And it always was.

Grandma taught us how to see much more than just how to draw. I’m still learning that twenty years later. It’s a lifelong pursuit.

Drawing teaches you to notice.

When we’re young, our brains build identities for everything around us: what each thing is called, and what it looks like. Then something switches. Most of what we see is no longer relevant beyond our immediate impression. Our brain starts reading the world in shorthand, filling in blanks in snap judgements. It serves us well, until we try to draw something. Ever tried to draw a hand? Most of us produce something closer to a chicken foot skeleton. Stick figures for humans. Or “lollipop trees” as my old instructor Joe used to call what most beginners draw when asked to sketch a tree.

We draw what we think we see, not what’s actually there.

When I learned to paint, a whole new dimension was added. I remember one painter showing me something I’ll never forget: if you look at a landscape or a sky, then turn your head sideways and look again, good and hard, you will notice new colors. Brown and reds in the green trees. Blues and indigos in the shadows. Lighter blues on the horizon. A little purple in the blue sky. Try it today, or tonight at sunset.

Noticing is the foundation of any work of art, of any good design.

And it’s not just about building things. Drawing portraits has repeatedly given me the same feeling as standing by the water that February day. I’m not trying to create something, I’m just trying to notice what’s always been there. And somehow, it always feels new. Eyes are the best part. They are the window to the soul, and drawing them, I feel this deep sense that not only am I tapping into the essence of who a person is, but glimpsing the world the way they see it, even for a second.

You already have a point of view no one else on earth has. Drawing is just how you learn to use it.

Thank you, Grandma.

—isaac

P.S. Start today. Pick one familiar object and draw it. Not from memory, but from life, from what you actually see. Really look at it. You’ll notice things you’ve never noticed before. Share with me what you find - and draw? :)

One of those perfect moments you couldn’t engineer if you tried. At least not like that.

I was frantically piloting a drone somewhere above us, holding a camera in my other hand, and trying to guide the horse with my fingertips on the leather reins. Thankfully he was experienced and gentle enough to manage without much help. I had to chuckle. There I was scrambling to capture the moment — but I was the one captured by it.

I’m in Idaho on a short trip, filming parts of the story of the place I spent much of my childhood. My family and friends have built a remarkably vibrant community and local economy here, all set within some of the most beautiful geography I know. The days have been long and full, up around 4:30 to catch sunrise (which comes before 5am this time of year), falling into bed around midnight each night.

And for months now, since getting serious on learning how to make films, I’ve been living inside this acute tension: trying to capture something beautifully without affecting or disturbing it by doing so.

I get it wrong a lot more times than right.

There are many moments when I’m just juggling too much. Trying to capture everything, all the right angles, with all the right gear. And actually capturing nothing, at least nothing real. Let alone the experience. Then I know it’s time to put the camera away and simply be there. But at other times, I feel compelled by something deep inside. It’s hard to explain.

I feel a little like David in Saul’s armor. This trip I brought three cameras, a drone, gimbal, and several lenses. But this is the way you learn — by doing. It sure would be easier to put it all away and just enjoy life unencumbered, or maybe just film with my iphone. No settings, gear, or self-consciousness. No endless thought processes trying to plan the perfect shot or sequence.

On Saturday I spent hours lugging my cameras around The Pie Safe and Gathered, my mom’s quilting and handcrafts shop. Travelers lined out the door of the bakery, the kitchen staff scrambling to keep up with orders. I do not enjoy being “that guy with the camera” in public spaces. But I’m so proud of what the community here has built. I know it could inspire others, because I know it already has.

But there’s a special reward, and I’ve tasted it a few times already.

First, when you stumble on the perfect light and the perfect moment, and you’re on it. Red light on, camera rolling, holding your breath to keep it steady. It happened just this morning. Second, you’re deep in the edit, hours into cuts and decisions. You hit play on that little section and something stirs inside. You feel a little hope that maybe someone else will feel it too. And then a stranger messages you to say it did, and changed something for them. It happened just the other day.

Still, most of the time I’m shooting I battle doubt.

This trip, I did something I’ve dreamed of doing since becoming a dad. I brought Lucas along and we surprised his grandparents. I caught the moment on my phone.

The next morning we stopped in at Grandma Jan’s new cottage, which my brothers just finished building for her. Grandma loves log cabins, and they even incorporated old hand-hewn logs we salvaged last summer from the collapsing shed up at Palouse Meadows. She opened the door and I followed Lucas through, the camera quietly rolling. I planned to turn it off, but Grandma hardly noticed. Her eyes lit up with his, showing him around the new space. He joyously noticed the toy fire truck and all the signature “Grandma Jannie” things. So I just let her shine, silently following them for a few minutes, the camera mostly disregarded — but rolling.

I have a feeling that someday that footage is going to appreciate dramatically in value, at least for our family.

I fondly remember both my grandfathers, Papa Byron and Papa Lynn, filming family trips and times together with their big, blocky, state-of-the-art camcorders. It wasn’t all the time, just sometimes. It was who they were, and part of why I love them. And the footage is a gift to me.

Maybe I can be like them. That feels like a good north star. The red light on—just for the right moments. Not more, not less.

—isaac

PS - if you’d like to see the results from the trip, make sure you subscribe to my youtube channel and follow on instagram. And if you’re ever in the northwest, you should visit Deary. That’s just my unbiased opinion.

We’d found all manner of flint shards and even a few good arrowheads around our place.

I dropped to my hands and knees and clawed out a few handfuls of soft sandy soil. And there it was, the biggest arrowhead I’d ever seen. Bigger than arrowheads could even be, I thought. Then I found another, and another. Twenty minutes or so later, I’d unearthed twenty-four unique pieces: axes, spearheads, knives, and scrapers—some fully formed, others only partial. They were shaped from a variety of colored flint: speckled, solid, smoky, copper-ish, and tan. They’d been piled right there together, about twelve inches directly beneath where my shovel had punctured the earth.

I was pleased. After all, this is what mines are for, right?

I brought the news inside to my dad and four older brothers. At first, no one believed. But upon my insistence, my family soon descended on the dig site. And when they saw that pile of axeheads—freshly mined and still dirty, yet unmistakable—their mouths dropped open. All at once, several larger shovels, picks, hammers, and other digging devices appeared, along with some of my brothers’ teenage friends. A dizzying flurry of digging ensued, while I stood nearby guarding my treasure, from time to time coolly showing a piece or two to the “big boys.” I still remember the hole they dug, and the mountain rising beside. It was impressive. But to their dismay, nothing more than red sandy dirt and a few tree roots was found.

One Monday after family dinner, after a bit of deliberation, we took the basket of treasure down to the archaeological society meeting at Baylor University.

For hundreds of years, Comanche and other Native American tribes travelled through this area, our homestead just a mile or so from the spot on the Brazos river where they frequently crossed, along with, in later times, millions of cattle headed down the Chisholm Trail. So there’s always been decent archaeological attention paid to our area.

I remember waiting patiently through all the formal discussion, led by a group of bespectacled and important-looking older folks. When the meeting finally dismissed, we approached a few members and presented our case. More soon gathered round. The room moved from delight that a boy of my age cared about archaeology, to skepticism as I told the story, to sudden shock when the evidence appeared, and then, talking all over each other, into a commotion of claims and questions. This cache was “almost certainly in the top five largest ever found in the US…” “worth up to ten million dollars, if verified…”

It was too much for my young mind to process all at once, but I was excited.

Then they asked for exact coordinates where it was discovered. When someone uttered the word “dig,” I remember my dad and grandfather glance at each other. A few moments later, my dad politely excused us, and we drove home.

We never returned to the archaeological society meeting, but I kept the prize sealed in a giant Ziploc bag among the many hunting rifles in my dad’s big fire safe. Gradually, the novelty wore off, and I pretty much forgot about them. Until a few years ago when I found them in a cabinet in my folks’ home in Idaho and moved them across the country to mine, where they are sitting in a cubby under my desk, safe and sealed, still in the ziploc. Waiting, maybe, for me to show another group of experts someday—perhaps this time with my own boys.

Was it pure coincidence that I happened to dig my mine at this exact spot? Maybe.

But there’s something about being nine years old or so, and the matter-of-fact-ness of curiosity to idea, idea to execution. I still remember laying in bed each night before sleep would come, vividly imagining businesses I’d start the next day, catalogs and logos I’d design, trails and forts I’d build in the endless ravines and trees of our backyard. And I did.

I have to wonder: today, would I still go grab a shovel from the shed and start digging in my backyard?

—isaac

p.s. are you or anybody you know an expert in youtube strategy, with editing & directing chops to go with it? let me know if so, i’ve got an idea :)

It’s been on my mind.

—

Recently, I found myself stepping off a plane again. I was returning from another country, so I had to go through customs.

It had been a while since I’d flown internationally, and I’d forgotten this part, but as I made my way through the lines and checks, past baggage claims and TSA, a final door appeared at the end of the corridor, with glowing letters: EXIT HERE.

As I and a few fellow weary travelers approached, the door automatically opened, ushering us to freedom—the pickup area. On both sides of the partitioned walkway stood lines of people. Hundreds of them.

A worn-out-looking man walking just ahead of me suddenly threw open his arms. Almost instantly, two little girls collided into them. Without missing a stride, he scooped them up and carried them on, somehow managing to wheel his luggage along, too. Then I saw her, a wide smile stretching across her face, standing a little ways beyond them. Seconds later, all four were enveloped in a family-sized embrace.

I caught myself staring—and smiling. A big, healthy smile. And that’s when all the other stressful thoughts stopped swirling in my mind. My own ride was about 30 minutes away, so I decided to stick around right there at the end of that line and just soak it all in.

I didn’t want to lose that feeling of being present.

Time and again it happened: each human very different in age, background, language and look, yet very much the same in expression, heart, joy and relief.

What an ordinary, profound half hour.

It occurred to me that there are very few contexts today where you’ll find that kind of universal joy—not loud or flashy, but real.

When my friend arrived, I stepped outside and found the same thing happening at the sides of cars and all along the curb. Hugs, laughter, even tears.

It was beautiful.

The thought flickered through my mind: this must be a little bit what heaven’s going to feel like.

With every opening of the door, new faces streamed through, tired and worn out from the journey, searching expectantly for that one familiar face.

Human belonging is one of the most sacred things, and we’re all searching for it. Family. Friends. Places we know & love.

Just to be in the present moment, with no distractions, no fretting about the past, no anxiety about the future. Knowing we’re right where we’re supposed to be, with the people we love.

We’re all on a journey home.

Don’t forget to savor those glimpses along the way. All those little moments pointing to the big one.

—isaac

—

Of all the big titles and responsibilities a person can hold, mother is the most important.

I didn’t grow up with money or much material comfort. I was born and raised in a mobile home on a dirt road. But it sure was a beautiful, welcoming one. My mother made it so.

My parents didn’t spoil us with substitutes of what is actually valuable. They gave us what money can’t buy: their undivided attention and love, in both word and deed. That example taught me more about what hospitality and beauty really are—and what success should look like—than any book, career coach, or college degree could.

My mom brought ten of us into the world, all born at home. Alongside my dad, she schooled, disciplined, and loved us into happy, healthy, mature humans.

Mommy, I don’t know how you all did it, but I sure am thankful. All the nights I kept you awake as a grumpy little baby (you don’t ever have to stop teasing me, cause I know you never will). The messes I made before I could clean up my own. The lessons you taught me in the living room each morning in how to pray, write, and speak up; at the kitchen table, how to diagram sentences; in the garden, how to pull weeds. Wherever we were, it was always from your heart. We were loved by both of you, deeply and totally, and that’s the greatest gift I could ever receive.

And right now I can just see you shaking your head and pursing your lips a little as you read, but don’t worry, you won’t change my mind. I know you made mistakes and I know you aren’t perfect—but you are.

There wasn’t much glory in the ordinary work of mothering ten kids, but you did a glorious job.

I believe we all have callings on our lives: people we were born to be and to become. For the past thirty-six years of motherhood, my mom has fulfilled her calling with grace, grit, wit, and wholehearted devotion. And when the time came, that example taught me what to look for in a woman who would mother my future kids, and gave me the faith to believe I might find her.

Helen, I’ve known you my whole life. Since long before we fell in love or I asked you to marry me, I’ve watched the way you love God and others. The way you care about people, young and old, deserving and undeserving. About making little things look beautiful. About giving God glory in everything.

Your mom taught you well. That would be clear enough to anyone who doesn’t know her just by seeing you, but knowing her completes the picture perfectly. Your mom has my highest respect.

Helen, I’ll never have your tenderness, your beautiful voice, the perfect touch of your handwriting, your cooking, or a long list of other cherished attributes. But I promise to use every gift I do have to return that love. My dad never failed to show his love to my mom, and that is a big reason I feel the way I do about her today.

I pray our kids see that, too.

God gave us a beautiful gift when He made mothers and grandmothers. And they make us.

I want every mother reading this to know that what you’re doing matters; what you’re struggling with, what you’re succeeding at. Keep up the good work, one tiny, mundane act of care at a time. Keep putting your whole heart into it. Keep planting little seeds of love and care and connection. I promise they will grow into trees whose fruit you’ll one day reap, whose branches you’ll one day find shade under.

We love and value you. Today, this Sunday, and every day.

—isaac

P.S. I wanted to let you all know something: Helen and I are expecting our third in July! We are so excited to meet him or her (gender is a surprise), and for Lucas & Ezra to meet their new playmate and fellow trouble maker :)

The weather was a bit warm and muggy, but the air was crisp with energy and enthusiasm.

My favorite speaker, per usual, was the one & only Mr. Joel Salatin.

He’s an incredible mouthpiece for the movement, a man of deep conviction and character. If you haven’t seen any of the countless documentaries in which he’s appeared, you should (I love this one). I first discovered him as a young teen reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a fantastic book on food which awakened in me a love for writing.

Joel is a man of big, powerful little phrases. He coins them every time he speaks it seems, and they stick. He’s a farmer, a philosopher, and a prophet. But there were so many great presentations, and such a wealth of knowledge. Gives me a lot of hope for where we’re going.

I gave a talk on how to create a thriving hospitality destination out of your farm or homestead. This is a key component for a lot of these folks if they’re to be successful not only materially, but evangelistically in spreading the word about a better way to live and eat. Historically, there’s been a huge mismatch between agriculture (especially the healthy, regenerative kind) and the things that make a place worth visiting: beauty, storytelling, hospitality.

I’ve wanted the chance to address this head on for a while, and it seemed to be well received. (If enough of you are interested, I might post the whole thing on my YouTube channel.)

Most exciting to me, I can hardly believe 130 of you came and toured our orchard! If I ever needed validation for the hospitality layer on top of the fruit production possibility of this place, this weekend was just that (and I made a lot of new friends!)

If I could quantify success for the project, it would be that it inspired someone else to plant and tend their own orchard in their own barren field — even if only a handful of trees.

It can heal the soil, provide delicious, wholesome abundance, and teach you more about yourself than you’d believe. It can spark dreams and talents you didn’t know you had. It can make your own corner of creation a little bit better than what you inherited.

Seeds were sown. I believe we’re going to see fruit. And this is just the beginning of that part of the journey. I’ve got some exciting plans underway for the next chapter of the orchard, and they involve you, so stay tuned!

—

On a different note, I just finished an essay on micro-resorts as an emerging category in the greater vocabulary of real estate investment, soon to be published in a bigger industry publication. If you’re interested in the larger picture of the movement, I wanted to share it with you here first. (See below.)

As always, thanks for reading, and see you next week.

—isaac

Building and Funding Micro-Resorts

At 24, I bought five acres of raw Texas land with money I’d saved and a dream to build a “village of cabins tucked in nature.” The project, which I called ​Live Oak Lake​, was finished ten months later, and then sold a year after launching for $7 million. In between: an Airbnb suspension two weeks after launch, an Instagram following of 150K built from zero, and first year occupancy rates most hotel operators probably wouldn’t believe (94%, to be exact).

Today’s letter covers what the micro-resort category has become, including:

• Where micro-resorts came from and when the market crystallized

• Why small key counts are a structural advantage, not a limitation

• Who’s building these and what the winning operators have in common

• What capital structures — from rewards-based crowdfunding to GP fund vehicles — are emerging to back the next wave

Where Did This Market Come From?

The instinct to sleep somewhere interesting is not new. Glamping operations, boutique inns, and treehouse rentals have existed for decades, but they were scattered, unbranded, and mostly invisible to the broader market. There was no category, no language, no investment thesis.

Airbnb changed that, though a bit differently than how most tell it, I think.

The first act was democratization of the key bottleneck: distribution. Suddenly a homeowner with a spare room or cottage could reach millions of potential guests. Experiential lodging entered the mainstream. Travelers who’d never considered anything outside a hotel began booking yurts in Utah and A-frames in the Smokies.

The second act is less celebrated: gradual commodification. As professional property managers scaled up, the average Airbnb listing began to look more like a managed apartment or house, and less like someone’splace. The soul started draining out. The story became generic.

Into that vacuum stepped a new kind of operator – not a property manager, but a builder, a storyteller, someone who bought land, had a dream, and decided to share it with strangers for a price.

COVID accelerated everything. Drive-to destinations spiked. The staycation became a fixture of American leisure. By March 2023, global spending on experiences was up ​65 percent​ compared to 2019, while spending on things was up just 12 percent – a gap that has only widened since. The guest who’d always dreamed of a quiet weekend in the woods now had the app, the budget, and the cultural permission to book it.

A coherent category had emerged. Call it the micro-resort: a purpose-built experiential lodging property, typically 5–20 keys, founder-led, story-driven, within drive distance (usually 1–3 hours) of a major metro.

The DNA of a Winning Micro-Resort

The landscape of successful micro-resorts is still small enough to map. ​Bolt Farm Treehouse​ in Tennessee. ​Onera​ in the Texas Hill Country. ​Dunlap Hollow​ and ​The Cliffs at Hocking Hills​ in Ohio. These properties share no brand or management company, but their DNA is remarkably consistent.

The founder’s presence is strong in the property’s design and hospitality, and in the marketing. Guests don’t just book a cabin, they book into a story. They know who built it, why, often even what the founder left behind to do it. That biographical thread runs through the Instagram account, the welcome letter, and maybe even the record spinning when you walk through the door.

The concept photographs – and spreads. Every successful micro-resort has a visual identity strong enough to move organically through social platforms. Not polished in a corporate way, but distinctive in a personal way. The kind of image that makes someone tag their partner and say nothing else. The industry uses terms like “Instagram-able.” I prefer “word-of-mouth-worthy,” because that’s what it really is – or isn’t.

The story is told in public, from day one. The best operators start posting before they even have the land or money. They bring followers through the fundraising, land clearing, the framing, the small disasters. By opening day the waitlist already exists. The storytelling and the business are the same operation. The brand has real equity.

Location is deliberate. A property 90 minutes from a major metro can draw from an enormous pool of two-night weekend travelers. Move it five hours out and the whole business model has to change: longer stays, bigger marketing budgets, a different guest with more time and commitment.

And there is always a reason to exist beyond comfort or convenience. The Cliffs has topography dramatic enough to justify the trip alone. Bolt Farm has treehouse architecture almost magically embedded into the top of a mountain that immediately registers as aspirational. Onera has multiple unit types hovering above a creek and through a forest with an otherworldly vibe. Nobody drives three hours for a comfortable mattress. Nature is the star of the show.

Here’s the number that matters most: the occupancy math at small scale.

A 12-key property at 85% occupancy and $350/night ADR generates roughly $1.3 million in annual revenue. The operator knows the guest. Maintenance is manageable and the brand stays tight. There’s no front desk, no general manager, no RevPAR consultant eating margin. Scale to 50 keys and the math still works – but the intimacy disappears, the mystique erodes, the storytelling feels institutional. The founder becomes an absentee owner with a hospitality problem. Fewer keys isn’t a bug. It’s the whole point.

The Part Nobody Likes to Talk About

This is not passive income. Hospitality is already one of the most operationally demanding businesses in real estate. Building micro-resorts add a layer: raw land, permitting in rural counties, bespoke construction where nothing is off the shelf, brand-building from zero, and guest operations that are personal by design (but less staff-dependent than you might at first imagine).

The founder-led model is a real competitive advantage, and a real liability. Burnout in this category is common and underreported. The brand is often so tied to the founder’s identity that succession is genuinely difficult. Several of the most celebrated micro-resorts in the country are quietly wrestling with this right now. I can speak to it personally.

And yet the operators who sustain it share something that has nothing to do with financial sophistication: they love the work. That’s a selection mechanism. The ones treating it as a yield play consistently underinvest in the things that actually drive return: the quality of materials, the thoughtfulness of guest communication, and all the little details that make a place feel cared-for. Hardware alone is never enough. The warmth, the story, the thousand tiny acts of care – that’s what brings guests back again and again and builds spectacular brand equity.

Creative Capital for a Creative Asset

The capital markets haven’t caught up to this category. Most micro-resorts are self-funded or stitched together with SBA loans, business lines of credit, and personal savings. There’s no obvious institutional home, being generally too small and operational for private equity or most family offices.

That gap is beginning to close in two interesting ways.

Rewards-based crowdfunding is one of the newest and most interesting financing tools the category has. Several operators in the experiential hospitality world have raised $400,000 to over $1 million on Indiegogo or their own sites directly in a matter of months, without giving up equity by pre-selling stays in exchange for a discount or other perks.

It works because the audience that dreams of building something like this is often the same audience that wants to stay there. Backers are frequently future guests. The founder’s public story – the same one driving occupancy – is also the pitch. A campaign page isn’t a prospectus; it’s a continuation of the narrative that’s already been running on Instagram for a year.

Beyond the raise itself, a well-run campaign validates demand before construction begins, generates press, and more often than not is the difference-maker in whether an up-and-coming developer is even able to secure a loan. It requires disciplined execution of a proven playbook, not just for the raise but obviously through to execution. But for someone – preferably even an “outsider” – with a compelling concept and the ability to communicate it, it’s a remarkable tool.

The GP fund structure is the more institutional answer, and possibly the one that most defines the category’s maturity.

The thesis: aggregate 8–15 micro-resort projects under a single GP vehicle anchored by an experienced developer-operator. Each project keeps its individual identity and operator. The fund provides shared back-office infrastructure, a pooled capital raise, and a pathway to permanent financing or exit. Individual projects are too small and too operationally complex to attract institutional capital on their own. A portfolio of them, managed under a coherent thesis, starts to look like an asset class.

The risk institutional capital typically introduces in this space is homogenization – the soul gets optimized out in pursuit of efficiency. A fund structure that preserves operator autonomy largely sidesteps that.

One version of the capital stack, properly sequenced: rewards crowdfunding to prove the concept → SBA or construction lending to build → GP fund aggregation for scale or liquidity. Sequential tools, not competing ones.

The exit market is real and developing. Live Oak Lake ​sold​ to private HNW investors. Onera was ​acquired​by Summit Hotel Properties, a publicly-traded REIT. Under Canvas ​bought​ The Fields. Marriott ​bought​Postcard Cabins. The institutional and corporate appetite is growing, and exit comps are growing, though still early.

Why Now

Demand for experiential travel is not just a trend, but seems to be a clear structural shift in how people spend leisure dollars, driven by demographic cohorts still in the ascending phase of their earning curves.

The storytelling infrastructure has never been more accessible. A founder with a phone camera, a point of view, and a basic understanding of how to make a good hook and tell a 60-second story can pre-sell a property before the first cabin is built. That was virtually impossible a decade ago.

And here’s the counterintuitive tailwind: AI. As generated content proliferates and algorithmic experiences flatten the digital landscape, the appetite for things genuinely made – specific places, by real people, with taste and intention – will grow. Authentic, founder-led hospitality is a natural hedge against the generic. Nature is the place people feel most alive. Micro-resorts are the portal, the platform.

The operators exist. They’re building, posting, hosting, earning five-star reviews from guests who tag their friends (and come back again and again). What the category is still missing is patient capital and the financial structures to help the best of them grow.

That’s the gap.

—

For everyone interested, I’m teaching a free, 90 minute live workshop on the 10 steps to designing, building, funding, operating, and marketing your own micro-resort this Thursday evening, 7 CT. Register here, and bring your questions, because I’ll be answering them live.

It hurts a little, spending money on something with no clear financial return in sight.

That’s the accountant in me. But there’s another angle, too. That of the artist. A good investment needs both.

planning

This investment had no business plan behind it. It was just a dream — an inspiration from talking with my uncle and some friends, a memory of the tiny orchard my parents planted when I was a child, and a desire to turn that unloved sliver of field I drove past every day into something worth looking at. Something my future kids could grow up working in, learning the same lessons of responsibility, care, and hard work my parents taught me.

planting

The blustery day we planted those trees feels like yesterday. Each bare root stick was only a couple feet long, fragile and featureless. But carefully selected soil supplements, compost, water, and a handful of prayers were planted alongside each one.

Those first twelve months of sunshine, rain, wind, hot and cold air — all in due season — tripled each tender sapling upward and outward into the sky, downward into the soil.

pruning

A year after we’d planted, we cut the enthusiastic trees almost all the way back to where they’d started, leaving only one or two budding stubs. It felt like all that growth was in vain, but it wasn’t.

The two winters since, we’ve pruned again. The “experts” did, at least. I was always tied up with other tasks like replanting the trees that hadn’t made it, or managing the crew mulching around the trunks.

This time, my old friend Aaron, a consummate Texan agrarian who transplanted to Idaho a decade ago, was in town for a wedding and kindly agreed to help us out. Twenty minutes of watching Aaron dress up a pear tree, and something sparked in me. I tried one myself. Then a peach, and an apple. First remove the suckers, then the waterspouts shooting straight up. Aim for an open vase — 3-5 main scaffold limbs, well spaced, forking where appropriate, and never crossing. Clean up the fingertips, remove the clutter. Focus the tree’s energy. Show it how to grow.

Helen and her friends brought breakfast to the pergola a few hours later, but I hardly wanted to stop.

With each tree I pruned, it became more instinctive and less intellectual. Less is more. Balance and proportion are life and death.

Great design is like that. Yes you better understand some rules, but the point is not to follow rules. The point is to know and internalize what you’re really after. Then get in flow and have fun. Each person does it a little differently, and that’s part of the beauty. Pruning is the perfect expression of taste.

reaping

The business plan will come. Or it won’t.

I’m getting to participate in the oldest art form on earth. The one God gave us in the garden, when He commissioned us to tend and cultivate the canvas of nature. What a gift.

And I get to do it with friends like Ben, Kendall, Butch, and many others. Each of you has played a vital part. Mowing, mulching, counseling, coaching. Fixing leaky irrigation pipes, fertilizing sickly trees, getting me to think about the hard stuff, helping me figure it all out.

While giving the very first tour to a group of about 25 folks at our Thanksgiving fair last November, I found them hiding in the tangle of bare brown bushes — a couple of small, hard pomegranates. I split them open with my bare hands and passed them round.

Three years of patience, a thousand-plus hours of labor, $75,000. And there we were, tasting the first fruits.

The investment will yield returns of many different varieties, like the fruits themselves. And those returns will come at different times, different seasons.

It’s a living, fragile, fascinating work of art in the making, and it’s teaching me much more than I’m investing.

—isaac

PS - This weekend, 70+ more of you are coming to experience the orchard in spring. I can’t wait to show you. Maybe some of the returns on our investment will be seeds you take back with you — to make your own little orchard, out of your own barren field. If you’d still like tickets for the Homestead Conference, get them here. And if you’re registered to attend and want to join the orchard tours, you can schedule here for Friday, or here for Saturday.

PSS - I’m still looking for a creative editor / producer to work with me on short-form video. Strong ideas, pacing, and feeling. Not just cuts and captions. Flexible 10–40 hrs/week depending on fit, working directly with me from concept to final cut. If this is your thing and you’re exceptional at it, send me a message.