Moving day

Today I helped friends pack boxes and carry furniture and it was almost sweet, because it was not Brad and me who moved house. We have moved into and out of a number of houses, apartments, condos and the Airstream in the four years we have been partners. Oh, and there have been storage units of various shapes and sizes, too, across three different states.

How has this convoluted, exhausting but adventurous series of domicile relocations come to pass in so short a span of time? After all, we're not gypsies, traveling nurses, hippies in a van or even people who travel lightly. We love the chance to explore different horizons but love do so with our toys, tools and fabulous changes of clothes.

The official date for the beginning of our relationship is the opening ceremonies for the Whistler, B.C. winter Olympics in February 2010. That fall I had finished the process of applying to six MFA programs in creative writing and waited with no patience to hear back from admissions. As winter deepened, the connection I was building with Brad became even more entangled. We talked about where we might end up if I got accepted to any of the schools, and what we might do otherwise.

Each of us had separately considered leaving Taos for new opportunities, so when the door to graduate school for the next year's entry closed, we were still determined to find a new home. Brad had been in New Mexico for nearly seventeen years, and I'd spent twelve there with a few breaks for travels. We loved the land, our communities and indeed most of what we did there, but we still felt compelled to go explore.

The spring before we left, I had two weeks with two great friends skiing in Utah on spring passes at Snowbird. We camped out in various rooms in KOD's house, and he is a generous and lovely person who has become kin since Brad introduced us. One afternoon just before we drove back to Taos, we were at the bar and I met this gal from Jackson. Our conversation meandered to my town hunt and she suggested it would be an amazing place for a couple who follow the seasons and benefit from tourism.

So, we chose Jackson, Wyoming. That's four years together, three years here and counting the moves:

1. Brad into Mack's rental in Taos
2. Brad and Mack to Wyoming with the 1962 Airstream - dividing up goods between trailer and storage
3. out of the Airstream and into an apartment the next fall

Repeat steps 3 and 2 in reverse, then 2 and 3 again, then move Mack to Taos and Brad into a house in Jackson. That's a great deal of back and forth, over the hill (our storage unit is in Idaho, and we have one in NM, too), in and out of a 20' trailer, and then into and out of whatever winter housing has the least expensive to most habitable ratio.

We have done this because we wanted an adventure, cannot live in the aluminum bread box of a house in the winter, but also because Jackson has a lack of affordable housing. We'd rather pay $600 a month for our rent and utilities and live doing a delicate tiny home dance than share our space with multiple people in a small house. Much of our summer is given over to work anyway. When I have free time I am on my bike, at the pool, in the library, or buzzed from caffeine at the coffee shop.

We spent the past winter apart: I went to Taos and found a two bedroom house I could loved and could afford. I turned my kitchen table - a work bench made from a door and some 2"x4"s - into an art workspace and fell in love with having my own home again. That may be the next adventure, a home base where we can create, grow a garden, renovate the raggedy Airstream, and have fun making a baby. For now, though, I don't have to move anywhere until September, and I can't be happier.

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