Getting away from it all brought us home.
Moving to our 50 isolated acres in the rugged hills of Wyoming has been both challenging and magical. Neither my husband, Derek, nor I grew up in the country—but little miracles happen every day that reassure us this is where we’re meant to be.
After selling our house in town, our family of four lived in a camper on our land while we had a 36- by 70-foot storage building erected. The plan was to live there for six months, until we could build our house. But many unexpected costs—including drilling a 1,000-foot well and putting in a road—delayed us. That storage building was home sweet home for nearly five years.
We went from a four-bedroom, three-bath house to a one-room structure with a single bathroom and a resident family of mice. Our teenage son, Weston, and daughter, Savannah, shared a partitioned loft. A woodstove was our only heat source when it got down to 40 below.
The kids, who were used to walking two blocks to school, now had an hour-long bus ride. If it was too snowy for me to drive them to the bus stop, they’d snowshoe with their dad 3½ miles to the highway. Derek would pile everyone into the vehicle we left parked there when heavy snow was predicted, take the kids to school and drive another hour to his job.
Love Conquers All
There was a lot of complaining at first, but the siren song of country life was louder. We instantly fell in love with our land—sledding, hiking in the canyon and sleeping under the stars. Weston found a great snowboarding hill. Savannah likes picking colorful wildflowers. Our playground is as big as all outdoors.
Nature’s embrace is my favorite thing about rural life, like the feel of chickadee feet on my shoulder as I tote seed to the feeder, or the sound of mockingbirds singing. The country is a year-round classroom. So far I’ve learned to do everything from raising chicks and growing tomatoes to maneuvering the ATV to round up our horses and donkey from the pasture.
Our land is also my creative sanctuary. I’ve started a jewelry-making business, Sunny Fields Pottery. Creating clay beads is a great outlet on a winter evening. I joined a writers’ group and began to work on a memoir about our first year here. I’m hoping other families considering a move to the country will read it, laugh and cry with us, and catch the pioneer spirit.
Here to Stay
People often ask me if I had known then what I know now, would I move to the country again?
Today, looking out the window of the house we just finished building, I see Derek barbecuing on the front porch and our kids playing volleyball.
Last year, I’m proud to say, I canned 50 jars of homegrown tomatoes. We get fresh eggs from our henhouse, and our guinea fowl patrol the grounds regularly for grasshoppers and ticks.
Rocky as it was, that first year out here produced some of my best memories: sitting around the small table by the woodstove playing cards; snowdrifts swaddling us in pure silence; Savannah smiling, with a fistful of dewy flowers in her hand. I will always treasure those things. Facing challenges together has cemented us as a family. And somehow, the rough times have made everything about living in the country look better and brighter to us now.
Yes. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.
April with her husband, Derek, their children, Weston and Savannah, and their goldendoodle, Lila.