Retiring to the Frontier: Part 1

Our friends back in Southern California have said they couldn't see themselves moving out of state to someplace completely new and at first I couldn't, either.  I'd spent all but my first five years in suburban Orange County, California, a childhood, adolescence and young adulthood filled with trips to the beach, to shopping centers (and later malls), a five to fifteen minute drive to whatever I wanted or needed. Orange groves dotted the landscape between postwar housing tracts, and that was all we needed.

Moving to rural inland SoCal in our mid twenties for T's first teaching job took some adjusting. Farther from the beach, from stores and from our friends, it was now a 37 mile drive to college, where I was finishing my degree and teaching credential. but getting to Orange County was a smooth 30 minutes on a good day, not that big a deal. We liked living in our little yellow house on the hill, looking out over the citrus groves, red tailed hawks circling overhead, the manic sounds of coyotes howling and yipping into the evening darkness. We were spoiled for country living.

By the time we were ready to retire, our country life had been spoiled. Horsethief Canyon Ranch and Sycamore Creek housing developments moved in where citrus groves had been. I missed the scent of orange and lemon blossoms on my drive to work, and my 12 minute drive to work became 30 minutes, then 40 minutes, until finally I planned for an hour just in case the freeway had a problem. It took forever just to go grocery shopping, fighting the traffic, finding a parking space, waiting in long lines. Errands took hours. Cars clogged the roads. We were living in the fastest growing area in the country.  Where it had always been hot in inland SoCal, now it was also humid since the new homes had grassy lawns with automatic sprinklers watering nonstop. And I don't do hot and humid very well.

 So we knew it was time to move,  looked around, and found we could afford to live in New Mexico, a place we had visited so often it felt like home. It helped a lot to have Southern California Edison purchase our little home for a project that has never been completed.

Our new 'hood is census designated as "frontier, " which means we're far from hospitals, food sources and jobs, with around three persons per square mile.

This is the first of three posts introducing our frontier and how we adjusted to a different culture, found new people and became much more self reliant.

Middle Aged Crazy or What the Hell Are They Thinking?

 I really don't know what we were thinking when we said, "We'll buy it!"  It was a beautiful day, the light just right, the same light that Georgia O'Keeffe, that cow skull decorator, painter of flowery genitalia, was drawn to, sparking an influx of artists to New Mexico that continues to this day.  A soft breeze, almost zephyrlike, made itself barely audible through the oaks and pines.  The air smelled sweet.  At night we could see every star in the sky.

So we bought a 100 acre piece of property in Northern New Mexico with an almost new log cabin, really, truly in the middle of Wheretheheck, Nowhere.  The closest town is a village, population a little over 26 as of the last census.  The next most populous town is the county seat, with a whopping 1500 individuals living in its zip code.  The big town is an hour and twelve minutes away.  That's where we will buy our groceries and maybe see a movie once in a while.

T and I are retired high school teachers who have enjoyed living in the country.  When our farming neighborhood of 30 years, in a rare rural pocket of Southern California, started to visibly display all the trappings of suburbia including mind-numbing traffic, we started getting antsy.  Eminent domain shoved us into a situation where we had to get out anyway, so we decided, "Why the hell not?"  We didn't need to worry about schools, or jobs, or if our kids would grow up weird living really out in the boonies.  So we are moving.

This blog will be the chronicle of this new chapter in our lives, and I hope you will lurch along with us on our New Mexican adventure.