When I first felt it, I tried to write it off as burnout. I wanted to believe that what I needed was a vacation, a good cry, and a drink. That wasn’t the case. The life I’d built for myself was no longer in alignment with my core values. Even though I had a deep knowing that the yearning I felt wasn’t going anywhere, my excitement was mixed with confusion. How could my perspective on my life change so completely this fast? The way I wanted to live and raise my family was suddenly the opposite of what I’d been putting my resources and effort towards for over a decade. My worldview had shifted dramatically in 2020 and 2021. In the final months of 2021, binge listening to rewilding, homesteading, herbalism and freebirth podcasts at my desk had me feverishly examining my options. The stories of other people, real people, living the way I someday hoped to were now at the forefront of my consciousness. I was suddenly convinced that it couldn’t wait for someday.
Looking back, this journey actually began with deciding to attend U.C. Davis for college. My parents were both successful professionals, and my only acceptable path was to go to college and then pop onto the hamster wheel of a career path with clear advancement opportunities. Which is exactly what I did. I left Orange County, California and followed my love of horses to Davis to ride on their equestrian team and pursue a winemaking degree, which was in the college of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. I had chosen to leave the city lifestyle I had always known and take my most rural option. At that time this was my radical leap into wildness. People at Davis kept their horses in pastures and paddocks, not the 12ftx12ft stalls I was used to. We went on trail rides, swimming with our horses in the local creeks. We galloped through fields and jumped over logs. This was unprecedented in my world. And the equestrian culture was only the beginning. I lived in a dorm that was across the street from a cow pasture, and I was surrounded by more open space than I’d ever had access to. It was also my introduction to outdoor adventure culture. I met avid campers, hikers, and plant scientists. I went to farmer’s markets, rode my bike, and had classes outside in the student vineyards. The first years there were spent in personal growth and bliss. Then the lessons I was being taught started to sink in. I learned that agriculture is not nature, and how many problems there are with monoculture, land use, and conventional farming inputs and practices. But it was easy enough to put all that into the outskirts of my consciousness, at least at that time.
After graduation I built a career in the wine industry that set me up for success within the systems of our society. I started out working at a small winery but found that the hours were long and the work physically grueling for low pay and without any viable advancement opportunities. So, I left and compromised my vision of working outside of an office for an easier and bigger paycheck. Once I had established myself in the California corporate wine sphere, I bought a house with a 30-year mortgage, paid for all the proper insurances, contributed to my 401k, bought into the Stock Market, went to the doctor, financed vacations and home improvements on credit cards, had car payments, and was prepared to pay for someone else to raise my children while I was at work. I believed I could snuggle up into the corporate fold like nestling into a cozy blanket and be safe. But I was never actually able to convince myself to feel safe. I was deeply anxious and insecure. What if I lost my job? What if the parent company shut down the winery I worked at? And a dozen other scenarios along those lines. My life felt outside of my control. I had a lot of financial obligations and understood that if I didn’t make payments the Bank would take my house. I was a few mistakes away from losing everything. It wasn’t truly mine. Plus, I sensed that selling the majority of my time to make a corporation money wasn’t my highest calling. Underneath it all I remembered that conventional agriculture is ruining our health and the planet. And I remembered that I was at my happiest pushing the boundaries of my personal relationship to the wild Earth. But then again, I had a wonderful job that paid me well and respected me and my work. I have to admit to loving so much of the day-to-day fun of being an up-and-coming corporate fat cat. And I love winemaking! Walking the line between science and art, tasting wine every day, and being involved in a fast growing and innovative production plant was really fun! Even working in an office was stimulating in that it had introduced me to so many people and ideas. Listening to them share their varied life experiences expanded my world view. Still, I sensed that selling the majority of my time to make a corporation money wasn’t my highest calling. I would sit in my small backyard in a tiny cul-de-sac listening to the noise of the busy streets and feel discontent. My heart yearned for nature.
Then COVID hit. Like so many people, I experienced profound change at the hands of the pandemic. For me it lit a fire under my ass and propelled me out of my corporate haze. I remember the first day I worked from home. Spring is a beautiful time of year in Sacramento, where I lived. The warm rays of sunshine were dancing in a cloudless blue sky. I gathered my supplies and set up a work station on my backyard patio. I spent time outside and felt joy. Over time, my nervous system started to relax. I was living in an energetic state that I hadn’t accessed in a decade. Working from home also opened up a reality where I could actually balance my work and personal lives. I had a successful pesticide free garden because I had time to manually remove and squash all the aphids that had infested everything years prior. I started drying and processing the herbs and peppers I was growing into tea and spices. I was able to keep a clean house, and got into a routine of stretching and meditating. My houseplants finally lived. And most importantly, I came to realize just how much pleasure and purpose working my garden and tending to home life gave me. I started to question sending my future kids to daycare. I started to question having all these expensive and stressful overhead costs. I was questioning my entire way of life and viewing modern society as a house of cards on the brink of collapse. Our food systems are poisonous, inhumane, and in jeopardy. Our government is both incompetent and corruptly placed in the pockets of the banks and large corporations. Our for-profit healthcare systems are financially predatory and have no incentive to actually provide a path to wellness. We are taxed far beyond any appropriate level without any quality returns or accountability.
Eventually, my work pulled me back into the office full time to sit in meetings behind plexiglass and wear masks all day. The way it was done irked me, but a deeper truth is that being a cog in the corporate machine, and participating in modern systems, no longer worked for me. Illusions were shattered. I had also come to realize just how much pleasure working my garden and tending to home life gave me. I started to question sending my kids to daycare so I could work. I started to question having a mortgage and what I thought of as “smart debts”. I was questioning everything. The more I paid attention the more I could see that I couldn’t trust these systems to support my best interests. And I certainly didn’t want to work in an office full time so that I could afford to participate in them.
During this time, under the blue moon at an underground Halloween party in 2020, I met the man who would soon become my husband and the father of my child. The vinegar to my baking soda volcano. He encouraged my new world view and added his own ideas to the mix. He spoke passionately to me about living without debt, how a bank mortgaged home wasn’t a true asset, his views on owning firearms, and so many other things. His radical ideas on how to live were intriguing and confronting for me. During a camping trip early in our relationship, we were walking along a river and speaking out loud daydreams of leaving behind our current lives and moving into a camper down by the river. We both had the same impulse, and the same frustration that society looks down on that type of freedom. Would we be able to raise a family that way? Well, one night over a year later, we were having a familiar conversation. I wanted to spend my time outside growing healthy food, have my horse at my house, focus on raising a connected family, and immerse myself in nature. He wanted to build us an earthen home, and raise his family where he could protect us from tyrannical government overreach and defend the freedoms he so passionately believes in. Neither of us wanted to live in the city, especially in California. Through many conversations our homestead goals began to take shape. But I wondered, how would we ever do it? We were both feeling trapped by the options we felt that we had. And yet, I knew that together we had many of the skills that would be required. He had already spent years researching energy systems, learning woodworking, and preparing for an opportunity to get off-grid. We camped a couple times in his converted van and realized how well we worked together in the wilderness. The life we wanted seemed just out of reach.
As it turned out, fate was on our side. The housing market was exploding! A simple online search revealed that if I sold my house, there were many places across the country where we could own bare land mortgage-free with the projected profits. I could get out of the clutches of the Banks and eliminate so much of the soul crushing cost of living that had been such a burden for so long. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of mortgage debt would be transformed into an owned asset. This was the final puzzle piece. But I was still trying to talk myself out of what I knew I really wanted. Did I have what it takes to live off-grid? I was very accustomed to city life. I had never spent more than a long weekend camping and had never lived outside of California. And anyway, where would we move to? I wasn’t willing to risk wasting this opportunity on a place chosen for low prices. We needed to explore the country. We discussed traveling as nomads, but I was so unsure of myself that I couldn’t commit to it. Then one day we were watching the TV show Avatar the Last Airbender. It was an episode I had seen countless times called The Tale of Two Lovers. In the opening scene, Sokka is floating on a giant leaf in a lake, and a band of nomads comes along. “I want to be nomadic!” the words blurted out from deep inside my unconscious self. I couldn’t deny the truth of what I had said. To live wild and free on the road was something I had hardly dared to even dream about. It seemed so reckless! But it was actually a logical way to find the perfect homestead. To top it off, this was a beautiful middle finger to all the restrictions, expectations, and disappointments life in normal society had been laden with. We made that decision, shook hands to seal the deal, and never looked back.
The first thing we needed was a vehicle. Full time living in a van with three dogs didn’t sound very fun. We decided to rescue a 1999 Prowler travel trailer. I say rescue because it was a salvage title and parked in this awful smelly back yard hoarder’s den. But it fit the budget! We brought it home and spent the next two months working feverishly to get it completed in time. We overhauled the whole thing, setting it up with solar and cleaning and redoing much of the interior. All this was done while juggling showing the house to potential buyers and selling all our belongings. Oh yeah, and during this time we also conceived the baby we’d been working on for the previous five months! So, we were very busy to put it mildly. But quickly we were ready to hit the road! What followed was six glorious months of nearly complete freedom. I swam in crystal clear waters, drank and ate from the land, and did more art than I’ve done since I was a child. Everything expanded for me. My consciousness, my inner peace, my understanding of the true nature of the world, and of course my big baby belly. I expected to spend around three years on the road, but the Universe had other ideas.
When we found our home, it was based more on intuition than anything concrete. As we drove into town my jaw dropped. I was craning my neck all around looking out my window, completely in awe of the beauty of the jagged and rocky mountains along the river. I felt instantly connected to this place. Our campsite was situated above a creek that was fed by a natural spring. As we enjoyed our time there the dogs found countless animal bones in the woods and I reveled in the big energy of late summer thunder and lightning storms. We had come into Montana about 6 weeks prior, and I was loving every spot as we worked our way down from Kootenai National Forest towards Big Timber, where we were going to meet up with my mother. Both my husband and I received an internal message not to leave Montana. But how could we not? Winter was coming and we were really hitting our stride on the road. Well, regardless, we had stayed as long as the Forest Service would allow in the Lolo National Forest and needed to move on. As we said goodbye to a friend who worked at the produce stand, she gave us a tip on an area where she had seen sale activity. I immediately plugged it into my Land.com search parameters and we headed off to Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. Just a couple of days after leaving I got an alert with a listing too good to ignore. We drove six hours round trip (twice!) to check out the property that would become our homestead. I wasn’t quite ready to stop traveling yet, but when you know you know. And I knew this land was meant for us. It wasn’t as large as I had once fantasized, and working land this steep and forested presents unique challenges. But I sensed that we can build something incredible here. And the excitement of getting started building our homestead on this gorgeous mountain eclipsed the grief I felt at giving up life on the road. We made a cash offer and became the true owners of land to build our dreams on. But since it was late September, we figured we would have to spend the winter in Florida and come back in the spring.
One day, as we were lounging at our Beaverhead-Deerlodge campsite, a couple of dogs ran up to us, followed by a very frazzled old lady. Well, my husband being who he is, a conversation was struck up. Through chit chat and a gift exchange of edibles and mead we became friends. She ended up offering us a really great deal on her rental house for the winter and my birthing season. To make a long story short that rental did not work out. But we had now been planning to overwinter in Montana, and just couldn’t reframe a winter in Florida as appealing. It seemed hard to believe that we didn’t want to flock to the warmth. And admittedly I did dream of swimming pregnant in the ocean. But I’m really scared of sharks so I don’t think I would have enjoyed it much. Plus, the logistics were sticky. We would be moving every two weeks as mandated by Forest Service. This meant that I would have to be prepared to be in labor on a travel day and give birth anywhere, including at a rest stop, if that’s how the timing worked out. We would also be dealing with the Florida tourist busy season and a national forest much busier than we are used to. We would likely need to have our dogs on leash, and I had concerns about privacy even if I was able to give birth in the forest. There also seemed to be a high likelihood of running out of national forest options in warm areas while I was still freshly postpartum. I’m sure we would have made it work, but we were able to come up with plenty of reasons why it would be just as hard as staying in Montana. So, we made a decision. We would move onto our land and survive winter there. ( Check out my post about our first winter! http://bigmountainhomestead.com/2023/03/07/30-in-a-travel-trailer-how-we-survived-the-winter/ )
It’s been an intense six months since we started our homestead. Each day is full of learning and new experiences! This journey has taught me to listen to my inner voice, building confidence and resilience I’ve never had before. And I’m just getting started!