Living an independent life
Our Small Town Thanksgiving!
With all of the bad news, I would like to share something good…
This Thanksgiving we are new in town with no one to share our holiday with. I read in the local paper about a free Thanksgiving feast at our county community center.
At first, because I come from the big city, I assumed this would be only for the homeless, but when I read about it again, they were clearly inviting everyone.
Next I assumed it would be a mob scene, because such an event would surely be quite crowded if it were offered in Fort Collins, our previous home town.
Come to find out, none of my misgivings came to pass. The dinner wasn’t crowded at all. There was no line, the food was the best I’ve ever had, and everyone in that room full of strangers welcomed us warmly!
We even ran into a small group of our future neighbors from up at Navajo Ranch. So nice making new friends, and they invited us to their upcoming Christmas Party.
Small town living continues to surprise us, and always in a good way… such great inspiration to go home and put up our holiday decorations, after all it was 55 degrees outside!
Do you see yourself differently than others do?
It’s a first! We walked into a restaurant yesterday with adult and senior prices, and the server immediately said, “That’s two senior meals?” In this case they defined ‘senior’ as 60+
Yes, I have been asked occasionally if I would like the senior discount, but in this case it was assumed!
Then I realized there are a few different ways to look at this. The negative viewpoint is accepting that we look 60, which Mike is. He has mostly gray hair, and a weathered face from working hard and outside quite a bit, so this was not really a stretch.
Another way to look at this is that they were trying to reward us for living so long. We have become the respected elders of our tribe.
This is not about ego and vanity for me, it just surprises me when others see me as their elder. I simply haven’t yet gotten used to being seen as a senior.
I recall a great scene from the film “It’s Complicated”, where Meryl Streep catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and says, “Is that REALLY what I look like?” I laughed out loud! I saw myself so clearly in that same mirror.
Putting it all into perspective: Bent’s Old Fort
One of the great advantages in moving from northern to southern Colorado, besides the warmer weather, is having new places to explore. After 30+ years in northern Colorado, we were ready for a change.
Yesterday we took a trip east to explore Bent’s Old Fort near La Junta, Colorado. It’s an old adobe fort built along the Santa Fe trail back in 1833. Charles Bent, along with Ceran St. Vrain, built the fort to trade with Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Plains Indians and trappers for buffalo robes. For much of its 16-year history, the fort was the only major permanent settlement on the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and the Mexican settlements.
Loved all the insights places like this give into the lives of the early settlers! I suppose I should mention my favorite thing to play as a kid was pioneer woman. Come to find out I would have really hated it…
Their theme yesterday was “Native American Heritage Day” and the highlight of our visit was a talk by Michael Terry on Indian artifacts. What a funny, natural speaker!
Michael is entertaining as well as very informative on the topic of stereotypes and the nonsense most of us have gathered about Native American lives from old and new movies.
On the way out we found this old grave, an artifact which helped me put this all into perspective. Let’s face it, all we do is complain about our lives these days. This young man only lived 31 years of what was probably a pretty rough life. He was a stagecoach driver who died of sunstroke en route to Bent’s Fort in 1865.
How passive solar foundations are different
I bet you were wondering when my husband Mike was going to contribute to this effort. Here is his explanation of how changes in the floor and foundation in our new home in southern Colorado will help to maintain a warm, even temperature in the winter:
Our new house will be passive solar with a direct gain system. This means that in winter, the sun will shine in through our south-facing windows, directly heating our well-insulated concrete floors.
The concrete floors will be 6 inches thick and covered with ceramic tile. The tile will be a dark color to absorb the heat from the sun.
While 4 inches is the optimum thickness for the concrete, additional thickness will add some extra heat storage capacity. We thickened our floor to 6 inches to accommodate a few thermal storage water tubes. You can put colored water in them and they look GREAT, but they can be quite heavy. Please see blue examples at right… more about these later!
The concrete floor is where the light from the sun is converted to heat and is absorbed into the concrete. The floor moderates the house temperature by its mass, which gives off heat when the house air temperature is low and absorbs heat when the house air temperature is high.
The concrete floor will be insulated from the ground with foam insulation, seen in blue in this photo. It is insulated underneath and around the edges. In addition to this, the foundation walls will be insulated on the inside. This creates a longer path for the heat to escape the house, making the ground under the floor warmer, thus cutting down on heat loss into the earth.
Figuring out where you belong
Just took a quick trip out to our building site west of town… Every time I do, I feel even more certain that this is the place in this big, wonderful world that I belong!
I know we all have our own opinions of the most beautiful places in the world. Some can’t live without the ocean, others love the plains, but I am perfectly sure that this semi-arid piece of land close to the high mountains suits me just fine.
It’s hard to say what it is that makes me so certain. The absolute silence is very important to me, especially after listening to the relentless traffic noise in Fort Collins for nine years. The natural beauty and wide variety of birds, plants and wildlife also help… This is simply my place.
This setting makes me feel like I never want to leave. I feel gratitude that we can finally live our dream in our very own place in the sun… solar-powered, of course!
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)
Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 