urban versus rural life
On 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.As another Christmas comes and goes…
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.
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.
As 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
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.
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.
This 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.
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.
City life, rural life, stress & heart health
I find the gradual transition I have been through in the past few years, from city life, to small town and rural living, fascinating. I did not know until I researched it, that the entire world is moving from rural to urban quickly.
According to a 2011 report from LSE Cities and the Deutsche Bank called Urban Stress and Mental Health:
“Urban living is on the rise whereas rural living is becoming the exception – in all parts of the world and at an ever-increasing rate. The rapid pace of urbanization is an important marker of the societal transition at large that has occurred over the past 30 years. Our world is shifting towards an urban, small-family or single household, and at the same time, an aging society. In the next 30 years we will be faced with the growing challenges specific to our cities’ aged single urban populations.
However, urban living is not only about getting older, it is also about being in a constant state of stress. Stress is the unspecific physiological and psychological reaction to perceived threats to our physical, psychological or social integrity. Urban living can be threatening if you haven’t enough space of your own, if you experience insufficient security or live under unstable economic conditions. Stress increases with the anticipation of adverse situations and the fear of not having the adequate resources to respond to them. From an evolutionary point of view, stress is the mechanism that prepares us for any ‘fight-or-flight’ reaction, and also causes us to evolve in order to better adapt to our environment. Although not harmful per se, stress may jeopardize our health when stress exposure is chronic or when complete recovery is not possible.”
In our first year of living in a town of under 3,000, my stress level fell precipitously. It felt amazing at times. With only two stoplights in the whole county(!) and almost no traffic, I found nobody in Walsenburg CO to be in a rush, unless of course they were tourists. There were never parking problems or lines anywhere. But since my natural stress level was geared to noise, traffic, aggressive behavior and threats from strangers everywhere, it took me a while to adjust. I had to tell myself to mellow out constantly.
In our second year here we moved out to the country on a few acres and began living in a quiet, clean, peaceful, naturally beautiful setting, but my body was still geared to a higher level of alertness and anxiety than my surroundings warranted. It took time to relax by practicing meditation, yoga, and simply sitting quietly more.
I needed to learn again that my emotions were tied to my heart. When my world felt like a threatening place, even unconsciously, I was daily putting my heart at risk. Health practitioners worldwide now see stress as a major risk to cardiovascular health. Cortisol and epinephrine are two hormones that, along with others, raise blood pressure and blood sugars in the body, threatening the heart. Another reason stressed-out people are vulnerable to heart disease is that they rarely eat well, sleep well, and exercise.
In short, I cannot believe how much my life has changed since leaving city life behind. I did not know the level of stress I was living with everyday until it was gone. And even then it took me quite a while to truly relax and enjoy the lack of stress in my life.
Learn more about this major life transition by reading my memoir…
Writing books versus selling your work
The person who risks nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
So I have another opportunity coming up this weekend to go sell my books at the La Veta Holiday Crafts Fair. Yes, I never thought of writing books as a craft, but apparently it is. In the dictionary, crafts are defined as “an activity involving skill in making things by hand.” Synonyms are occupation, profession, line of work and pursuit. I don’t make my books by hand, but I do make them “by brain,” so I guess that counts.
By producing a book, I feel like I do put myself out into the world. There are certainly many expenses and risks. I share my life and hope others can relate on various levels. No, I don’t write fiction, I write real life, and cannot imagine writing fiction at this point in time.
I have focused thus far mostly on the many emotional gifts of midlife, a rite of passage no past generations of human beings have ever experienced. I had no awareness of this gift when I experienced a number of personal crises starting in 2001. Being an academic librarian, I read up on this subject, learning about the essential work I would need to do to improve the rest of my life. I learned how midlife change works, and then I got to work changing everything I could.
Most importantly, I learned there really are do-overs BEFORE it’s all over, and I chose to share that knowledge with anyone interested in transforming themselves.
Unfortunately, I have quite a love-hate relationship with selling my work. I love getting out and meeting new people. I love explaining what I write about and why, but whenever money comes into the equation, I become uncomfortable. I suppose I am not alone in that feeling. Nobody likes to feel like someone is selling them something, do they?
But I will attend this new crafts fair and stay as long as I enjoy it. Perhaps I just need more experience in “selling” my ideas and words. Perhaps some day this will begin to feel good…
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T. S. Eliot
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 