Three Saturdays
Just 2 Saturdays ago, we were frantically finalizing a house sale...
Our plan to rent it out fully-furnished was usurped by a neighbour casually asking to buy it instead. Suddenly we had 10 (ten!) days to sort literally everything we own into 3 piles - bring with us, store in the basement, or sell/give away. Over half of our possession ended up in that third pile - a radical letting go of nice but unnecessary Stuff combined with a frenetic management of over 30 Craigslist postings (and all the spam bots that flood in because of those). How incredibly liberating (and exhausting) to winnow down to just a 10x12 storage space! (the photo was just the beginning of the stockpiling).
Just last Saturday, we had completed a 2-day escape...
...through MN, Iowa and an unexpectedly beautiful Nebraska to collapse at a friend's house in Boulder. They fed us, took us on refreshing hikes from their mountain-top perch, and let us exhale just a little. On the first day we just put miles between us and the mayhem of house-selling, but day two we took smaller highways, detoured through prosperous or dilapidated small towns, visited an historic Pony Express station, and celebrated with the most indulgent ice-cream cheesecake snickerdoodle sundae imaginable (if you can't imagine, here's a photo). Combined with recharging stops every 3 hours, this is the type of slow, exploratory travel we love most.
This Saturday, we have completed the first week of our house-sit...
...in Frisco Colorado. The house fronts onto the wetlands and water reservoir (see sunrise photo at top), with mountains in all directions. Two foxes cut through the yard every morning. Linus (the dog) takes us hiking every day for 2-3 hours - steep mountain paths with vistas over the whole world - plus am and pm poop walks through the wetlands, so we are outside a lot. Sarah is on a bike ride up Copper Mountain (maybe all the way to Vail) while I write this - we are inspired and Drawn to be in these mountains in a way that flat St. Paul never called to us (and Monteverde did). Put that high on the list of retirement community criteria - nature that inspires and nourishes.
If there's any frustration, it's that the days are still too packed. Sarah is recovering from the weeks of little work while we packed. I am trying to write regularly for this blog and a Creative Non-Fiction Writing class, and also have started a 15-hour/week graduate program through Cornell online. I have completed two of the twenty long-unread books I brought, but haven't managed to dive into the piles of projects - old journals, foreign money, music, back taxes, even Netflix. It is only week one, but I wonder how long before I can truly transform from a typical worker, structuring and evaluating his days around Things To Do lists, into a person who follows more natural rhythms and callings. When will the physical freedom and space that Frisco's mountains so generously offer translate into the inner freedom and space this retired soul is searching for?
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Currently in...
Philadelphia
Heading to...
Costa Rica (Monteverde) till Christmas, then Thailand (Chiang Mai), Vietnam (Hoi Ann, Feb-Mar). Please share any sites, people or ideas by email.
Beautiful area. Enjoy. If you head up past Keystone, there are some great hikes that can take you up the continental divide. You can see all the way down to Pike’s peak.
There are so many hike and bike trails here, we don’t need to go any further than 15 minutes in any direction. I did hike part of the CDT this summer in Montana, beautiful! Perhaps a future longer hike – this was just an 8 day loop in the Anaconda section.