Almost

We had all these dreams. We always wanted to live in the mountains. Somewhere. Anywhere. Just not the desert. And, for me, at least, for many years, not in the tropics. 

When I was a kid, I wanted to live on a farm. Instead, I lived in a trailer park. But I dreamed of open spaces. Land and horses and cows and chickens. Trees to climb and adventures to dream up. It never happened. When I got to junior high, my grandparents moved to Payson, Arizona, and my family and I began to spend a lot of time in the mountains with them. Suddenly livestock was old news. Juniper and pines, aspen and firs were the new dream.

“I’m going to live up here someday,” I promised myself. Near the smell of juniper, the comfort of fireplaces, far away from city lights that dimmed the view of the stars.

Then I fell in love with a soldier. When we got married, we followed his best job offer, and settled in his hometown in Florida. But after a couple of years, we began to dream of the mountains together and tried to move to the northwest. We wrote to cities like Seattle and Portland, and McLeod, Montana (just because we found it on a map and liked the name.) But there were no jobs for new firefighters in any of those places, so we stayed in the tropics. We had two kids. Made do with vacations in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains every year. I became content. After all, Florida had field fresh strawberries, beautiful tomatoes, and wonderful friends. I let go of the dream.

Then the letter came. Arizona’s Flagstaff Fire Department was hiring. We discovered an anonymous gift of five hundred dollars cash in our daughter’s diaper bag one night when we got home from church and a note telling Rob to fly out and test for that job. Which he did—not get. And suddenly I wasn’t content in Florida anymore. We almost had it. Almost moved to the mountains. It was so close, we could touch it. Almost.

Rob went to paramedic school. Was promoted to lieutenant on his department. We tried for the dream again. After all, he had even more experience now. Maybe we could compromise and just live closer to the mountains. The next year he tested for Chandler Fire Department, and we moved to the desert. At least we could drive to the pines on his days off. And we did. Frequently, and for many years, always dreaming of someday owning a home on the Mogollon Rim or the White Mountains. We raised our Florida babies in the desert Southwest. Eventually Rob retired. Our babies had their own babies. We settled in as grandparents and gave up on the mountains.

Until last August. When, once again, they began to call us and we decided to go.

We had rented a big house in Greer for a month, a tourist village that our daughter described as “a little piece of heaven.” Enjoying the cool breeze on the front deck one afternoon, Rob and I looked at each other and said, practically in unison, “We could live here.”

So, we sold our house in a hot market, shook the desert sand from our shoes, and headed north in time for Thanksgiving. By the end of the month, we closed on a sweet place on the Mogollon Rim, a favorite place to explore. We had an acre and a half in the pines with a view of nothing but woods from our back deck. Rob ordered the sign he’d always wanted for the front of his dream property—a three-foot-wide piece of juniper with the words, “McLeod’s Keep,” carved into the golden face of the wood. Every good Scotsman has his own Keep. We had the deck refinished, replaced outdated appliances, put up a new fence on the back acre, and got estimates for a roof to shade the deck.

And then it snowed. Coyote tracks followed our fence line most mornings, punctuated by random deer prints and droppings, and we looked forward to our first spring when unfamiliar bushes would bloom their true identity and we could look for elk while we drank coffee at that patio table we planned to put outside the French doors leading from our bedroom. We wandered through nurseries in the frigid cold, picking out the firs and aspen and red oaks we’d plant to make the place our own when the weather warmed up.

We kept making plans and living out the dream. For five weeks.

We bought heavy coats. Hiking shoes. Scoped out all the trails we wanted to explore throughout the woods surrounding our land. We decided our next vehicle should be another truck—which made Mama happy. Fuel efficient cars are looked on with suspicion when you’re mountain people. And we were mountain people now. Rob had a warm hat. I had warm gloves. We were clearing out the garage of boxes so we’d have a warm truck on twelve degree mornings.

We didn’t know how to live in the cold, but we were going to figure it out together.

We almost did. We almost saw our dreams come true. Almost belonged to that little piece of heaven. We took the risk for one last adventure. Left the desert behind. Downsized our belongings and upsized our property. Settled in a new town, found new breakfast joints, made two new sets of friends, and looked forward to making many more. Spent every waking moment unpacking a house full of boxes so we could hurry up and enjoy our dream come true.

But we never got to sit on our deck. Or stand out there at night to stare at the Milky Way. Never enjoyed a cup of coffee out there. Never explored the back roads together. Never put up Roby’s juniper sign. Never bought another truck. Never lived there again after we got sick. Because Rob never got out of the hospital.

We took a huge risk together and we lost it all. I lost it all. When I lost my darlin’.

For five short weeks, we owned that little piece of heaven, and then it was gone. It’s hard to watch now while others who took the same risk we did make it work. The mountains are filled with their success stories—just not ours. But we gave it our best shot. Went all in. Never looked back.

And then it backfired. Blew up in our faces. Stole everything from us and more.

“That was a pretty spectacular fail,” I whispered through my tears one morning months afterward. From where I stand alone now, I wish we’d figured out the truth and hadn’t taken the risk. Hadn’t tried for the dream ever again. Finally realized we weren’t meant to be mountain people after all. Maybe then I’d still have Rob.

But we almost made it work. Almost sat on that deck. We almost belonged to the mountains.

“Almost.”

It’s such a sad word.