If you follow me, you may wonder where I have been for the last few months. Hopefully, the title above gives you a hint.

Yes, we were climbing, in a way. Okay! Maybe it wasn’t a mountain. Still, when you’ve reached the point where your high school class ring is considered an antique, even a molehill can feel like a mountain.

My climb, if you’ll let me call it that, began several years ago when my better half decided we needed to move before I killed myself trying to take care of a large home on a hillside lot with a driveway that made a ski jump look flat.¹ That is when the training leg of our future excursion began in earnest.

We tried to find a smaller home in a gated community that provided some services for their residents. Not being a big fan of HOAs, I was a somewhat recalcitrant participant. Luckily, we failed to find anything that would meet our expectations. The next phase of our preparatory journey shifted to visiting and researching “Independent Living” communities.

That segment of our effort gave us a new understanding of what “Independent Living” might mean. The places we toured ranged from plain old apartment complexes with age restrictions to places that tried to mimic your favorite resort in Cabo. My favorite tour was in one of the age-restricted, relatively plain old apartment complexes.

It had not been updated for years. When we stepped out of the elevator to view an apartment, we turned down a dark hallway. As I looked down the long, dark hall, I was reminded of the scene in The Shining when the ghosts of two young girls appeared. Needless to say, we did not rent their apartment.

Then things changed. A serious health concern made us rethink our situation. Suddenly, we were starting up that mountain, and the preparation time was over. Of course, our mountain was symbolic, not physical.

It was the journey from a homeowner with a large home full of family memorabilia, prized furniture, wedding photos, art collected on our travels, and all the other things one can accumulate in twenty-plus years to fill the space in a home.

While our goal was not a mountain top, it might as well have been. Climbing a mountain might have been easier in some ways. Once we decided, chose the location, and had the paperwork signed, we hit the ground running.

It is amazing how much energy it takes to scale a mountain, which we have done—at least, we’ve hiked a couple. However, the energy expended in moving your world from one home to another seems void of rest stops and oxygen canisters.

Thankfully, we survived the challenge and are preparing for the next challenge, selling our home of almost twenty-five years. Of course, this part of the journey means becoming accustomed to a community defined by walls, not trees, roads, houses, creeks, and golf courses. Only time will tell if our decision was the right one.

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