My favorite time here in the southern Colorado foothills is the morning. I wake up to such a marvelous array of natural sounds. I love to hear the birds greeting the new day.
Then I go out to my garden and appreciate it all!
Yesterday we took a trip up to Pueblo to visit a farm east of there to buy fresh produce. I love buying directly from the farmers and the prices are quite good!
Then we drove into Pueblo to visit Yang’s Gifts in the Pueblo Mall. Why? Because I won a FREE gift from there! What fun going through the store choosing something just for me and for free! I love this store, but then I have always appreciated jewelry, fans, and beautiful clothes from Asia.
One thing Mike and I now disagree on. I enjoy occasionally driving into Pueblo or Trinidad to shop. He gets quiet in the city and his joy level visibly increases when we leave town.
He gets happier and happier as we get closer to home.
I just read a new review of the Criterion re-release of the 1985 Albert Brooks film “Lost in America” in The Atlantic. This film is a satire about two upper-middle-class Californians who decide to quit their great corporate jobs, and go “find themselves” by traveling our country in a Winnebago.
I couldn’t help thinking, as I read this review, how pessimistic their viewpoint is. Perhaps these Californians failed at their goal simply because they didn’t have a good plan from the beginning. It’s one thing to quit your “boring, predictable existence earning a solid wage” with no real plan at all. It can be an entirely different experience to spend the time to find out where you most want to live ahead of time, and then create a sustainable lifestyle in that place.
Like so many of us from the Boomer generation, the main characters in “Lost in America” achieved financial success and yet could derive no pleasure from that success. What I have learned from decades of living is that financial success provides no pleasure, unless it also provides personal freedom.
Our greatest success in choosing this new, rural lifestyle has been the freedom we now enjoy. Many would find our lifestyle boring. If you have no interest in weather, wildlife, sunrises, and an ever increasing appreciation of the natural world, you would probably run back to the city after only a few weeks, if not days.
The silence here can be deafening, unless this is the kind of silence you’ve been seeking your entire life.
Monsoon showers are coming through every afternoon now,
with double rainbows attached!
“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there’s really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.” – John Rushkin
I noticed this question under the list of searches that brought readers to this blog… It reminded me of a enjoyable conversation I had yesterday with a newcomer. She was wondering herself about the pros and cons of moving here. There are so many dimensions to that question. Here are a few:
Our hundred year old rental in Walsenburg, where we lived while building a new home
First of all, it depends on where you plan to move. Walsenburg is one of the oldest towns in Colorado, and unfortunately it looks it. Such a strange mix of very old, rundown homes right next to nice, well-kept ones. This is beautiful country, but isolated and, in some cases, impoverished. This is one of the worst Colorado counties for crime and poverty.
The good news is homes are still quite inexpensive (less than $100,000) there. The bad news is you will probably have to spend quite a bit to update your home, possibly starting with your connection to the town’s water system! If you don’t mind putting lots of sweat equity into your new home and you realize it isn’t easy to find dependable employees to work on your projects, come on down! BTW, rentals are extremely difficult to find in Walsenburg or La Veta. Especially ones you could stand to live in. Walsenburg has two full-size grocery stores, the only ones in our county, and only a few decent restaurants. It also contains the ONLY STOPLIGHTS IN THE WHOLE COUNTY!
The Spanish Peaks!
I cannot honestly recommend Walsenburg as a nice place to live. However, as you progress west of there on Highway 160 and see the tremendous view of the Spanish Peaks and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains ahead of you, you will then understand why many are moving here for the geography alone! We moved here to enjoy passive solar living in a rural setting, with endless blue skies, strange and wonderful rock formations, and that still unspoiled frontier feel.
Navajo Ranch, located in between Walsenburg and La Veta, offers incredible views, plus phone, electricity and good, dependable water available to all the lots. This is where we chose to build, with no regrets two years after moving up here! The lots are still inexpensive and the quiet is wonderful…
A marvelous small town library!
If you prefer to move to a quaint small town, choose La Veta, only about sixteen miles west of Walsenburg at around 7,000 feet elevation. La Veta still has that small town feel with around 800 year-round residents, however it almost closes down in the winter months. Both La Veta and Cuchara, eleven miles further south on Highway 12 and at 8,600 elevation, attract many families in the summer, but they go back home in the winter months. You will find lots and homes much more expensive as you proceed up to La Veta and Cuchara.
And remember, not everyone can breathe above 6,000 feet. I had to learn this the hard way!
A major part of my discussion yesterday with my new friend was about making friends in this area. I made only one friend in Walsenburg in my year living there. I found few open to friendship of any kind, and some downright mean. La Veta seemed more open to new people, although some only acted friendly at first. This bothered me a lot when I first moved here three years ago, but now I have developed a couple of good connections with women in La Veta. We have concluded that new people, especially single women, are seen as a bit suspicious around here.
Surprisingly, I don’t think much about friends anymore, because I enjoy spending time at our wonderful home alone and with Mike. Everything about this place seems right to me now…
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I have been changed by the experience of leaving city life behind. The greatest change has been my new ability to at least occasionally be in the present. I see now that before I moved here, I was constantly stressed out, and in distraction mode.
“Distractions are both more tempting and more destructive than we realize. It’s tempting to fill in every little minute of the day with productivity or distractions. Don’t. Leave some emptiness.” – Zen Habits
It seems to me that cities are set up for constant outside noise and distraction. Any time you feel uncomfortable in any way, you can call up someone to go see, order some new kind of food, go out shopping or go see a movie. People in cities spend most of their time sitting in traffic or driving somewhere else. Cities are distraction machines, and the Internet is the ultimate, easily available escapism.
Being in the present means you are not planning ahead. You are sitting still, willing to be here now to observe and absorb your present surroundings with no thoughts of yesterday or tomorrow, no need to distract yourself. I find many of the observations of ZenHabits.com useful in my new mindset:
“If you’re filling your life with distractions, its probably because you’re afraid of what life would feel like without those distractions…”
To be honest, I never really had the time to gain full awareness of all of this until I moved away from modern American life. I knew I was anxious and not as relaxed as I wanted to be in the city, and now I see why. Cities raise our anxiety levels. I know because it took me at least a year away from a city to see how anxious I have been most of my life, and then find ways to allow myself to truly relax.
I have been a worry shopper my whole life. Once I solved one problem I moved on to the next one. Out here there is so little to worry about, leaving me much more time to focus on what is important to me. Now that’s a great new challenge! And what is important to me now is a few important relationships, and appreciating the natural world and its wonders.
We can sit and dream about so many things, but we would be wasting our lives. This present reality is all we get. Let’s learn to love it.
Then I go out to my garden and appreciate it all!
He gets happier and happier as we get closer to home.
Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 