Jeff Burnside

By Jeff Burnside

 

A deeply enchanting piece of land demands that anything built on it be equally enchanting – and respectful.

 

Jeffrey Pyatt, a successful Seattle businessman, was certain this was his challenge once he bought nearly 1200 acres of unbridled beauty on the eastern plains of Colorado. In the middle of this acreage sits Shepherd Hill. He’d grown up in Denver and, even as a skinny little kid fastidiously wearing his cowboy costume and riding in the Little Britches Rodeo, he knew he’d eventually succumb to the draw of the legendary eastern plains.

 

Rolling hills, rare timber stands, billowing grasses, wildflowers, a ravine that welcomes the roaring rainstorms, crystals so plentiful that they lay strewn on the ground everywhere you look. And the vistas? They go on forever. Pioneers began working the land nearly 175 years ago. Native Americans have revered it for many thousands more.

 

“That land is precious to me,” says Jeff, “because of all of the people who have used it before me.”

 

Think that’s a high bar? Now try building a house to meet those expectations.

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“Two things got built simultaneous;

the house and the person I am now.”

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Jeff’s a thoughtful, caring man in his early 60’s who has learned to trust his instincts. And his instincts led him to hire a home builder named Ray Bonilla who, well, had never actually built a home. “That sounds worse than it is,” laughs Ray. He has many years of experience renovating or upgrading homes in the Seattle area, including portions of Jeff’s home in Bellevue.

 

“He proved thoughtful, detailed, willing to learn, and importantly, is nice,” says Jeff explaining why he gave the job to Ray. “Plus, he was excited by the opportunity.”

 

It was clear from the get-go that Jeff wasn’t your normal kind of homeowner. “There was no drawing of the house yet,” recalls Ray. “But he did have a picture of a cowboy sitting in the middle of a grassy field in a buffalo leather chair taking a nap. With his hat pulled over his face. And he said, ‘this is, this is what I want the house to be’.” Jeff conceded that the picture was from an advertisement. Yet it captured what he wanted. A feeling. And they went from there.

 

What Jeff didn’t expect – nor did Ray – was the profound impact this land would also have on Ray, sweeping over him the very moment he arrived to plan construction. 

 

Indeed, Ray says it changed his life. And here’s how it unfolded.

 

Instead of opting for a motel a few miles down a country road, Ray erected a yurt right smack on the most prominent hilltop, with views in every direction. He explored every square inch of the property, including remnants of an ancient fire pit.  He would take naps in pastures among the cows.

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“I don’t know what I don’t love about it. That’s the problem.” Every sunrise and every sunset is “out of this world.” The way the insects become illuminated in the low sun. “I can tell you right where to be at 5:30 in June.” Ray became enamored with the moody weather. “You get this really warm golden light bouncing off the grass, it is breathtaking! In the winter when it just snows, you get that Alpenglow throughout the whole property and on the horizon. And there’s nothing like the feeling of that blizzard coming and kicking your ass, and then the next day the birds are chirping.”

 

And the wildlife was everywhere. “All of a sudden it means more when you’re sitting on the little porch of your yurt and a rabbit crawls out from under it and makes eye contact with you,” he says. “The more I’m around animals, the more I know about people.”

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Ray is about a quarter Native American. He can’t help but wonder whether somewhere deep inside him, he connects with the land where Apaches and Cheyenne roamed throughout and honored a mythological character named bííʼoxúyoo, or "Found in the Grass."

 

“There’s an energy left here that resonates with me. Or a frequency that aligns with me. And I wonder if it’s the Native American roots. I’ve wondered about that quite a bit.”

 

Armed with such inspiration of “peace and beauty,” Ray began construction.

 

Jeff had hired Seattle architect Joe Chauncey, a longtime friend.  Joe had designed the Pyatts’ Bellevue house twenty years ago. Trust, again, was key. Joe ran Boxwood, a firm with an unusual side business: Marketing and branding wine. “It’s all design related,” Joe says sitting in his office, blueprints on one side, bottles of wine on the other. His firm has developed a reputation for listening – and doing so better than anyone else. For example, rather than asking Jeff and his wife Paula what designs they preferred, he asked them: How do you see living in this house? Tell me about your guests? Jeff and Paula answered this way: This home is for family holidays where everyone can be casual, walk in wearing cowboy boots and jeans, have a beer, relax, and feel like you belong.

 

They agreed on strong steel and wood structural elements, high ceilings, a massive steel fireplace, an entry featuring a cowhide rug, art depicting western scenes including custom pieces by Ken Peloki and Tom Browning. 

 

“Beautiful country. Quite obviously, Colorado was a fine place for a ranch,” reads ‘The Tenderfoot Bride,’ a biography written in the late 1800s by the wife of a homesteading couple who would be Jeff’s neighbors if still alive.

 

“This piece of property is what makes him makes him tick,” says Joe. “It’s how he sees Colorado. And he has probably a fairly romantic view of Colorado.”

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But there’s another far deeper dynamic at work. Jeff was just 11 when his father died. “I always promised myself that I’d be the dad that I never had,” he says through a choking voice and a hint of tears. It’s so clear: This house on the plains is the physical manifestation of this yearning. It allows him to feel like a proud father whenever the extended family gathers there, far from the distractions of a city, jobs and all the things that keeps families busy – too busy, sometimes. Jeff, Paula, two grown daughters, their husbands and kids. A regular cattle-call now. “We are just a family. Going for walks. Having conversations.”

 

Constructing the house on Shepherd Hill has also reunited Jeff with his stepbrother, Greg, and half-brother Pete, who lives nearby and runs their livestock operation on the surrounding ranchland. “The best part of all this is I’ve gotten brothers out of the deal.”

 

Building a large building in such a remote location brought challenges. It wasn’t easy. They had to build a long driveway to the site from the county highway a mile away. Bitter winter storms battered thing pretty fiercely. And the extreme dry heat shrank the wood more than most places might. After all, it was nearly a desert at 6,000 feet.

 

“Actually, I woke up to an inch of snow on the half of my bed that my feet were under,” Ray recalls with a smile while living in the yurt. His computer and printer were covered with snow too. “It’s the wind that changes everything. These blizzards.”