This past Thursday I got a text from my friend Debra in Albuquerque with a link to a New York Times article about Ted Conover’s new book: “Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America’s Edge.” As some of you know, my husband and I live off-grid in the San Luis Valley in Colorado, which is where Mr. Conover’s book is set. I read the article in the local coffee house, Milagro’s – local meaning in Alamosa, an hour away from the Mesa where I live – and as I walked out of Milagro’s I saw a sign on their door for a book signing being held by Mr. Conover that night.

On my way home, I picked up my mail and there he was again! On the cover of the local newspaper. Behold the power of the New York Times! A “3 ping” event in a short time catches my attention, so I asked my husband if we could go to the reading that night. My husband said “yes” as he is writing a memoir about life on the Mesa, provisionally called “Served By the Sun,” and he was interested.

Unfortunately, as the time of the book signing approached, we were too busy actually living our off-grid life to drive two hours to see someone talk about it.
The first snow came to the Mesa that night. I drove up from town (San Luis) in it and it was blinding. We couldn’t leave our place because the woodstoves needed to be going full-tilt and the cats were in the warmer RV, but the propane had to be monitored. If the RV propane runs out, the temperature in the RV plummets in minutes. It was in the 20’s that night.

In the NYT article about the book, I got a basic idea of what Mr. Conover had experienced and written about. He lived in an area in the San Luis Valley he referred to as “the Flats” and to be honest, I do not know where that is.
The San Luis Valley is 8,000 square miles. It is the largest high-altitude desert in North America. ALOT of it is flat. I sometimes refer to the flat sagey land in my neighborhood as “the incomprehensible sage flats,” but “the Flats” could be any number of places in the Valley.

After reading the article, I thought of my “take” on our-off-grid life and how I would offer a different take on life in the Valley and what drove the two of us to move here.
To speak practically, I will say that price was a consideration. I would have preferred not to be living so profoundly “off-grid,” as far as water and electricity go or to at least have “on grid” options, but I did not see a way to get the other things that were non-negotiable and have those water and electricity options for a price we could afford.

The non-negotiables:

-Privacy & no HOA
– ET sightings/history of the area
-Being more off-grid from the current “cultural” (way of life) matrix in our country and on most of the planet
– Beauty in the environment
-Quite, serenity and sovereignty over our living space
-Some community (and…the wild horses that live here were unexpected and a complete blessing)

Here is a summary of some of the points I would give Mr. Conover if he asked me for my take on “off grid” life:

-the soul nudged (maybe it shoved)

-part of that nudge/shove was the rug got pulled out of our old life – it happened more gradually for awhile and then in Summer 2020 it was “GO” time, the rug was yanked. That life had 7 weeks left and then it was no more. We got into creative action.

– all the steps that followed – and there were MANY – were part of the soul’s (souls’) insistence that we drastically shift the outer world as part of the drastic inner shifts that are underway
(My husband obviously has his own soul’s shift, but I cannot report on the details of that partly because he rarely frames things in those terms, so that is why I go back & forth between speaking about “we” and speaking from the first person. The shift was definitely in OUR life, but the way we each see it and possibly the outcomes – the shifts themselves – may be different)

-create enough of an inner spin that will take me through ascension (this way of life is serving that purpose)

-position myself for the earth ascension that is already under way and to interface with off-planet friends and new technologies to assist with my job here on Earth

There is more, but that is a good summary. I often experience fear and alot of frustration (it has taken me 5 days to power up this laptop and access my blog- grrrr!).

I know something huge and radically different is coming to the planet and for some of the people (could be lots of people, but what are lots of people choosing??), but I don’t know when or how it will unfold in our everday life. And in the meantime I often struggle to know how to navigate this time (and to be honest, the last 30 years which have largely been “this” kind of time).
But…. I am not a victim. I wish the people Mr. Conover lived with could reframe their state of minds to know they too are not victims. Victim is a state of mind. I know that can seem very difficult to embrace in the face of what people experience and yet, it is a cosmic truth: there are no victims.

It is a challenge to understand this truth on the profound spiritual level where it exists. But my God! – what better way to spend your time than inquiring and contemplating this truth?

All for today. More to come. As Byron Katie says from her profound, awakened first-hand experience: the Universe is friendly. How are you seeing that today?