It has been a long time since I wrote in an update from our experiences out here on the Mesa. For the most part, it's been business as usual. Our friends we met up in Eagle's Nest came out and joined us on our parcel while we got some more experience living off-grid and while they tried to decide whether or not to buy a parcel of their own. They came out August 1st and it has just been a whirlwind of things going on.

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To say that this summer was chaotic would be an understatement. We set up our systems, and we made out plans for next steps, and the reality is that we have made very little "progress" since the last update because of a series of unfortunate and unforeseeable events. I would be lying if I said it was all easy to deal with and not something that felt like the 12 Labors of Hercules. Through most of our new experiences we retained our resolve and rolled with the punches as they say, but at some point it just became a relentless battering of our spirits and we hit a low point where we just really questioned everything we were doing. But, we picked ourselves up again. Until the next round of uncontrollable circumstances revealed themselves to us. We have always been okay, we were never in any real trouble, I don't want to paint an inaccurate very vague picture of our summer experiences, but it wouldn't be out of reach to say that the majority of the summer has been very stressful. Challenging, in a number of different ways.

We have actually been working through more challenges as recently as this week. We have had enough challenges that about two weeks ago we started looking at the possibility of changing gears and starting up a homestead in a different place entirely - Vermont, to be specific. We had a fire scare out on the Mesa- a small fire, contained within a single day, started just about 30 miles from here and we could see the smoke. It was a real awakening for us, and we had to take a moment to make some assessments. What would we need to do in order to evacuate if necessary? Where would we go? What if all of our stuff is burned up and lost? Would we come back? Would we start from scratch again if forced to? The most important of these questions turned out to be the last three in that list. Our answers, both of them, were "no".

a beautiful sunset on a sage covered mesa with a low cluster of clouds and a visible downpouring of rain

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I was shocked at the immediateness of my feelings on the matter, and I honestly didn't understand why. We took some time to really think through it and understand what would make it so easy for us to shut the door on this experience and start over somewhere else, again. As it turns out, we were both unsure of the landscape as the place we want to call "home," we inferred this to be related to the extreme difference between this land in New Mexico and the woods of northeastern Ohio that we both grew up in. We were unsure about being so remote, and yet so exposed, on a mesa where nothing really grows above chest height. We were unsure about how we could care for gardens or animals, both of which we want to have as we build a mini-homestead. We concluded that the mesa is place of off-grid living, but off-grid homesteading is a different way of life entirely; and this environment isn't particularly hospitable to those endeavors.

So, we looked at properties, we browsed the country for the possibility of buying a green home - an off-grid home with property that homestead comfortably. We found some options  dotted around the country, and a few particularly appealing ones in the northeast -- New England area. We have always considered this travel experience to be an opportunity for us to decide if we love New England or the Southwest of this country the most, and here that question came up again. We did in fact pursue information about financing, about purchasing, but ultimately we discovered that this move would not be something we could achieve right now. So, we basically decided we would stay here for the winter and save save save so we could come out swinging in the spring and buy our homestead, but keep this land for recreation because we do really love New Mexico and it's landscape.

view of a sage covered mesa with mountains in the background and a large dust cyclone in the foreground

Then more stressful events occurred and they were extreme enough that Alex was ready to hitch up our camper and drive away from Taos without looking back. To be abundantly clear, that response always felt wrong to me, but I didn't know why and I was willing to go along with Alex's wishes. But, like the processing we did when the fire was nearby, we needed to pump the breaks on the emotional responses and try to understand what made the most sense. My gut told me, I am not done with New Mexico yet, and it isn't done with me either. Alex is feeling homesick because it's becoming fall and that is our favorite time of year back east, and I think that contributed a lot to the urge to bolt. But, beyond that... there's just been so much not great stuff happening this summer that it felt easier to just haul out than to buck up and muster on through it. On the 12th the plan was to leave, on the 14th we decided to slow down and not just impulsively take off, yesterday we found out that we truly couldn't work a financing deal to move to a homestead in New England right now and we decided that we would double down on setting up here for the winter, hunkering down, and saving money (as we had originally planned).

We talked last night about the possibility of buying homestead-friendly land near here- up in Eagle's Nest or Angelfire, where the elevation keeps the temperatures cool and there are lovely almost Coloradan mountain forests. I didn't want to run away from New Mexico without being certain that it couldn't provide what we were looking for. We chose to buy this land for a reason, something in this place grabbed onto us and connected with us in a way that no other place did, and I couldn't ignore that truth. So, I browsed the land available for sale and thought about it.

I woke up today still feeling really crummy about the whole situation. I was emotionally exhausted, mentally exhausted, and physically felt like I was being weighed down to the earth by about a ton of extra weight. I could barely get up out of the bed to make coffee - and it doesn't help that I have slept like garbage for a few weeks now because of all this stress. But I just felt miserable, and helpless to know what to do next. So, I scheduled a vacation excursion for us. We are going to get some space from the area, (we are literally leaving the state), to get showers in a full size shower, do laundry in machines for the first time since June 30th, and hopefully sleep, deeply, for a full 8 hours or more, in a room that has a door. It's really the little things that make it vacation for us. We are also going to luxuriate in a hot tub in the evenings and process some more of what our next moves look like. To say we have a lot of options would be an understatement... but a few things we have considered as of today include:

Stay for the winter and buy land in the spring in New England, and keep this land

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Stay for the winter and buy land in the spring in New England, and sell this land

Stay for the winter and buy land in the spring near Taos, and keep this land for recreational uses

Leave for the winter and decide where we want to go in the Spring and continue RV-ing

Stay for the winter and buy a tiny house in the spring to park on this land, thereby freeing up the camper for travel again

Stay for the winter, take the camper to North in the spring and camp until the end of fall before deciding what to do next

Stay for the winter, buy a Class A or C asap and either winter here, and go north in the spring or be ready to leave and travel over winter

Stay for the winter, buy a Skoolie and commit to traveling for a lot longer while we consider more deeply where we want to live and why, and hold onto this land

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I mean, the possible combinations... there are so many ways we could play this out. The only things I know for certain are this: I want to have a small homestead at some point, We don't want to go back to being on-grid if we can avoid it,  If we stay here we will save a lot of money very quickly, Our camper as it exists right now is not in any way road ready or easy to travel in (mostly because of the fridge), We don't know if we should live in one place all the time or live a lifestyle that is a bit more transient, We still love New Mexico, We still long to spend more time in New England, We don't regret any of the choices we have made so far.

One of the things Alex says pretty often is, "we seek out novelty," but I think that's wrong and I told him so tonight. We don't get bored and move on casually to the next exciting thing... we are constantly processing and thinking and learning about new ways to live life differently (in a better way, in my opinion) and every time we have made a change of course it has been because of our life experience and increased knowledge. We don't seek out novelty, we seek out the next step in our steady progress toward realizing the full picture of what we want from this life. So, while it isn't always easy, and it is often very exhausting, I would rather live with this proclivity for change than stagnate and become complacent with a life I am not excited to live.

And tonight is the first night in weeks that I think I might get a good night's sleep. I feel very calm and very comfortable with the awareness I feel I now have about where we are, what are choices are, and what we are leaning towards.

I am also aware that that last detail could be completely different by the time we get back here on Tuesday next week, and that's okay too. We will figure it out. We are good. We, as a family are solid and comfortable with existing in this space together. The rest will come as it's meant to do.

Changing Winds on the Mesa

The Chaos Sweeps In

Storms Shake the Ground

Another Whirlwind

The Dust Begins to Settle

The Calm After the Storm... I hope.