My wife Sara and I have been quite busy this spring looking for our new house and property. That's been an interesting adventure and very energy and time-consuming. I've owned three homes in my life, but since 2002 have been a rolling stone, living in Park City, Boulder, Atlanta, Santa Fe and now Portland. Sara and I met in 2006 and married in 2007. I lived in Atlanta then, I moved to Santa Fe where she lived knowing that would simply be a launching pad for us to find our place somewhere else.
It seems strange to be looking for property that may be the last land we own. Every prior situation where I have owned property has felt temporary. Mainly, I suppose, because I have always seen a house and property as someplace I live while I work. If work moves, I move. If I move, I change houses. Therefore, I've always been kind of passing through, if you know what I mean. Upwardly mobile executive types who've be so over the past three decades know what I mean, anyway.
But the times they are a changin'. Sara and I feel we are to find and buy some acreage, establish a relationship with it, and connect with community--of the small, local kind. I can do my business from anywhere. At least what I do now.
Yet here's the difference. Doing this with Sara, with this land, and with community--this is now my primary work. My vocation will now revolve around that, rather than where I live revolve around my vocation. That is such an odd feeling.
Yet this is not a change in direction: this is an expansion of possibilities. I know in my heart that I am to work in the realm of leadership, and in supporting leaders in making the shift into these new, post-industrial times where the current form of leadership isn't relevant any longer.
I know that evolution is moving more quickly than leadership has been evolving, that the imbalances we see all around us today are affected by this old form of leadership we cling to, and that leadership is the domain in which I will make my difference in the world. I am blessed with remarkable opportunity in that realm, an incredible company in Texas to work with, and I will give-and-take as much as I can to help them in their journey.
After significant challenges in finding this property (a two year quest) and negotiating through significant issues with the seller and the lender, here we are. We are now under contract (and through the inspection and renegotiation process) to buy 11 beautiful acres in Oregon's wine country. The photos you see here are from that property. The first photo is the house on the property. Very humble, serviceable, and it should hold us for a number of years until we build a sustainable, eco-friendly home on the land.
The second photo is looking east, out the driveway leading into the property. In the near distance you see my sister, brother-in-law and realtor at the entrance to the drive. In the farther distance, the rolling hills of Yamhill county.
Seven years ago I sold my executive home in Park City, Utah, put my skis on top of the car and left that life. I could not have imagined how my life would unfold. How my life would change. The remarkable woman I would meet and marry. The family I'd connect with in the process. How my work would evolve. And that we would be moving to the Pacific northwest to beautiful land adjacent to a 100 acre property with a vineyard on it.
This is Sara, my wife, walking that property the same day those other pictures were taken. I was walking alongside Sara and saw something inexplicably change in her as we walked up the driveway there, together. I started snapping pictures as we both walked, trying to capture an image of what I was seeing and sensing.
A man only needs to glance at his wife and sense what I sensed to know with great confidence that they have found is good--in this case, is their home. He knows in his heart it is simply a matter of him doing his part to make it happen. If you are a male, I know that you know what I mean. It is that feeling you get that you'd move mountains for that woman because of the goodness in her heart and the trust and belief she has in you.
As crazy as these times are, life goes on. There is something deeper. Something changeless, timeless and formless. As churned as the waters have become on the surface, there is stillness down there, underneath, running deep. I sense it in my wife, underneath it all the worry that comes with these changes and times. I felt it as I walked across the rolling hills of this land, feeling it in my blood as my cells mysteriously recalled what my English/Scottish ancestors felt as they walked their heather- and thistle-covered hills in a misty rain. But mainly, I sense it in the depths of my self.
As times become more uncertain--where credit markets and financial icons wobble, fears of pandemic are the news of the day, where the earth labors with ecological issues and a fever, and businesses attempt to find a way forward in a brave, new world--there is something deeper we can find. Leadership, maybe. Roots, well, perhaps. But I think it is love, the kind that comes from having both feet planted firmly on the ground while having a feeling for the direction one needs to move, coupled with a feeling for the next action one needs to take to get there, coupled with the courage required to overcome not knowing exactly what the journey, much less the destination, looks like.
I guess that is leadership, in a general sense. And for me, a male, it is also some specific part of maleness that I'm learning about.
That's where I am at on my personal journey, and as the demands on my time and energy lessen a bit as we work through the rest of the process of buying and moving to this new property, I will get back to writing here about leadership and emotional intelligence. And yet, in an oblique way, perhaps I did just that.
