Nomad’s Rest

Once our efforts to buy land in Maine fell through we hit the road again in search of a place to settle down and call home. Our search took us all over the US and Canada. We consulted psychics, astrologers, threw darts at maps, drew names of states out of a hat, flipped coins, you name it, we tried it. We got close in northeast Washington state where we put a bid on a piece of property but that also didn’t pan out.

We were beginning to think that we would never find our place when we stopped in a small town, call Westcliffe, in south central Colorado which some traveler friends of ours had told us about. They had been urging us, for years, to check out this town but we had never been near it at the right time of year. In the Fall of 2003 we were doing a rock show, not far away, so we decided to drive through the town so our friends would stop asking us if we had been there yet. Hmmmmm! It was gorgeous! A wide green valley dotted with cattle ranches bordered by the 14,000 foot, snow-capped peaks of the Sangre de Cristo mountains on one side and the smaller, rolling hills of the Wet Mountains on the other. The small town’s one main street was lined with shops, restaurants, a library, health food store, bowling alley, movie theatre and lots of art galleries. It was peaceful and charming!! This could be the place!!

We stopped at the local rock shop and asked about the town while Sky sold them some of his stock. We walked the streets and perused the properties for sale posted in the real estate offices windows. Since we were on our way back East for a few months stay with my son, we figured we would come back in the Spring and check out some properties.

True to my impatient nature, I found that I couldn’t wait until Spring. As soon as we got to New Hampshire I was on the internet searching for properties in Westcliffe. In November, we contacted one of the real estate companies, lined up properties to view and flew to Colorado for to take a look.

I had one specific property in mind, that had caught my eye, and when I saw it I knew we had finally found our home. Of course Sky was a bit skeptical as he had always said he didn’t want to maintain a long driveway and didn’t want to be remote but this property had 8 miles of an unmaintained, gravel “driveway” and was 12 miles from the highway!!

BUT, it was a beautiful, peaceful, 75 acres adjoining national forest, with a very “rustic” cabin nestled among the aspens and perched at the fork of two streams AND the price was right! With minimal bargaining on price and after years of searching, we finally had our “Nomad’s Rest”.

Since winter was coming on, we figured we would move in the following March after we finished our rock and mineral show in New Mexico. Being from the East, when Spring usually starts to arrive in March, we didn’t count on being almost immediately snowed in with a foot of snow with our 2 wheel drive truck!! Welcome to life at almost 10,000 feet, where spring snow storms are the norm!! Also, unbeknownst to us, spring snow storms, when they melt, bring 12 miles of mud that is harder to get through than snow!! It was 2 weeks before we were able to get out and we were wondering what we had done!!! Maybe we needed to be nomad’s once again!!

Thus was the start to our now 14 year odyssey living off grid with no running water, at 9400 feet in the Colorado mountains where our nearest neighbor is a wolf refuge!!

Until next time……how can you step out of YOUR comfort zone and Re-Wild YOUR life!!!