SECLUDED SANCTUARY
by Holly Smith
photography by Heidi Long
 The lure of the wide-open spaces turned these Eastern expats into diehard Westerners and log home devotees.
Sure, you could move out West and not build a log home, but Ed and Susan Abel don't recommend it. “If you're going to be in Montana,” insists Ed, “you have to have a log home.” Not that the lifelong Pennsylvanians know exactly how they ended up in Big Sky country in the first place. “I just started feeling like I wanted to have a ranch,” recalls Ed, “and something went off in me. It was almost like a calling.”
The couple's answer to that call? A gorgeous 3,200-square-foot, three-bedroom pine log home complete with locally crafted furnishings and sweeping views of their 11,000-acre mountainside property. But since “mountainside” is not exactly synonymous with “easy access,” the Abels' builder, Bill Pelc, had to get creative when it came to making the couple's home a reality.
 “It was such a remote location,” recalls Pelc, who owns Montana-based Big Sky Log Construction with his wife, Kathleen. “We would pull concrete trucks up to the job site with bulldozers. It was a tough site.” Not to mention off the grid. Nearly a dozen miles from the interstate, up an old logging road in Gold Creek, Ed and Susan's property didn't have electricity or running water. “Construction was all done on solar panels, a backup generator, and batteries,” says Pelc. “And we had to dig a well in the middle of nowhere. It was very unique.”
After years of Internet research, log company comparing, and unabashed dreaming, Ed and Susan had a home that was just as they'd envisioned it when they first approached Vermont-based manufacturer Real Log Homes with their plans. “It was tremendously successful,” says Susan of the process, which left her and Ed with a not-too-big, perfect-for-the-windswept-landscape home they reside in several months each year. Even better, it was a blast.
“Being in the business, I can't ever say that I had a lot of fun building a project,” says Ed. “But in the case of building our log home, it was one of the most enjoyable experiences I have ever had.”
And to think, it all started with a feeling....
Special thanks to our sister publication, Log Home Living, for their help with this article.
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