building passive solar
We hope to add a few of 
We are newcomers to rural Colorado, so after two years I compiled a book about the total experience of moving here to build passive solar in the foothills: Retirement: Fear or Adventure of a Lifetime?
I had an interesting conversation with a neighbor, who hopes to move to his house here in southern Colorado in the next year or so. The kids are all finishing college this year and he and his wife have built a nice “cabin” near us, and far away from his many responsibilities as a business owner back in Kansas.
Besides the usual, “Have I saved enough money?” fears, my new friend is quite worried about how he will fare in his new life here. He is born and raised German Lutheran with an amazing case of Type A personality. In other words, he likes to be doing something most of the time, preferably something productive, and often pushes himself with deadlines, hating delays and uncertainty.
Now you might say, who does like delays and uncertainty? Don’t we all like to feel in control of our fate? The only problem is, we aren’t. When it comes right down to it we could all fall ill or die today. Anything can happen to anyone at any time. Starting from that premise, what do I need to do today to further my own specific life goals?
I was also raised with that good old German authoritarian, “What have you produced today?” work ethic. Luckily I have also been given the wonderful opportunity to adjust to the idea of retirement very slowly, not all at once.
“What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult for each other.” – George Eliot
My husband Mike is my best teacher in this area. He had the misfortune to go from highly-skilled and productive engineering technician to Chronic Fatigue Sufferer in his mid-thirties. After many job losses and years of doctors and others not believing him, he somehow adjusted to the anger and frustration of having an illness that nobody seemed interested in defining or diagnosing properly. (New research!)
The long-term effects of CFS forced Mike to retire early. It also taught him to have more patience with himself and everyone around him. First it made him very angry, then CFS made him a better person. In fact I’m fairly sure we wouldn’t get along so well if he had not been changed so much through his experience with this terrible illness.
His patience and understanding provided me with the unique opportunity to change careers. At age 50 I started over as a freelance writer. After 25 years in the library profession, I finally gained enough confidence to believe that I could be a writer. With Mike’s great emotional and financial support I did what I had always wanted to do, but also feared. I could not have done this without Mike’s help.
That is why I now see ‘retirement’ as the next great adventure.
With love and support we can spend time finding out what it is we really want to try. What did you LOVE as a kid? What did you really want to be doing when you first went to work? You can do those things now. Sure it may not make money, but it could be lots of FUN!
Too many of us focus solely on the money issues surrounding retirement, and not enough on “What’s next for me?” Can I change? Would I like to be a more relaxed or patient person? Can I adjust to not producing something everyday? Can I change my focus to making life less difficult for others? Now that’s a good retirement goal!
I’m a newcomer to rural southern Colorado. After two years I decided to compile a short journal about the ups and downs of moving from a good-sized city to rural America to build a passive solar retirement home in the foothills:
A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado
Please share this information with your friends if they are considering similar life changes. Feel free to contact me directly to discuss any of these challenges, and to order your own signed copies of any of my books! Cheers, Laura Lee (email me: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com)
Enjoying a Celebration of Never Moving Again!
Today marks two years since we left our perfectly nice home in suburbia for the adventure of a lifetime. It may not sound like such a big deal to move to small town USA to build a custom solar home in the southern Colorado foothills, but it was for us at age 60!
We moved to Walsenburg on June 17th 2014, to sleep on the floor of this hundred-year-old rental, moving in the next day and staying there for 13 months while our new home was forming far too SLOWLY 20 minutes west of town at 7,000 feet. Mike worked as the contractor and purchaser of all things when we found the builder was not taking competitive bids, but just hiring his local friends.
Then on July 30th, 2015 we moved into our new home, HOME AT LAST!
For weeks after that move we just sat and stared out the window, mesmerized with the awesome views out our front windows, too exhausted to do anything else. We finally made it to our goal after many, many challenges and so many days of absolute stress.
Why did we do it? Our trip to Pueblo yesterday answers that question quickly. Being in cities always ruins my day. We need to go there occasionally to buy certain things, but the stress, the heat, the traffic, the bad air and bad manners of other drivers always convinces us we will never live there again!
We have no patience with cities anymore, and why should we when we have a magnificent place where we can escape them?
Today we will drink a toast to surviving all these many changes and challenges, and also to never moving again! Instead we will try to get our patio finished this summer, enjoy the great wildflower displays everywhere, the cool mountain breezes each evening, and offer encouragement to others who have found their new home in this small slice of heaven.
Want to learn more about our experience of moving from the city to the country to live a quiet, relaxed life? Check it out here!
With the best of intentions, change can still be hell! Trust me, I know…
“Even in seemingly dormant times, we are in transition. Losses and gains are in constant play. We are the change-agent, and we are changed. Even without toil, we transform. So, wisdom advises us to open our hearts to transition; to honor fully what is passing, to learn from all that unfolds, and to welcome what arrives at our door each day with courage and curiosity.”
As all who have been reading this blog for the past year or so know, I have had many doubts about this big, dramatic move Mike and I started on two years ago. Especially when we first moved to Walsenburg, and I basically hated it.
But then if you took anyone from a beautiful, suburban home in Fort Collins, and moved them into a tiny, dirty 100-year-old house in a sad, rundown town an hour away from any decent sized city, the shock would be total, and it was!
The challenges we have faced in the past two years have been daunting for both of us. For me the biggest challenge was simply adjusting to such a different world than I was used to. For Mike it was the many extra expenses, frustrations, and delays in building a passive solar home in a rural environment.
I am now quite happy that we made this choice, while Mike says he wouldn’t have done it if he had known how unhappy I would be in the process of adjusting to something so different.
In retrospect I wish I had not worried so much about everything and trusted more in Mike’s vision for us, because this place is heaven. I fully appreciate how much courage and vision it took for Mike to push this whole project through to completion.
Now we live in a beautiful home that is supremely quiet, with fantastic views in every direction, and our direct-gain passive solar is working great! Plus I now feel like I’m making a few friends and slowly starting to feel like I belong here.
In summary: This place is perfect, but change can still be hell!
How did this happen? How did I end up here, feeling so fortunate? It’s a long story, one I can now share with you in my new memoir…
How Prince Made My Life Better
I don’t remember how I first heard about Prince. In the early 80s I had recently returned to Boulder Colorado, lost in severe depression. Imagine sitting in Taipei, Taiwan, certain that I needed to leave or lose my mind. But where to go next?
![original_photo_Thailand_1973cropped[1] (2)](https://adventuresofthenewoldfarts.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/original_photo_thailand_1973cropped1-21.jpg?w=1040)
After a disillusioning and devastating seven months studying Chinese at the Stanford Center in Taipei, I felt like I knew how miserable some missionaries to China in the late 1800s had felt. There was nothing I liked about my life, and I had previously come to the conclusion that my future included a PhD in Chinese history.
What next, as I turned 30?
I returned to Boulder because it was the closest I had ever felt to home. Luckily I had friends there who put me up for a year or so. I wasn’t even sure if I had enough mental health left to work, but I got a half-time job in the Personnel Office at CU-Boulder Library. There I met a few welcoming positive and supportive women, most notably Cathie. (Thank you for your special kind of love and understanding Cathie!)
After a while, I got a perfectly mindless job in the Cataloging Department. Does anyone out there know about working as a “Retro Jet”? The job is simply editing OCLC records online as quickly as possible to match the book we have in our collection.
So we sat on the computer editing OCLC records for hours on end. Luckily we were allowed to listen to our walkmans while we did it! Somewhere in the great camaraderie of retro jets, I was introduced to Prince, the perfect music to listen to for this particularly boring job! Yes, the people I met through my retro jet job, and the music I was introduced to made me feel great for the first time in years!
There is something about Prince’s music that took me out of my busy, worried mind and freed my soul for some sort of positive future. At the time I had no idea what that might be, I just knew I needed to find my bright side again SOON!
I’ve always been one of those Boomers who was searching for where I belonged in society. I went on to complete an M.A. in Third World History, and then turned to my first love, psychology around age 35. But as it turns out, my real love is NOT LIVING IN CITIES.
My life has taken such a circuitous path, partially because I had certain goals stuck in my head early, that I would eventually need to let go of. My most recent discovery about myself came from moving away from all cities and building solar.
Come to find out, I don’t “belong in society” at all! Who knew?
I belong where I feel free...
Home Designs That Changed America
I found it interesting to watch the PBS special “10 Houses That Changed America.” In this program, the two houses that reminded me the most of our new passive solar home in southern Colorado, were the Taos Pueblo from ancient times, and the Glidehouse.
Then I learned about 
Unlike our own custom-built passive solar home, the Glidehouse does not include a specially-designed direct-gain slab that collects heat during the winter months, and then releases it at night, greatly decreasing the need for additional heat. We also spent the extra dollars for 
I am happy to see more Americans who are concerned about energy efficiency in their living situation, not just to save money, but to live more in harmony with the earth. I love living so close to nature, and waking up to see bunnies coming up to my sliding door to look in in the morning.
Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 