WELCOME

I wish I could tell you that I live somewhere exotic, like Big Sur or a small island off the coast of Maine. But I can’t. In reality I live in southern Arizona, just outside of Tucson. Which, in many ways, is better than exotic. It’s comfortable. The people are diverse and vibrant. It has a small-town feel with all the amenities of a large city. 9 months out of the year Tucson’s weather is fantastic. And during those three summer months, we are often cooler than Minnesota. Our monsoons are more fun to watch than Netflix. And the winters are supposed to be brilliant. This coming one will be my first.

 

I’m not totally new to the Southwest. I moved to Pen’s quest house in Santa Fe when I retired from my job as the Managing Editor of a trade magazine in D.C. That was about five years ago. It wasn’t a hard transition for me mainly because I had completely fallen in love with the Southwest, and Pen has been my best friend since I was fourteen. And I had lived in D.C. for all of my adult life, so, it wasn’t something I had to think about.

 

It was a good decision. Santa Fe is great. The landscape begs to be noticed and appreciated. There are plenty of free activities. But it is crowded. And young. It didn’t take long for me to feel old and in the way; to feel simple compared to the deeply conscious and spiritually advanced. So one night during the pandemic, Pen and I decided we should collect ten friends together and start a community someplace more affordable than Santa Fe. Someplace simpler. 

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Long story short, we got in a car and drove around the West until we landed in an area outside of Tucson. Pen bought a large parcel of land surrounded by mountains, hills, and desert. We spent the next year on zoom calls with mostly Pen’s friends, plotting and planning. The more we drank, the more reasonable the whole thing sounded. We were going to join forces, form a community, and take care of each other. “It’s my dream,” each of us pronounced at one point or another during these calls. (Are they still called calls?)

 

The end result? Five of us actually followed through and we are all living together in a small ranch house with an attached bunk house and a barn stacked full of our miscellaneous crap. What could possibly go wrong?