Yes, I do see both sides. On the one hand, our country has some very serious problems, the main one being the nut we presently have in charge. But since I can do nothing today to change that, I choose to enjoy my present surroundings every moment of every day. Living here is a lesson in nature’s miracles!
For example, the amazing look of Navajo Ranch this August!
Suddenly there are millions of sunflowers everywhere!
Yesterday, when the sun came up…
… the Spanish Peaks were looking like this!
Mike and I left suburbia in 2014, after living in cities for most of our lives. We wanted to try out solar living with spectacular views of Sangre de Cristo mountains. We moved here to live close to nature, to try out passive solar living, and to build the kind of home we chose to live in for the rest of our lives. We came in search of a far more quiet, peaceful, healthy and inexpensive lifestyle than cities could offer us. We have received so much more…Would you like to know how we ended up here? The ups and downs of our year-long building process? My fears in our first year here? Why we love it so much now?
Please send me an e-mail to order your own copy — Laura Lee: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com
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.
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 was 14 years old when “Easy Rider” came out. I decided to see it again this week. So glad I did,if only for the music!
Wikipedia describes it as a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers (played by Fonda and Hopper) who travel through the American Southwest and South after selling a large score of cocaine. The success of Easy Rider helped spark the New Hollywood era of film making during the early 1970s. The film was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1998, a landmark counterculture film and a “touchstone for a generation.” Easy Rider explores the societal landscape, issues, and tensions in the United States during the 1960s, such as the rise of the hippie movement, drug use, and communal lifestyle.
Although I know this film hasn’t changed in 48 years, watching it showed me how much I have changed, and most of my changes have taken place since moving to rural Colorado. For example, when the riders pick up a hippie on the way to a commune, they eventually ask him where he’s from. His answer is simple and so true: “A city.” When pressed for more he says it doesn’t really matter what city, because cities have the same effect on us as people.I so agree now. And if you don’t, I challenge you to move to the country for a few years. Then we’ll talk.
I have also learned a lot about my biases and judgments of people I don’t know. For some reason, moving here has lightened my load of judgments on those who don’t look like me. I know in ‘Easy Rider’ the country people in the south hate hippie-types. There’s a great line in there from George, the local drunk played wonderfully by Jack Nicholson, who tags along with them on their journey to New Orleans. He says many just don’t appreciate the freedom these two bikers represent. When they see it they want to kill it. Nice foreshadowing.
My brother John and Mike in our developing sky garden last May…
Mike rode a Gold Wing when I first met him. Before I fell in love with him 12 years ago, I judged those who rode motorcycles, especially if they had a tattoo. When I first set eyes on Mike I thought, oh no, he has a tattoo. My next thought was but it’s nice dragon! So much for that judgment… I have learned quite a bit about how to experience true personal freedom by living with Mike and by moving away from cities.
How do we benefit from judging ourselves and others? We don’t.
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.” — Anne Lamott
Right Anne, like anybody’s perfect, but oh how I tried for decades. How crazy was I? Straight A’s in school, the best student in the world, pressure, pressure, pressure. Heck, I didn’t become a writer for most of my life because I figured I wasn’t perfect enough yet. Three graduate degrees later I finally, SLOWLY figured out that Anne was right the whole time. Now I am eminently imperfect, and I have so much more fun!
After we moved here I wondered about how honest I should be about exactly how unfriendly some folks were here. I was actually blown away by how badly some acted, even therapists! I assumed that people are naturally friendly in small towns or out in the country…WRONG!
Lots of folks move here BECAUSE of their anti-social personalities. Duh!
It was only later in life that I realized that I own my own stories, all of them. My most valued possessions are my own stories and how I survived them, every one of them!
My first book was the result of this realization. I had already sold a few of my essays to editors who were putting together anthologies on midlife change back in 2008. I had almost completed the sell of the story of my own divorce to appear in the Seal Press book: “Ask Me About Divorce,” when I realized I should be making more money on my own stories! That is howMidlife Magic: Becoming The Person YOU are Inside came to be. And I can assure you I made much more on my book than the $100 the Seal Press was offering!
From this and so much other risk-taking behavior, which emerged after I stopped trying to be ‘perfect’, I learned the joy of simply being me. And come to find out, I enjoyed the real me so much more than that nervous perfectionist!
Being uniquely me helped me find true love at age 49 too!
“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go…” -T.S. Eliot
Mike and I left suburbia in 2014, after living in cities for most of our lives. We wanted to try out solar living with spectacular views of Sangre de Cristo mountains. We moved here to live close to nature, to try out passive solar living, and to build the kind of home we chose to live in for the rest of our lives. We came in search of a far more quiet, peaceful, healthy and inexpensive lifestyle than cities could offer us. We have received so much more… Would you like to know how we ended up here? The ups and downs of our year-long building process? My fears in our first year here? Why we love it so much now?
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 