Ready. Fire. Aim.
Five years ago we drove up a gravel road in western North Carolina, stood on 65 acres of sacred land, and said yes before we fully understood what we were saying yes to. No master plan. No guarantee. Just a deep knowing that we needed to make the leap before we talked ourselves out of it.
It was one of the best decisions we've ever made. It was also one of the hardest things we've ever done. Both are equally true.
Here are 10 lessons we learned after 5 years at Firecreek.
01 — READY. FIRE. AIM.
Don't wait until you feel ready. The version of you that has it all figured out doesn't exist. The perfect time will never arrive. We bought land we'd only seen in winter, in a county we'd never been to, and while we were facing an incredibly uncertain future. Trust was the point. Jump first. Figure it out on the way down.
02 — THE LAND
This place is the ultimate gift that keeps on giving. It has also been relentlessly, beautifully hard. We stopped trying to resolve the contradiction somewhere around year two. The land doesn't care about your plans. It has its own schedule, its own needs, its own pace. Learning to work with nature’s rhythm instead of against it is something we’re still, and will forever be, learning.
03 — THE ANIMALS
The innocence and peace of animals was a huge part of our healing here. Both the wildlife, and the farm animals. We learned with love, and through mistakes, how much joy they bring, and, that they do depend on us. One simple slip-up can dictate their survival, and in some cases it has.
04 — THE HEALING JOURNEY
The land held all of us through something we weren't sure we'd get through. We are still here. Christy is healthy. The forest and the clean air here clearly had much to do with that. Wild spaces are hallowed ground.
05 — THE KIDS
Our children don't know yet how unique their childhood is, growing up on a farm, constantly raising a new baby animal, and meeting all manner of interesting people coming to stay here. We're not raising them to be homesteaders. We're raising them to know the vastness of life’s possibilities.
06 — GROWING FOOD
Feeding people from our own land brings deep satisfaction. Not only the joy of the harvest itself — but the moment you put a plate in front of someone and they don't know yet that most of it came from just feet away.
07 — HURRICANE HELENE
Helene showed us something about this community we hadn't fully seen. The mountains absorbed something enormous, and the people here — neighbors, strangers, people who'd never met, with vastly different world views — showed up for each other in a way that fundamentally changed our perspective. Appalachia doesn't make noise about what it can do. It just does it.
08 — A NEW CULTURE
We moved here as outsiders. We still are, in some ways. What Appalachian culture has given us — its relationship to land, to time, to neighbors, to difficulty — has quietly changed how we see everything. You don't move here and teach this place things. You listen. Eventually, if you're patient, it starts to talk back.
09 — HEALING OTHERS
What we built for ourselves turned out to be what a lot of people needed. We planned to heal ourselves. But something about this place — the elevation, the water, the quiet, wildness, the slowness — offers grounding to the nervous system in ways that most don't have words for when they arrive, and can't stop talking about when they leave. We're grateful every day that we get to share this.
10 — RESILIENCE
Changing geographic locations doesn't solve your problems, but, shifting your life to include time in nature, meaningful connection to community and simplifying one’s purpose, offers a level of resilience and hope we all carry inside, yet few regularly tap into.
Five years. Healing from cancer, farm kids, a magical hollow, an ever-growing menagerie, food we grew ourselves, people we'll never forget, a storm that brought many lessons, and a life we chose before we knew what we were choosing.
You won't feel ready.
Jump anyway.
-G