Page 6 of The Grumpy Side of Paradise

Four whirlwind weeks after Georgia visits me in New York, I’m peering out the oval window of an airplane, watching the city’s lights disappear below me. My heart dips as we rise above the clouds, and there’s nothing below me but white. No buildings. No bridges. No Hudson. There is no East River.

Nothing.

And no amount of positivity can keep me from wondering if I’ve made the worst decision of my life leaving behind New York City for a little place in the middle of nowhere called Paradise. Even if the payoff might be huge.

Putting aside the fact I’m leaving behind beautiful buildings and art galleries around almost every corner, there won’t be a Hungry Ghost Coffee shop either. And how can any place call itself Paradise without the best coffee in the world? I’m praying the town of one thousand even has a coffee shop. If not, I’m on my way to the very opposite of paradise.

I’m on my way to Hell.

Good things lie ahead,I remind myself. That’s the mantra that got me to this place, and I’m sticking with it. Georgia knows what she’s doing. I’m not leaving behind thousands of potential jobs for a TV show pipe dream. This crazy idea of hers will work.

I tell myself that for the entirety of my early morning—nearly six-hour—flight. But no matter how many times I say the words, I keep hearing the voice of my grandfather repeating a phrase he used with Joanna Gaines-and-shiplap frequency: the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

But then, just before noon, the plane descends into Salt Lake City, and I get a view of the tallest mountains I’ve ever seen. My chest loosens enough that I can breathe again. I’m still not sure I haven’t made a mistake, but it’s probably not the biggest one I’ve ever made—that’s definitely still the time I snuck out of my house to go on a blind date with a KSU football player named Dirk who sported a mullet and talked all night about football plays before making a “play” for my boobs. The knee to the groin I gave him was the only thing I did right that night.

By the time I pick up the giant truck Georgia rented and insists I’ll need, I’m back to buzzing with nervous excitement about this project. We’ve spent the past few weeks talking ideas over FaceTime. Her redesign for the floor plan involves knocking down most of the walls—including the unstable exterior ones—and adding a second story. Then there’s the updated plumbing and electrical that has to happen.

Georgia wants me to be there to document everything from the outside to the inside for social media while she finishes up another design project in California. Once the exterior stuff is done, then I’ll step in with my plans. I’ve got ideas for new flooring, a second-floor deck overlooking the lake, and simple touches that will keep the early twentieth-century house looking authentic but not old.

As I pull onto the freeway from the Salt Lake airport, I pull up the country music playlist I keep a secret from my friends in Brooklyn and crank it. I’ve got a three-hour drive through Utah before I get to the Idaho border where Paradise sits, which gives me a lot of time to think.

I’ve loved planning with Georgia, and I’m excited to get started, but there’s no way I would have given up living in New York for this one job. It’s the possibility of renovating even more houses with her that motivated me to leave behind a city I love for a speck of a town in Idaho.

The bigger project she’d hinted at in Pedro’s is an entire village... resort... something like that. The label doesn’t matter. What does matter is that there are twelve houses she wants to renovate with my help, if the show gets approved.

She told me about the history of the Little Copenhagen Resort, and it’s fascinating. Exactly the kind of project I would love to be part of. The Danish immigrants to the area one hundred and fifty years ago settled near the shores of the lake they gave a weird name, where the resort is now, and called the spot Little Copenhagen.

They didn’t stay long before they spread out further from the lake to better farming ground. But they still kept shacks near the lake for ice fishing during the winter and eventually built a town they named Paradise, which honestly sounds pretentious. Then around 1950, someone in Georgia’s family had the brilliant idea to buy the land with those little fishing shacks on it, build actual cabins that could be used year-round, and lease them long-term to the families who’d been going to the lake every summer for almost a century. Voila, the Little Copenhagen Resort was born.

The lease terms were for seventy-five years, which means they expire in a few months. The land has increased so much in value in the past few years that if Georgia renews the leases, she’ll have to increase the price by two hundred percent to make enough money to pay the back property taxes her grandma let get away from her. But the cottages aren’t worth that much. No one wants to renew the leases at the increased price for houses that, though well-maintained, haven’t been updated in decades.

Her plan now is to renovate or rebuild the old cottages entirely, sell them, and develop more cabins or condos on some of the undeveloped acreage on the resort property. The first house will prove to HGTV we can do the work and that they should give Georgia her own show. Their investment in renovation materials and the salary they’ll pay her will give her the money she needs to rehab the entire resort.

On TV.

Withme. Her sidekick.

I’m taking a huge risk, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. And I will do whatever it takes to make sure the HGTV producers will want to green light this project.Good things lie ahead. Superpowered positivity is all it takes to get them.

The part that makes me nervous right now is the fact I may be stuck for who knows how long in a town with fewer people than I could find on one Manhattan street corner. A town even smaller than Manhattan, Kansas. All that wide open space brings back the claustrophobia I felt growing up in a place where everyone knew my business. I already miss tall buildings and strangers surrounding me on every side.

Those feelings change when I reach the canyon I have to drive through to get to Paradise. Granite walls rise on each side of me, covered in trees whose fall leaves create an abstract portrait of oranges, reds, and golds. No matter how hard humans try, they can’t beat nature when it comes to creating art. My homesickness for high-rises and skyscrapers evaporates. I’m still not sure how I feel about giving up the personal privacy a big city provides, but I slow down to enjoy the view and change my music to Guns N’ Roses.

There’s nothing better than an angry Axl Rose to get me revved up. I’ll take a good raspy growl over the smooth singing of a Harry Styles any day. Johnny Cash over Alan Jackson. Tom Waits over Michael Bublé. Kurt Cobain over... well, you get it.

I like a growly man, and they don’t make ‘em like they used to.

As the first chords ofParadise Citybegin, I unroll the window. By the time Axl snarls the first lines, I have the music blasting and my arm out the window. The earthy smell of leaves and crisp air rolls into the truck, blowing through my hair, and filling my lungs. The song moves to heavy drums and Axl’s intense growling, and my doubts fly out the window one by one.

I crest the last rise of the canyon and gasp as Smuk Lake (that’s the weird name) appears below in the Paradise Valley. The lake’s name (pronounced smock, according to Georgia) does not do it justice. A word that guttural can’t convey how stunning this view is, even if it does mean “beautiful” in Danish.

Smuk Lake is much bigger and bluer than Georgia described, and it’s surrounded by mountains only slightly smaller than the one I’m driving down. I didn’t believe her when she said I would love it, but I think I might agree with her now.

If this place has amazing coffee to pair with the colors and the breathtaking views, it’s definitely paradise.

But will it stay paradise if Georgia brings in her TV show? I don’t know how Paradise will keep the small-town charm she’s told me about if it’s the center of a home renovation show. If I know small towns, I know there will be people upset by what Georgia wants to do. The project is bound to draw in even more people and developers that will ride on her coattails.

My phone rings, pulling my eyes from the lake to the truck’s digital dashboard. I press the button to pick up the call and am greeted by a deep voice.

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