Living in rural USA

The human race always moves towards FREEDOM

/ Laura Lee Carter / 6 Comments

isabel-wilkersonI saw an interesting exchange of ideas on Meet the Press this past Sunday. One speaker I found most outstanding was Isabel Wilkerson, the author of “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.” 

What a wise, informative, and well-spoken woman! I found this discussion interesting on a lot of different levels, but I could personally relate to it in terms of our own recent ‘migration’ out of the city…

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“You can’t separate peace from freedom, because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.”            – Malcom X

Yes, our move was mainly based on the idea of increasing our own freedom from densely populated cities, and all of the restrictions included in that lifestyle.           Life can be GREAT in rural America!

At the beginning of the show, Ms. Wilkerson stated that, “Any migration is about freedom.” She spoke of the desperation so many blacks in the south felt to escape, and yet in some cases they were treated like criminals just for wanting to move north.

hillbilly-elegyAnother part of the conversation I enjoyed was with the author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis, J. D. Vance. He spoke of the part of the American dream which so often includes a desire for upward mobility. And yet moving to somewhere that is economically different requires that you socialize with others who are not like you. His example was when he attended Yale after growing up in the rural south.

At first I related to Mr. Vance’s experience in terms of my own life. I went from a public high school and a middle-class upbringing to attend an exclusive college with the sons and daughters of America’s millionaires in the early 1970s. What did I have in common with these children of privilege?

Then I began to think about our recent move to an old, relatively poor, mostly Latino town in southern Colorado after living in expensive, predominantly European-American suburbs for most of my life.

Some say the best way for those of us who live in the United States to advance past our many prejudices is to spend time with those whose lives are quite different. Moving here has been a step in that direction for me.

Living in a small, poor town has helped me make the small step past diversity towards commonality. At first I found this experience quite alienating. As the obvious outsider, I could not predict how others would respond to me. Those who look like me are mostly tourists in Walsenburg. They come, they hopefully spend some money, and they leave. But slowly, as I got to know more local residents personally, it became clear that we all want the same things for ourselves and our families. None of us is really so different than the other.

Are any of us really so different? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness summarize well the goals of every human being in this world I think.

Learn more about my move to rural Colorado…

You cannot control how others receive your energy

/ Laura Lee Carter / 7 Comments

Perhaps I will always remember this holiday as the one where I finally accepted the truth about other peoples’ reaction to me. Ah, if I could have totally accepted this truth decades ago, my life would have been so much easier:

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You cannot control how other people receive your energy. Anything you do or say gets filtered through the lens of whatever they are going through at that moment, which is NOT ABOUT YOU.  

Just keep doing your thing with as much integrity and love as possible.

This includes everything I write about here and in my books. Just because I have chosen to learn enough to understand the psychology of midlife transition or passive solar technology, and appreciate the freedom this knowledge has given to me, does not mean anyone else has a clue what I’m talking about.

Even my parents, who taught me much of what I learned as a child, the ones I thought knew EVERYTHING when I was young, have no idea where I’m coming from with most of my ideas and thoughts today. They are living in their own reality and often do not appreciate mine, but that is not about me.

earthOn some level I’m ashamed that it has taken me this long on this beautiful blue planet to appreciate this truth. But on the other hand, it is so freeing to let each of us be where we are right now.

We continue to search for whatever makes our lives feel better.

As another Christmas comes and goes…

/ Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment
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Rasta, the MOST attractive being at our family Christmas!

Why oh why does Christmas go from exciting and FUN as a child, to challenging? Probably  because I’m not as good at being around “family” as I used to be. But seriously, after spending almost no time together in the past 50 years, why should we get along well? I don’t know about you (obviously) but this holiday celebration completely wore me out.

The only truly notable adventure we had was driving south on I-25 yesterday evening south of Pueblo. The wind was blowing pretty crazy off the Rockies to the west. We both saw the wires on the power poles blowing sideways. At that point I said, I wonder if those poles ever break in half.

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In only a few more miles we were stopped by an accident ahead for a few minutes. As we came up to the accident we saw one semi truck lying on its side beside the highway. It turned out that a pick-up towing an old RV had blown over onto the highway.

broken-power-poleAs we approached that accident, we saw old wooden power poles on our right, broken off halfway and blowing in the wind. It was AMAZINGLY windy! A bunch of cars ahead of us got off at the Walsenburg exit after seeing that!

We were just so pleased to get home in time to watch the Broncos lose, and celebrate the passing of another family “holiday”in our own way, with champagne of course.

Family History Comes Full Circle

/ Laura Lee Carter / 6 Comments

 

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Deep in the silence of a Colorado foothills snow storm, I see how the generations of my family are now coming full circle. Soon after Mike and I moved down here, in the foothills halfway between Walsenburg and La Veta Colorado, my father told me his father’s retirement dream was to move to the tiny town of La Veta to set up his own barber shop.

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This is a man who had always cut hair in Turner, Kansas, outside of Kansas City, Kansas. Grandpa Carter occasionally drove out to Alamosa in the San Luis Valley to visit relatives. Along the way he found La Veta and loved it. Unfortunately my grandpa died just weeks after his retirement from the railroad in 1968.

I guess it is now safe to say my husband Mike had to do some fast talking to convince me to move down here from busy, expensive Fort Collins, Colorado in 2014. He loved the area, especially for the reasonably-priced lots with their own water district, pinon-juniper woodlands and great solar exposure. I love it now too.

john-carter-2003-with-guitarThis year my estranged brother John, who lives his own version of a Thoreau-like existence outside of Sedona, Arizona, decided to come up to visit us a few times after no word from him in years. In fact, we weren’t even sure he was still alive a few years back. He lives on the land, and a kind forest ranger finally convinced him to contact us. We have all now renewed our relationships with John.

John has not attended our family Christmases in decades, but he is making a point of it this year. My parents are in their eighties and now live in Denver. We will be taking him up there soon.

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I feel somehow certain that John would not have come up to visit us if we were still in Fort Collins. He loves the natural setting of our new home. He sits out on the ‘veranda’ every chance he gets, watches nature and plays his guitar, enjoying the lovely silence.

What are the chances that we would all wind up in this lovely place, so close to the town where my Grandpa Carter wanted to wind up? So many synchronicities or “meaningful coincidences” can only be seen in retrospect.

Robert Mirabal and the power of intention

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

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“You never know what the spirit of intention can do.”  –Robert Mirabal

We spent a marvelous morning on Saturday at the Native American Celebration at Fort Francisco in La Veta.

First of all the Fort is a beautiful example of 1800s adobe construction. Their exhibits are also a wonderful collection of memorabilia from the past century, like a a walk through the homes of the early 1900s. Old furniture, clothes, and my favorite, photos of people from our past.

Then we enjoyed a dance performance by three girls from the Jicarilla Apache Nation. The highlight was a performance by Robert Mirabal of Taos Pueblo. Yes, his music is magic, and I also found great wisdom in his words.

Robert MirabalRobert shared with this mostly European-American crowd the history of this area and what it meant to Native Americans. He explained why his ancestors came up here from the south and kept the trails alive and fresh for others. He spoke of intention in our daily life.

When Robert plays his flutes and sings, it sounds like he is channeling the life and  stories of his ancestors, bringing up vivid imagery of our Native American past.

And in a way, isn’t that what we all do each day, channel our ancestors? So much of who we are is determined by choices made by our parents and grandparents.

I am honored to be now living on this land where the buffalo roamed, the place where my grandfather hoped to retire.  I feel closer to the land than I have in decades, and I intent to protect this land and its heritage.

Excerpted from my new book: A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado.

My New Book – Kindle Edition!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

memoir-of-retirement-2016Hey! It’s Small Business Saturday and you cannot find a smaller one than mine! Please consider my new memoir as a great gift for boomers thinking about retirement alternatives. We did something completely different and we’re glad we did, but there were times we weren’t so sure. Some of you have asked when I might have an e-book edition of my new book available for purchase. I just loaded it!