The WHY of It
Moving: It doesn't make sense on paper, but community is everything.
Why do we make transitions. How do we know whether it’s right?
I’ve wanted to write to you all—instead I’ve been tactile, packing boxes, scooting them across the concrete floor, sorting through 5,000 mason jars and ponytail holders and file folders, baby clothes, and kitchen spoons, creating goodbye ritual after ritual, walking the land barefoot before the snow sets in, stepping outside at dusk to hear the bugling elk, soothing our dogs who are confused by all the change, narrating for our children what is happening and hearing and making space for their narration as it unfolds. A potent time. I want to be HERE. This morning, early, still dark, I found a moment to send out my bat signal to you. If you’ve followed my work or read my books, you know I’ve lived on 20-acres of land in the southwest corner of the Gallatin Valley of Montana for fifteen years. We arrived with reverence and we are leaving with the deepest of reverence. I have a profound relationship with these trees, this hill, the elk and the particular rhythms of this place. That sentence sounds sterile to me because it cannot ever incapsulate the depth. For a year or longer, the earth has been rumbling up messages that it might be time for our family to go. I could hear it; not here anymore, there is another place. I resisted what I heard because how could we leave? How?
Long and short. The corner we live on has become increasingly busy with traffic and accidents and loud truck brakes at night; large houses are going up with owners who don’t knock on a neighbor’s door to introduce themselves; people no longer wave when we stand at the mailbox and they speed speed speed by; a high-end glamping business has cropped up only a few doors down. The vibe is doing a rapid 180, with the exception of our across-the-road wonderful neighbors, Willem and Diane, who have been here forever and taught us both about how the wildlife moves here and how elder-hood and a super vibrant life are not mutually exclusive. Places change. It is what is it. Plus we are being called to community.
Not far.
Across the valley.
To the northeast corner, where most of our loved ones here live.
Chris and I double-down and got very intentional.
If we could dream wildly, what would we dream up?
We wanted proximity to community. #1.
We wanted to be able to walk to multiple neighbors.
We wanted to be able to walk or bike into the mountains (I felt sheepish asking for something so grand). We also wanted a smaller land footprint.
We wanted to be closer to my parents who move into town, closer to our friends, closer to our activities, close enough for Chris to bike to work, closer to the pulse.
I wanted to be “on someone’s way” instead of “at the end of a long road.”
We are currently not on the way to anything. I joked with a friend that you have to pack a snack to drive all the way out here. I wanted to be on the way to the trailhead, on the way to town, stop in, door is always open, dinner table has an extra place set for anyone, fire circle is burning, come by, our home is your home.
In early September, the girls spent the night with my parents so Chris and I could commune with each other and the land in the dark—hours spent lying facedown on the earth, crying, laughing, listening.
The trees told me about the ‘prayer river’ of trees in this valley.
They assured me of and showed me the underground connection.
They said, “It’s okay, go, it is time.”
They told me that they need people to keep the ‘prayer river’ OPEN, open, open.
They told us each separately what our family needs.
We heard the same thing (!!): containment, huddle up with others, like the elk.
The trees said, “Watch and listen for the trees there, they will tell you.”
The next morning, we were scheduled to look at the log cabin.
We ask the real estate agent if we could walk the land before going into the log cabin, and so… in and out of the trees, ducking, rising, touching bark, hello trees, hello, hello, are we the right people for this spot, please show us, yes or no? Immediate. This place, yes, welcome.
How did it happen so easily?
On paper, none of it makes sense: capital gains tax (goodness), 20 acres to 2.5 acres, handmade modern house built in 2014 to a log cabin built in 1984 that needs tons of work, wild land with all prey and predators (lions, bears and wolves) to a small sub-ridge in a more people-dense area. No one would call this an “upgrade.”
But Chris and I have always been excellent at vision together. We co-create in the seer-scape and I do believe that’s part of our subterranean contract as partners. We saw the 140 trees on the small sub-ridge. We saw the truest wealth of being able to walk to your soul friend’s house 1-mile away. We saw the dirt road network and the trailhead into the mountains right there. We saw the potential to make what we want instead of buying into something turn-key ready. We saw the value of living in a neighborhood of close-by people who work in and contribute to this town and valley, as opposed to what seems to be growing around us now. We saw the containment and hug energy of this new land. We saw a place that is “on the way” for many of our loved ones.
Fabric.
When we made the decision a month ago, before we told anyone, I walked the trails behind our house weeping. I still do. I can’t not. We know every tree (the Sister Trees, the Wind Tree, the Climbing Tree, the Mama Tree, the Papa Tree, the Grandmother Tree), every bush, my girls know the names of all the berries and flowers, they grew up crawling here and speaking their first words to the hill. Thank you, thank you, thank you dear land for holding us. We tried to steward you well. I hope we did. Thank you, thank you.
The people who bought it, our adjacent neighbors, are integrating it back into one “piece” of land. At our last meet-up we laughed and shrieked together about how he had encountered a mountain lion face to face in the middle of the day. The hand off is kind and soulful and, of course, there’s no actual hand-off because the land doesn’t belong to any of us. We can own it on paper but it isn’t ours.
We also got a chance to meet the owner of our new place—an older man. We shook his hand and thanked him. He shared how he and his brother put the wood ceiling up together, how he planted each of the Doug firs and watered them like babies 40 years ago, how one of the valley’s best back-in-day stone masons made the chimney, and how wonderful every single neighbor is, “good people in every direction” he said. We stood outside, under the eye of the mountain, and told him that Chris had built our house and that it was special for us to move from our beloved place to a place that has been so loved. Gawd. It could not have been more sweet. We may have all had a tear in our eyes.
Today, the 21st, is his last day there and our first day moving boxes in.
I can’t stop thinking about him and what a transition he is also undergoing.
It’s a loss for everyone.
With every new beginning, there is a death of some kind.
I will always grieve this place, this land that raised us into the middle part of life.
More this week and next about the HOW of our leaving—what we are doing as we leave and how we are entering a new place.
Heart, heart,
This is so inspiring Molly. I open every writing you send with relish, knowing the sisterhood within. I don’t do this with anyone else’s news I’ve never met. Thank you for your story. I hear the pain, the hope and certainty. Sending love x
You’re making a thoughtful respectful transition. Thanks for sharing the process with us.