Courtney’s Thoughts:
I am at 11,000 feet elevation. Locked into a pair of skis for the first time in 25 years. I am afraid of heights and speed. But neither can compare to the fear I have of falling and breaking a leg. (A thought that I shared aloud, to which my ski instructor replied, “At this speed the chance of injury is pretty non-existent.”)
It is a blue bird day – crisp blue skies and stunning 360-degree views of mountains for miles. But my vision is fuzzy because my goggles are full of tears. A half dozen three-year-olds tackling their first ski lesson are leaving me in their snow dust as they “pizza and French fry” downhill. I am silently willing myself to buck up and be the badass I think I am. “You can do this, Courtney, you can do this,” I repeat.
The saint who invited me on this trip, our first trip as a couple, is no doubt second-guessing his choices. This is not the Courtney he knows. When we finally got back to the hotel, instead of hitting the hot tub or the bar for an après cocktail, I jumped online searching for a flight home. Admittedly, I was a little dramatic. But with just one flight a day to this remote destination, I was not going anywhere soon.
So instead of heading to the airport, we (er, I) limped to the gondola. It took just 12 minutes, the length of the ride from Mountain Village to the town, to shed my tears and fall in love. If you have ever watched the sunset streak the sky red behind the San Juan mountains, you know what I mean.
In the past two decades I have been fortunate to travel extensively, initially prompted by my career which took me all over the country and to every major city multiple times – New York, Philly, LA, DC, San Francisco, Chicago, and across the pond to London. I got to “work” from many stunning destinations – Sonoma, Deer Valley, Sea Island, Blackberry Farm, Primland, Mayakoba. My career sparked the travel bug. I was lucky – until those finance bros in their stupid khakis and their stupid vests (I introduced you to them in my last column) ended that.
The opportunities I had created a desire to see so much more, and I have. The past decade has been jam-packed with epic travel adventures – surf camp in Costa Rica, wine tasting in Tuscany, hiking on the Isle of Skye, yoga in Grand Cayman, fly fishing in the Teton River. As you likely guessed, I have a list of all the amazing places I have been, and where I would still love to go.
But only one occupies my thoughts daily. Telluride, Colorado.
After that first trip in February 2016, we returned in 2017 and again in 2018, and every year since. Sometimes twice. I used to consider myself a fully committed beach girl, but something about the mountains just speaks to me. Fresh air. Wildlife. Hiking. Skiing. Snowshoeing. Crystal clean albeit freezing cold lakes. Dogs, so many dogs. I’ve slowly learned to love the ski terrain too – skiing after a big snow fall is sublime. Skiing during a snowstorm is otherworldly. The quiet and calm that covers the slopes is my therapy. Telluride is a small town, in a box canyon, with a quaint main street. There are no chain stores or restaurants. Everything is unique. Including every person, every sunrise and sunset.
After our first few trips to Telluride, we agreed that it would be a perfect place to settle in retirement. And then we looked at real estate and quickly ported back to reality. So, unless (until!) we win the lottery, we will continue to be able to afford Telluride just once (maybe twice) a year … but we will dream about it every night our heads are not in her clouds.
Full disclosure, with all the traveling we do, we are always grateful to return home to Bluffton. When we stroll Calhoun Street to catch sunset on the dock, after dinner at FARM, or sunrise with Alljoy Donuts in hand, I always remark, “If we were on vacation right now, we’d be so in love with this place …”
You can love two opposite and opposing ideas. And I do. I will keep playing our numbers and hope one day we can live in both my favorite places.
Barry’s Thoughts:
Let me tell you in no uncertain terms, readers, that the grass is not always greener. Sometimes the grass is just long enough to hide all the dog turds. The bitch is, you don’t know they’re there until you step in them.
When my wife and I moved down here (from Ohio, because, of course) 23 years ago, we weren’t really planning too far out. Truth be told, it’s still not our strong suit. We weren’t even married then, so the notion at the time was that we’d come down to the coast where I had work waiting for me, we’d spend a few years enjoying life by the beach, then we’d move on to the next adventure.
Then we got married. Then we had a kid. Then another. Before we knew it, 10 years had passed and we’d never quite moved on to that next adventure. And by that point, the next adventure was going to have to be worth it because we’d set down roots here and had made friends here. More family had joined us here, setting up Hilton Head as de facto home base.
That said, we both started to feel that itch. We wanted to raise our kids somewhere that had seasons. Somewhere they could go out sledding during the winter, have water balloon fights in the summer, and not have their sinuses flooded with pollen every spring. As luck would have it, the company I was working for at the time was hitting a bit of a rough patch (I’m talking “the owners have since fled the country” rough) and the time seemed right to pursue other career opportunities.
After a botched interview in my native Detroit for a magazine up there, I landed a job with a magazine on Long Island. It seemed like a good fit for the seasonal change we were looking to make, plus my mom’s family is all from LI. My grandparents still summered up there and my aunt and uncle hadn’t moved down here yet, so we had some family around. In 2013, we took the plunge.
We made it nine months.
The job I’d moved for was toxic to an insane degree, and three months in I became the third person I’d seen fired. Everyone else I worked with was gone within the year. The rental house we were living in was infested with squirrels, and lost heat during a blizzard when the squirrels chewed through the wires. Yes, there were more opportunities for the kids. But there were also neighbors who were entirely too comfortable dropping a hard-r N-word around us just because we were white. There were fun little beach towns. There were also very few opportunities for work outside of retail or organized crime.
So back we came. And in the years since, we’ve set down stronger roots than we ever did the first time. We’ve made lifelong friends, people who I know will be in my life regardless of where the next adventure lies for either of us. I’ve built a career here, offering writing services to all takers so that I’m never dependent on a company or toxic management to keep my family fed.
And, yeah, this past winter I got to take my youngest sledding, right in our front yard. This summer, we’ll probably have more than our share of water balloon fights. It was all right here, all along. And I’m not leaving.
