Comment by bob1029

Having a national forest as your back neighbor is pretty much the best possible thing I've experienced so far in real estate.

The biggest downside is trees will absolutely murder the local infrastructure if a serious windstorm blows through. It's one thing to lose power, but it's something else to lose roads. I keep a battery powered chainsaw in my truck for emergencies.

The only other issue is that maintaining a garden can be difficult without aggressive access control. Deer will eat anything you haven't put in a cage. I don't bother trying to keep them out anymore. I'm convinced they jump the chain link fences at night when no one is watching.

The fact that the land is public has had zero negative effect. The local grid operator is the most frequent visitor by a long shot. I made the intentional tradeoff to have an electrical easement between my property and the forest. The grid operator has to keep the tree line maintained. In practice, it's mostly self-clearing. The trees have a hard time overwhelming the lines when they are energized.