Living in rural USA
A New Southern Colorado Adventure & Delight!
Yesterday, we celebrated Valentine’s Day in one of the most mellow places I can imagine. We drove an hour and a half west of here and arrived at the Sand Dunes Pool for a long, peaceful soak in the hot springs there.
We started out in the long, lazy river pool at around 100 degrees. This gets deeper the further you go in, and at the end there is a small water fall. The surrounding are surprisingly tropical and the temperature inside is perfect! This is the only pool you can swim around in in the adult section.
When you tire of the long, cool pool you can choose between three other smaller pools from 103 to 110 degrees or take a sauna.
The atmosphere is tropical, with cool plants growing everywhere! We saw a few orchids, some very nice succulents, a large Jade tree, and even a few tomatoes on the vine. This place is wonderful, like a moist, warm oasis in the middle of the dry, cold San Luis Valley. No wonder it is so popular! Alcohol is served in this section, and their hamburgers are great.
Everything I have described so far is in the adult or age 21+ section of this property. There is also an large, outdoor pool for families with kids. The surrounding mountains are incredible, and they also have places to stay there if you are on a vacation or RV camping. We’re just glad we live close enough to drive over for the day!
I do wish to mention one comment from a fellow swimmer yesterday. She was around age 50 and apparently she had been observing Mike and I for a while, when she came up to us and said,
“I just have to say you two make such a cute couple! My husband and I have been married for over 30 years. I just hope we can be like you two as we grow older together.”
That pretty much made our day!
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!
Aging and Friendship
“Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen.” — Charles Caleb Colton, a popular nineteenth century English cleric
It is obvious to me, my previous post about moving and making friends past midlife hit some sort of nerve with my readers. I so enjoyed the personal comments made by over 20+ readers! Some have studied this phenomenon throughout their lives and concluded it may have to do with different parts of the country and different sizes of town and cities.
So I decided to do a little research into this subject. I wanted to understand why two of my closest friends for decades dropped me suddenly soon after I turned 50, and why only one friend from my previous life in the Fort Collins area (for 20 years!), still keeps in close contact now.
The most insightful article I found was: “Aging and 3 Kinds of Friendship” by Brent Green. Mr. Green tells us that there are three kinds of friendships we may experience as we proceed through life, convenience, cosmetic and interdependent. A different article defined these loosely as takers, givers, and power sharers.
We all have had convenience friends, ones you hang out with because you share a work place, or kids in the same grades, or the same workout gym. These relationships can be very unequal with one person “helping” the other a lot. They can be draining!
Cosmetic friendships can also be draining because the person who supposedly likes you, wants something for it. Like work friends who think your relationship may help their career, these “friends” can vaporize quite quickly when you have nothing more to give to them.
The best kind of friends are those who are interdependent on each other. They don’t lean heavily, but they are there for you and accept you exactly the way you are. To quote Mr. Green:
“Both parties contribute and receive. Both are available to share the joys of closeness and help shoulder the burdens that come with aging. They give and take. They are committed to mutual growth and positive adaptation along the uncharted journey through life…They include the extraordinary friends we can count on when we become distraught or disillusioned. They are people who lift our spirits and in return welcome our nurturing care during their tough times.”
If you have any friends like these, count yourself very lucky!
Blogging Boomers Mid-Winter Edition
We’re stuck in a beautiful snow storm in the foothills just east of the magnificent Sangre de Cristo mountain range in southern Colorado today. If you can think of a nicer place to be stuck, please share.
I am here today to share with you the works of a few of my favorite boomer blogger friends, and ask you a question at the end of this post.
Number one is from Linda Myers. She has a timeshare dilemma — too many to use. Go see her dilemma over at her Bag Lady in Waiting Blog.
Over at The Survive and Thrive Boomer Blog, things are hot and cold. Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, almost had a kitchen fire, so she writes about tips for preventing kitchen fires. On the cold front, she writes about how older adults can prevent hypothermia during the winter by wearing a hat inside and keeping the temperature at at least 68 degrees.
Meryl Baer of Six Decades and Counting, is traveling once again this week, and discusses the difficulties of finding great eateries on a cross country road trip. Go read about some of her disappointments in Dining Along the Road, especially when traveling off the beaten path.
I have been noticing an interest among my readers in the process we went through in moving from suburbia to rural Colorado, so I wrote about the wins and losses we have experienced in the past two years.
Near the end of this piece I ask my readers whether age 60 is too old to make new friends. Please send me a comment with your own opinion on this issue. I am really curious what others have to say about this!
Wins and losses when moving from Fort Collins to the southern Colorado foothills
We moved from Fort Collins to here in June of 2014 to build a direct gain passive solar home in the foothills west of Walsenburg. We rented a hundred-year-old house in town for 13 months while building our own version of a retirement dream home. There would be few surprises when we finally arrived in our new home, but moving to Walsenburg was the greatest culture shock.
When you decide to move to a very small town after living in the city most of your life, false assumptions can be made. After all, you really don’t know exactly what to expect, because you have never lived in such a tiny town before.
The first mistake we made was assuming that rentals would be available in both La Veta and Walsenburg in June. We discovered the end of May there were none we would even consider living in, and we were closing on our house the middle of June! We quickly made friends with Susie, the primary realtor in Walsenburg, and offered her a hefty bonus if she would find us something quick.
We also assumed utilities would be much cheaper in a small town, but we were wrong about that too. We did call the utility departments for both La Veta and Walsenburg before renting, and quickly discovered that only propane heating was available in La Veta. That would add up quite quickly in this cold part of the country, so we began leaning more towards Walsenburg in our selection process.
One thing we never would have guessed is that city water in Walsenburg would cost over $60 a month BEFORE you figured in how much you used that month! This town has lost about a third of its population in the past decade, so their water capacity is far larger than they need or can pay for, one reason why they are welcoming marijuana grow operations at present.
We did find a decent house to rent just in time, but it was so small we had to find additional storage for some of our furniture. The local realtor helped us with that too.
One total win for us was how friendly and welcoming our new landlord Bob was. He helped us whenever he could, and even provided new music for us to listen to as we explored our new home county. He then invited us up to his commune home near Gardner, where he has lived since the 1970s. The people who live in the communes in the northern part of Huerfano county have been so friendly and welcoming!
Another total win has been the quiet beauty of this part of Colorado. The views are phenomenal down here, and the weather is just a bit milder than up north. We love it! It’s definitely big sky country!
Most of the people we have met here have been friendly at least at first, although most seem hesitant to truly welcome new people. Most don’t seem to want to be friends. I’m still trying to figure that one out. I have heard a few interesting explanations so far!
I wrote quite a bit about making friends here in my journal, which then turned into a published memoir. When asked whether it was OK to write about how others have treated me here, I turn to Anne Lamott:
“Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
Sunrises are outrageous at 7,000 feet with no neighbors!
It’s been a long & winding road to this wonderful home in the foothills below those beautiful Sangre de Cristo Mountains, one I’d love to share with you!
Location, Location, Location – Where do you belong in this wild & crazy world?
As we age we find out how important the simple pleasures are in our lives. When you have more past than future, you learn.
Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 