LIVING IN THE BED OF A PICKUP : May 2019

A few months ago we made a big decision. We decided to sell our home on Whidbey Island....our Brigadoon on Whidbey Island and have Nuestra Casa (our home in Mesa, AZ) be our sort of full-time home.

The reason that Nuestra Casa will be only sort-of a full time home is that many months of the year we haven't been living in any home--instead we have been living in the bed of our pickup or, now, where it or our Desert Rat (Toyota 4Runner) can take us.

There were many considerations. One is that to have two homes seems wasteful. It just feels uncomfortable. Another consideration is that we love the desert, but instead of having to drive 1500 miles to get to our remote desert areas, we will now be only a few hours from the best spots in the nation to camp and hike.

We are also getting older, and living for 4-5 months in our camper was becoming too difficult. We reasoned that if we had a home closer to our desert areas then we could sneak out there for 1-2 weeks, and then scoot back home and take it a bit easier for 1-2 weeks (including having a real shower), then repeat.

We also realized that we needed to do the downsizing thing. Both of us are good at letting possessions accumulate, and having a large home (and now two of them) just fed into that. Everybody needs to do it sometime, and we realized that it was past our time to do this. Moving is an opportunity to look at every possession and ask whether it is time for it to find another home, especially when one is moving into a small home like Nuestra Casa.

Finally, we love the sun. In Nuestra Casa there are 300 sunny days each year. In the PNW there are 2-3 (OK, a bit of an exaggeration). But what we found by living in Nuestra Casa for these past 6 1/2 months is that we could get outside to swim and cycle EVERY day. For our health, we need this.

The hard part? There are two. Being more distant from our families, children and grandchildren. That is the hardest part. Second, we love this home and life. The problem is that we only love it for 2-3 months of the year, when the weather is nice and sunny. May to mid-July are awesome in our Whidbey Island home. Great weather and all of the tropical birds are here. Plants are growing and looking beautiful. It is heaven on earth.

But even late summer doesn't do it for us in the PNW. The birds are leaving, plants and flowers are leaving, and for the past few years, we have been leaving with them.

Our Whidbey Island home, our beautiful Whidbey Island home that is filled with the most powerful and wonderful memories we can imagine, sold yesterday.

We cried.

We know we are going to feel the loss for a very long time, but we don't feel regrets. It was the right decision for two people who are either in their 70s or close to it. We need to simplify our lives. In Nuestra Casa everything we need in terms of physicians/dentists/specialists is within walking distance. Walking distance. No more setting the alarm for 5:00 a.m. in order to take the ferry and then driving 35 miles into downtown Seattle for a doctor's appointment.

No more mowing an acre of grass. In fact, no more mowing any grass. No more cutting up trees with a chain saw. Now we will just move a little dial on the wall for heat. It's a miracle! You should try it. We can save our energy for activities that are strenuous, but more gentle on our bodies, like swimming, cycling, hiking, dancing, ping pong, and walking.

We are sitting together this morning while writing this, in front of our window in what we call our "bird room," which looks out onto our front yard. There are dozens of birds flitting every which way, including many hummingbirds. If we sit here for an hour we will surely see a deer or two in the yard--this time of year they are frequently hovering over their just-born fawns.

We are going to miss this home so much.