Category: The move

For thirty years we’ve known our fireplace in Evergreen needed work. The chain curtains got stuck easily. There was no glass door on to keep the cats out when there was no fire. There was a chasm between the firebox and the stone hearth that kept collecting whatever the cats dropped or chased into it. So after thirty years the work was completed in under three hours. Of course, given our experience with every other project in this place we did discover that the decorative river stone had obviously been applied with no particular reference to the open facing of the firebox so the installers had to dig out two stones to get the door in and then remortar them in place. Nonetheless, it is done and last night (after the mortar had dried) we had our first fire. It was some compensation for have the sixth bout of Spring Winter on May 22.

I’m sitting in our downstairs office with the basement still filled with boxes and bits and pieces of many things that have no place to go. Unpacking is not the only thing going on in our lives. In fact, this will be a very busy week for a couple of retired folks.

On Tuesday, we will have our first session as volunteers at the Wild Animal Sanctuary. Our workplace will be the Carnivore Nutrition Center (CNC) which is on the grounds of the Sanctuary. And no, we won’t be hanging out with any of the animals. The Sanctuary exists for the benefit of the rescued animals and humans with little clue of what they’re doing (like first time newbie volunteers) just stresses them out – subverting the purpose of the Sanctuary. We’ll spend four hours doing whatever the staff needs us to do like washing out the cans where the meals are mixed, moving things around or scooping the meal mixtures into 10 gallon buckets to be frozen for later feeding of the animals. It’s hardly glamorous work, but with so many lions, tigers and other various felines to care for, the CNC stays busy all the time. Most all of the bears are in hibernation now. When they decide to come out of their dens the CNC gets even busier. Our next volunteer time will be on the walkway, greeting visitors and answering what questions we can.

This Wednesday we travel back to Greeley to close on the sale of our home there. Yes, that was quick and bless John & Wanda Lowe for all their work for us. Thursday, we do another closing back in Evergreen on the refinancing of our remaining mortgage on our Evergreen home. And then, quiet and rest. That is, if you can call unpacking, sorting, donating, recycling and disposing quiet and rest!

We’ve gone from stuck to a sort of full speed ahead. The moving company is showing up on February 25. Habitat ReStore is coming by February 27. We’ve gotten more boxes from our friends, Chris and Anna Carter. And no, we are by no means ready for this.

The cats are stressed, as are we. This past weekend we had a wonderful time at Christ Church in Denver where I served on an interim team from 2001-2003. Our friend Russ Parker led the weekend and it’s worth describing both in context and content, but that will have to wait for a later entry. However, because the commute between Evergreen and Christ Church is much shorter and much less stressful than the one between Greeley and Christ Church, we elected to go to the high country Friday afternoon.

When we arrived we had to wade through a flood of cardboard detritus to get to our bed but also found the lower part of the vanity installed. Once the counter top is in place they can install the remainder of the vanity, install the tub, put on the trim. Best of all, the site foreman assures me they’ll be finished and cleaned up on Friday. So now we pack.

Saturday and Sunday is our orientation/training sessions for volunteering at the Wild Animal Sanctuary. Each session ends at 1 pm so we dash back to Greeley each day to pack some more.

There are a few things we can’t put on the moving truck (including the cats). Monday morning will be a challenge. First thing once we’re up is to drain the water bed and disassemble the frame and pedestal and get it in the garage where some lovely souls will take it to their home that afternoon. The moving folks show up at 9a and we’ll be packing the car as they pack the truck. Once we’re done we call more Trinity friends (the Woodruffs) who will come and supervise the movers while we hightail it to Evergreen and open the house for the movers when they arrive.

Tuesday we’ll start trying to sort out the chaos in Evergreen. Wednesday I drive back to Greeley to meet the Habitat ReStore folks so they can take the various items we are donating. I’ll load whatever we couldn’t on Monday and in theory we will have completed our exodus from the house that has been our home for the past 11 years.

We still have to sell the place, but that is in the capable hands of our realtors, Trinity folks John and Wanda Lowe.

Eventually, we’ll make the Evergreen house livable again. That’s a good thing. The not so good thing is that then it will hit us how much we miss the people and the community we’ve left behind.

We are prisoners. It’s not the cats holding us hostage but the temperatures. And the snow. Granted, we’ve had only 3 inches of snow, and while it is pretty cold, it’s balmy compared to what the mid-west had to deal with in the last week. But part of our preparation to depart was taking care of a few things in the yard, and they are snow covered. We’ve stopped boxing up things as the date of our actual move is still not firm and we need to be able to get around our house in Greeley until then. Thus, our prep work is at a standstill here.

In Evergreen things may also be at a standstill. We haven’t been there since January 27. At that time, between the CDOT snow plows and the contractor’s pickup trucks the upper part of the driveway was as snow packed as any side road in Steamboat Springs. Since then there have been a couple of significant snows. Tomorrow morning (February 9) we’re taking another overnight trip to Evergreen. We’re packing a snow shovel in case we have to dig our way to the house. Again. Then I’ll fire up the orange monster of a snow thrower to see if I can clear things up enough to get the car into the garage. Given that the driveway is 150+ feet of downhill grade, the real effort will be getting the car back up to the street.

Another challenge of our enforced inactivity is the odd situation of living less than a mile from the church that had been central to our lives for 15 years. The leave taking policy of the diocese requires that I neither attend services and events or even visit the premises. We do very much miss the people and the place, and the activity of relocating was to be the great distractor in coping with the change.

In reality, this delay will be all too brief: the vanity will arrive and get installed; we’ll have enough of a thaw to get the last yard work done; the Habitat ReStore will pick up the furniture and items we’re leaving behind and we’ll find a moving company that can take the remaining boxes and furniture on the 85 mile journey to Evergreen.

In the meantime, there are other coming events to look forward to. Next weekend we’re part of a parish weekend at the church I served before Trinity, Christ Church, Denver. This event is led by our friend, Russ Parker, who led a parish weekend for Trinity in 2017. The weekend after that we’re signed up for orientation and training as volunteers at The Wild Animal Sanctuary.

Until then we both need to address the spiritual discipline of paying attention and recognizing that Jesus wants us to engage with Him in each moment of the day. Thinking too far ahead increases the likelihood that we will miss the opportunities to give and receive blessing God is placing under our noses.

There are empty shelves and full boxes. There are random pieces of furniture, some destined for the Habitat ReStore and some to be moved and a king sized water bed to be disposed of (anybody interested in a full motion mattress??). The first problem is that we still have no firm date for the move. Every overnight trip to Evergreen has involved loading a few more boxes. That means that we have boxes in Greeley and boxes in Evergreen. That leads to the second problem, this all seems very unreal. The cause of the extended delay is a bathroom reconstruction project that started in early December. The actual delay is due to a custom vanity that is not due to ship until February 11. Once it is in place, we’re told the finish of the project is a week further on. So until then, we’re primarily in Greeley and only occasionally in Evergreen. That leads to the third problem. Whether it is at my local Rotary meeting or encounters in the grocery store, I’m getting a lot of quizzical looks. “Are you still here?” I think for the sake of the poor souls who keep running into us I need to look up the words from an old rock song: How can we miss you if you won’t go away?

God willing, we will soon be moving back to our long-neglected home in Evergreen. This move comes with both anticipation and regret. I’ll get to the anticipation later. The regret is due to leaving the place where we’ve spent the vast majority of our time for the last 15+ years. The place is a small city in the northern part of the state, a few miles east of the dreaded I-25 corridor, a place called Greeley.

The current tag line of the city is “Greeley Unexpected.” That was certainly true for us long before their marketing people came up with the phrase. In that town we found wonderful people committed to making Greeley a great place to live, to celebrate, to work, to raise a family. There were, as there are everywhere, some cranky folks who seemed to rejoice in negativity, but we were impressed by the commitment of long-term “Greeleyites” to build and bless, ignoring the negative voices. There’s a lot I could write about the life, culture, and community spirit of the place and maybe I will later, but we are leaving the city and moving back to Evergreen.

So if Greeley is so great, why are we leaving? That’s a long story in itself. The shorter version is that our original move to Greeley from Evergreen was to be temporary, 18-24 months at most. That was September of 2003. Things didn’t go as planned. We rented a condo and soon found our stay extending and the job changing in purpose and scope. At the end of 2007 I accepted the invitation to become Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church. That position I held there until December 31, 2018 when I stepped down to retire. We might have sold or at least rented out our home in Evergreen at that time except for two problems. The first was that we were doing some DIY remodeling when the call came to go to Greeley and the house was not in rentable shape. The second problem was the fact that by the time I accepted the call to Trinity, the Evergreen home no longer qualified as our primary residence and any capital gains from the sale (and we bought the house in 1989 when there was a major oil bust devastating the Evergreen housing market) would be rather excessive. So for all of those years we would visit our Evergreen home every other Sunday afternoon and then drive back on Monday for another 2 weeks in Greeley.

But now that’s over. Evergreen has grown a lot and changed a bit since 2003. Many of the people we knew from our former life there are no longer around. We have a whole new place to explore, new people to connect with, new areas where we can serve as volunteers. We are looking forward to the coming years at 7600 feet and what God will have us doing. However, Greeley we will never forget and remember our time there with gratitude and appreciation.