Stewardship
“Monitoring” is a two-hour walk and a letter in the post.
It is the obligation that makes an easement worth anything. A restriction nobody checks is a restriction that quietly stops being true, usually two owners after the person who signed it.
- Step 1
We write first
A letter in April with three dates. You pick one, or you tell us to walk it without you, which about half of owners do.
- Step 2
Someone walks the boundary
Usually two hours, on foot, with the easement map and last year's photographs. We are looking at the terms in your document and nothing else.
- Step 3
You get the report
Two pages, in the post, within a month: what was seen, what changed, and whether anything needs following up. If nothing does, the report says so in the first line.
- Step 4
Follow-ups are conversations
Most are a misunderstanding about a threshold and end in a phone call. In seventeen years we have never taken a landowner to court, and the day we have to is the day we have failed at the earlier steps.
What is open right now.
Two of this season’s visits ended with something to follow up. Both are written here rather than folded into an annual report nobody reads.
- OR-003Washington
- Firewood cut exceeded the notice threshold. Owner filed the notice retroactively; forester's plan now on file.
- WA-031Marshfield
- Boundary blazes faded on the north line. Re-marking scheduled with the owner for spring.
Neither is a dispute. In seventeen years Cedar Line has not taken a landowner to court, and the day that changes will be the day we failed at the letter, the walk, and the phone call.