When any journey and/or adventure begins, there is always an inspiration which precedes it. Take those courageous individuals and families in the early 1800's that made the decision to leave their homes and life in the east and join the wave of like minds in the westward move across this American continent. It could be said that their travels of hundreds to a thousand plus miles from home across land and rivers to reach the convergence of the beginning point for the Santa Fe, California, and Oregon Trails in Independence, Missouri, was enough to satisfy their individual dream of adventure. However, the fact that Independence was characterized as "the jumping off point", where 100's of thousands of men, women, and children (and pets) arrived with their hopes and dreams, there was no doubt in their minds that the adventure was just beginning.
Fast forward some two hundred years to a new millennium. When Janiece and I married the first year of the millennium, we were just beginning our adventure together which would take us to Asheville, North Carolina, where we called “home” for 15 years – then began our trek from Asheville some 800 miles west to Janiece’s home town of Independence, Missouri.
Thinking back to our time in Asheville, we often dreamed and spoke of traveling this country to experience the wonders of the natural environment, then developing a book of writings by Janiece and my photographs.
It was one of those dreams which swirled around in our heads lightly with no real actionable plan. As is it often happens, multiple events in our lives occur which, lumped together sets a stage for our destiny. For us, this happened many times during our years in Decatur and Asheville, and we responded with a “play” - our “play” which we thought would work with the set of circumstances that we were presented with.
After deciding to sell our home in Asheville, we began to look at farmland in and around the Asheville area – and made several offers – each which didn’t work out. In the fall of 2015 we made our annual Thanksgiving trip to Independence to be with Janiece’s family. Unknown to us were the events that would transpire during this trip and how we would respond to them. Again, our stage was being set!
Because of we were hopeful for the sale of our home in Asheville and our associated search for farmland there, this understandably was a major topic of our conversation with family during this holiday trip. One conversation led to another which led Janiece to ask about what had happened to her cousins’ grandparents farm and who might have purchased it. Well, it had not sold, and was sitting abandoned and overgrown. Long story short, we took a trip out to the farm one day with her cousin. It was a beautiful day and the land was magnificent.
We were both captivated by the beauty of the rolling land, a mixture of forest, and prairie and began to entertain an idea of making an offer to the family to purchase 25 acres and the dilapidated homestead. Janiece had, for many years posed the question to me about “would I consider moving to Missouri?”, with always my answer being “not really interested”. But this time no question had to be asked. We both connected simultaneously and felt this was one of those magical moments that we need to “listen” to.
On our way back to Asheville we worked diligently on a proposal we would make, and tried to consider all aspects of this new and spectacular plan. After talking all this through during the 13-hour trip home, Janiece asked “what if the family doesn’t accept our proposal?”. Immediately, from my mouth, without hesitation and with calm intention, I responded “we’re still moving to Missouri”. Little did we know the stage for our play was still being set.
Well, the family did not accept our proposal (they wanted us to purchase all 83 acres – which is more that we could manage and was not consistent with our financial plan we had set out). We had taken our house off the market during the holidays, but decided to not wait till spring to put it back on, but see what might happen even in the winter months. Of course, we began to look aggressively online at farms and farmland in Missouri, also looking at intown homes in Independence and Kansas City. “We had to be prepared, you know” (of course, we were creating our life play).
In mid March, we decided to re-list the house and immediately received an offer from someone who had been looking at it on Zillow during February and early March. At that point things began to change rapidly - a contract was made, I had knee replacement surgery, we ordered the PODs, packed up 15 years of belongings, closed on the sale of our house,
said our heartfelt goodbyes, and started out on our journey westward to Independence Missouri – and not totally clear to us at that time, “the jumping off point” for us and the beginning of our new adventure.
We arrived in Independence late in the afternoon on a Tuesday towing a small trailer with personal items and house plants, filled with excitement that we did it - we were really here, Janiece was home!
Home, well that’s a subject for Janiece to write about and she has already begun. We drove into town and immediately made a bee line to a house that we had seen online and the one that had really given us second thought about living in town. Long story short, that evening, without hesitation we set an appointment with the realtor to look at the house, and by Saturday we made an offer which was accepted that very same day. Three weeks later we closed on the purchase of our new home and moved in with an air mattress and a few personal belongings.
Can you believe, one day shy of a month after we sold our home in Asheville, we were at home in Independence
To be continued . . .
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