The 2642-mile Journey to a Place We'd Never Heard Of
By Max Poppers
As two life partners,
Kelle and I decided that living in the SF Bay Area was getting more and
more hectic, dealing with lots of congestion on the roads, growing cost
of living expense, and what was an atmosphere of hectic pace - constantly
catching up. About six years ago
we decided to explore other possible places to pitch our tent. The southwest
was beautiful but also had a kind of alien barrenness that did not fit
us. Ashland, Oregon captivated us, was only 5 hours drive from our friends
and had lots going for it. We visited about four
times in a two year period. At last, we were going to go for it only to
find that there were no jobs, real estate prices were escalating and coincidentally
no homes in our price range were available. Three years ago, while sitting
by our computer I decided to do a "search" for small college
towns. That's when Elizabeth City, NC got my attention. What a stretch,
living in the Southeast. No way.....Way! At that same time, I had a good
friend who spoke of two of his friends that moved to Asheville from Atlanta
and were happy. Another good friend of Kelle's had relatives in Burnsville
and loved Western NC.
We started to communicate with the happy Atlanta transplants, decided to visit in January to experience the most severe weather-met the folks in person on our last day here, loved their home in the Chestnut area, and really liked Asheville. During dinner at the Noodle House downtown with our new acquaintances, we learned that they were selling their house and building a new one.We thought about it for a few minutes and then told them we wanted to buy their house. We returned to CA and did a long distance purchase, sold our house and put our stuff in storage here in Hendersonville. Friends of ours offered us housing in our town in CA since we agreed to rent back our Asheville house to previous owners for six months.
It was "calling" from this place to our hearts. We stopped doing what we did in CA. Now, we are still in transition, awed by the actuality of being here and open to receiving our purpose for the 2642 mile journey to a place we never heard of just a few years ago.