Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
The Bluesky Art Show is celebrating its first birthday. I didn’t join the party until April but I’ve fully embraced the weekly prompts. It’s given me a manageable challenge to re-bond with photography and writing here on Val in Real Life.
I’m riffing on the open-ended, celebratory theme this week with thoughts about our crazy-ass journey on the way to landing in Silver City. Because in 2019, we were on a path to build a house near Carson City, Nevada.
Cue COVID.
Changing course
The pandemic changed everything. Northern Nevada wasn’t going to work anymore. Our digital business allows us geographic flexibility so it was “open house” on where we wanted to go. (Told you I’m riffing this week.)
We knew we’d stay in the west but beyond that we had some difficult decisions to make. When you can go anywhere, the choices can be fucking overwhelming.
So my dear man created a complex spreadsheet of decision factors. It included things like cost of living, climate, political sensibilities, distance to an airport, crime activity, and medical resources.
We scoured maps, took online quizzes, and did deep internet dives to identify towns to plug into the spreadsheet. Those exercises revealed some acceptable contenders but nothing that truly excited us.
What the process did reveal is that, even though we had the ability to go anywhere, our choices the were actually pretty narrow. Weather alone eliminated snowy northern states. Cost of living dealt another big hit to the possibilities.
The eureka moment
Eventually it became clear our new home state would be New Mexico. But the actual town was still a mystery. We had a small list of places to investigate and began plotting a path to check them out.
Then one day my dear man suddenly pulled out our motorcycling map of New Mexico*. Tucked into the southwest corner of the state, he found a little dot surrounded by twisty roads. That dot, of course, was Silver City—a town neither of us had even heard before, much less visited. It certainly didn’t show up in any of our searching.
As we learned more about the groovy little art town tucked into the bosom of the Gila National Forest, the more intrigued we became. So we high-tailed it to Silver City as soon as we could.
We were on a mission so we left the motorcycles behind in Carson City. Our goal was to travel light and fast. At least as light and fast as possible in our eight fucking tons of rig. It’s all relative, right?
Our intent was to move to this funky little town unless a red flag presented itself. It didn’t. And we began house-hunting two days later.
The rest is history as they say. And it’s a good thing we liked Silver City because we didn’t really have a plan B.
But now we are treated to views like this. I’d say it all worked out.
Bluesky Art Show
This post is inspired by the Bluesky Art Show, a challenge to share artwork surrounding a weekly theme each Saturday.
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