Last week, we moved from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Charlottesville, Virginia. It was a spectacularly challenging adventure. I don’t regret driving a 26 foot Penske truck over the Appalachian mountains, but I’ll never try it again. And, I am eternally grateful to our daughters, Claire and Claudia, for helping us load and unload. It was so much work. Apparently, during the past few decades, we accumulated a mortifying amount of stuff.

In our darkest moments, my spirits were lifted by the vision of Sentient Sanctuary that I described in Planning for Everything. For now, we’re in a rental in the woods, but we hope to buy a farm near the Shenandoah mountains we can transform into a sanctuary for animals and people. That’s the reason for the move, the why behind the what.

It’s a 25 year project. I’m in no rush. I plan to be information architecture consulting for the next few years until we build momentum. I’m not sure how it will all turn out. We’ll start with goats and chickens and improvise accordingly. I don’t know exactly what I’m doing, but I’m so happy to be heading towards my Vague Mountain at last.