Built to Last

Clary gave me (Robert) a chance to post about Wyoming, so I thought I’d write a bit about our mindset and why we were able to pivot quickly towards this Western adventure. I should also note for you Tom Petty fans that I am taking some artistic liberties and moving non-linearly through the rest of the Into the Great Wide Open album. We had been using the song titles in order from the Into The Great Wide Open album but we may mix up the rest of the tracks from here on out to match the content.

The bright yellow aspens set against the craggy snow-capped mountains on the Taggart Lake Trail were breathtaking and so very different than home in Charlotte. The trek provided an opportunity to reflect on how we got here (not to Jackson Hole specifically, but the whole journey). The story really begins near Montauroux, France in Summer 2019. Wonderful neighbors invited us to join them on a vacation to a tiny ancient hill town in southeastern France, about 20 miles inland from Nice. Our kids, who were five and seven-years-old at the time, handled the travel and time change incredibly well and loved the culture and scenery. As Clary and I sat around one night watching the kids swim at sunset, she asked “Why can’t we do this all the time?”

Rather than engage in a dreamy conversation about infinite possibilities, I started listing practical answers to her question (jobs and school). Despite my non-romantic response to Clary’s question, the idea of a family gap year began to percolate. We toyed with dozens of cities then decided to consult an expert. We called a much-more-worldly friend from grad school who lives in Zurich. He believed Lisbon, Portugal would be ideal for us.

As Fall 2019 progressed into the new year, we fell back into our normal schedule (wake up, pack lunches, walk kids to school, drive to jobs, etc.) and our family gap year idea lost momentum. Then the terrible COVID-19 pandemic arrived and dictated changes in March (I figured out how to work remotely, Clary exited her businesses, kids thrived with homeschooling).

So just as our ability to adapt by working and learning remotely opened a world of possibilities, world borders closed to contain virus outbreaks. That set of circumstances led us to decide we should (safely) travel to some of the most dramatically different places we could find within the U.S. Huge mountains, eerily beautiful deserts, and living in a tiny railroad depot town near the Canadian border for six weeks (Whitefish) all fit the bill. I’m tremendously proud of our family’s ability to happily adjust to these rapidly changing circumstances and I believe that this adaptability is what will allow us to be more than just resilient, but able to use challenges like 2020 to evolve and flourish. In my opinion, our ability to welcome change is what makes the The Gray Grizzlies “Built to Last” and I can’t wait for our next adventure.

“We were built to last
On until forever
The world is changing fast
But our love was built to last”
-Tom Petty, Built to Last

Thanks for following along – chasing the warm weather south to Utah next!