By Cara Froedge, Jackson Hole, Wyo.

ALTA  – A yellow butterfly dances up the walkway of Marian Butler’s home and lands in a box full of pink geraniums hanging from the front stoop.

Her home on the western border of Wyoming looks as though it was plucked from a fairy tale, a Swiss chalet almost like a gingerbread house. Butler, 82, laid the stones for the fireplace 60 years ago, crossed the threshold as a bride, raised nine children here, buried a 10th, and spent a quarter century caring for a husband with Parkinson’s disease.

A hand-painted sign stretching across the front reads, “Wherever you wander, wherever you roam, be happy and healthy and glad to come home.”

Dedicated to “2 square feet of solid improvements” in her yard each day, she pauses over the papers on her coffee table, tax records and bills that demand $5,650 for her home and about 30 acres. Butler, living on $1,000 a month in Social Security – minus a 10 percent donation to the Mormon church – faces a tax increase that’s affected many across Teton County this year as assessors updated property values to reflect Teton County’s expensive market.

She can’t afford it.

“I’m being taxed out of my home,” Butler said. “When half of my money every month goes to taxes, how am I going to live?”

Click here for the full story from the Oct. 1 edition of the Jackson Hole News&Guide.