So now I'm a Mountain Man?

Alas, I have been sorely remiss in my attention to the blog. Frankly, I had a long dry spell. I would think of things at work, and space them by the time I got home. . . Home. . . We have a new "home". We had grown tired of the apartment complex we were living in, and Janet got on the internet to "find us a new place to live". I wasn't totally against it, I just hated the physical processes involved in moving from one place to another. Maybe (although I have moved myself many, many times) it's because when I was growing up, the "moving men" came and packed us and moved us. All we had to do was stand there and watch, make sure that whatever we planned on taking with us in the car didn't get packed, and stay out of their way. Then we would hop in the car with our games and toys and snacks and drive to our new house. Simple. That's not the way it works when you don't have the cash for a moving company. More on that later.

Anyway, Janet kept finding "places for us to live" and she and Angie would maybe drive by and look at them. If they were a "possible", they would drag me to go look at it. Most were close to where we were, so a move would be a lot of short trips, or fewer if we could borrow/rent a truck or trailer. But, I didn't feel that it would be worth the effort involved just to move two miles away, I guess. So, she started looking for places in Salt Lake County, which would be closer to my work, but less desirable as a place to live. Then, she found a house for rent in an area that we had always (not so) secretly wanted to live. It was close to our favorite fishing lake, and in a small, mountain town. We drove out to look at it on a Saturday (we kinda wanted to get out for a drive anyway) and found it to be a "definite possible". As we were driving back into the Salt Lake Valley from the mountains, we could see a thick layer of "sludge" resting on the city. Right then, I decided that I had had enough of city living. We drove back out the next day, and looked at it again. Granted, it would mean almost an hour of commute time (one way), but the air was clean, there was a mountain for the back yard, and the population density dropped from 3300 people per square mile down to 40 people per square mile. There would actually be BREATHING room! We talked with the landlord, and he said that we were the only people that came back for a second look. I told him that I would get back to him within two days, and we headed back down the mountain to the smog and noise. But only temporarily. I borrowed some money against my 401k, and paid the first, last, and deposit, and we started moving. It took us a week and a half to get all our stuff moved, because I couldn't afford to rent a large truck. Although, we probably spent more than that would have cost just putting gas in the cars to make a couple of trips a day. I was able to scrape enough money together to rent a small truck to haul the large stuff that wouldn't fit in the cars (couch, washer and dryer, beds, etc.) But being able to "stretch out the spending" over two pay periods worked well. I would get off work, run to the apartment and load up the car, head up the mountain, unload, and some days make another trip before falling into bed exhausted, only to repeat it again the next day. Some people might consider us to be crazy, moving from the city (with a 20-minute commute) to a "summer home community" (with a 50-minute commute). I think we would have been crazy not to have made the move. The stress levels are much lower, the air is unbelievably clean, the skies are full of more stars than I ever remembered seeing before, there are deer, elk, moose, raccoons, skunks, foxes and probably more types of wildlife as well, and most importantly, it feels like HOME. It has been many years since I was somewhere that I felt totally at home. When I was growing up, we lived in a small town in Colorado. When Dad got transferred, he and Mom kept a bank account in Colorado, because, for a time, that was where they planned on ending up after Dad retired. Colorado was "home" for Dad. I now understand a little more. I don't know that we will stay in this rental house for a long time. But, I hope to be able to stay in this quiet, peaceful, beautiful area from now on. Of course, I do get some good-natured teasing from some of my co-workers about becoming a "mountain man". Growing my beard back for the winter has only added fuel to it. But that's okay. I'm home.