As it turns out, it is 2 New Chapters…
I hope you will join me! Today I will share this first of these…and next time I will share another “Next Chapter”!
Imagine my surprise after I wrote about embracing your next chapter when I realized that I have not only one next chapter but two!! I have been alluding to the fact that I have something on the horizon….and I want to share…because I want you all to be a part of it. I want to share all the aspects of my new adventure. Back at the end of January …in fact my birthday weekend I sat around the dinner table with my family….we talked about what might be next. We speculated about future things to come. We talked about other friends and extended family who were relocating out of California. Being 4th generation Californian I have seen a myriad of changes. I have watched as suburbia was built and the 95% all ranches of oranges, lemons and avocados turned into homes and shopping malls. I have watched the entire freeway system I learned to drive on go from being vast and vacant to bumper to bumper gridlock.
I have shared dozens of pictures and stories of time in the Sierras (the tall snowy peaks that form the spine down the eastern side of California). I have spent countless days in every season in the mountains and lakes of Mammoth Lakes, Ca. Owning a home there since 1994 has afforded an escape from the bumper -to- bumper traffic on the 405. But as my family reflected …even Mammoth has changed …the streets are crowded, the trails have hundreds you pass while hiking or skiing and there is really no get away. The refuge that once was a reprieve from the craziness of life has become more of the same.
Moving to Montana
In a conversation over dinner, I decided to put my home in Mammoth on the market and go to Montana to look for something new. This is an idea I had entertained intermittently, and I casually explored South East Idaho and Western Wyoming previously. But my family has vacationed and loved Montana for the last several years and at their prompting I put Mammoth on the market, got on a plane and looked at 20 houses over three days. Fast forward and I put an offer on a home, accepted an offer on Mammoth and proceeded through the inspections phase.
Knowing that there was an enormous amount of things to pack in Mammoth (it had been the resting place for all things that I wanted to save but had no place for during my last year’s Covid Construction project)….ugh…now I had to face the music…I started through stuff with a vengeance. And I still am confronting it all!
As I was on an early morning flight back to actually see the house I was in the middle of purchasing, I had this wave of doubt flood over me….what am I doing? Why am I selling the home I have had so many memories in? Is it going to be too cold? I don’t know anyone! Where will I even find furniture to fill this place? I won’t have a house to able to go up to Mammoth to ski!
Then I landed….it was 50 degrees! I never needed a coat (and it’s first of March). I spent 2 ½ hours just going through the home imagining having coffee at the fireplace in the bedroom with views of the Rockies and deer in the yard.
I visited favorite little shops in Bigfork and the ladies could not have been more welcoming encouraging me and sharing how they had just moved there in the last year or two and reassuring I will love it. I felt like I was already making friends. The Flathead Lake area is a beautiful spot!
I still don’t know how the internet is all going to work out…But I am believing there will be clean air, wildlife, new community with wonderful warm friends ….I am off to a new adventure! Anew chapter for sure. I will keep you posted!!!
