I hadn’t moved in thirty-five years. That’s thirty-five years in the same house. So how many ‘essential’ items does a family collect in thirty-five years?

​You might have heard the news, Kat and I made some major changes to our lives this year. I had worked at the same place for thirty-four years. Mostly good years, almost all good people. A few assholes, but to be expected.

In the summer of 2018 I drove cross-country, New York to Montana, alone. The plan was to stop in Colorado Springs to visit my Army son and then meet Kathleen in Kalispell where we would spend a week or so before heading back to New York. The pickup was loaded with tools and stuff so I could build a shed on the property we had purchased the year before.

​Moving to Montana surprised a bunch of people back in the old country, New York. I mean everyone in NY goes south, Florida or the Carolina's. Who goes west to Montana?
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A few observations of living in the Rockies to date:

​There comes a point when you just know it’s time to make the change. When the past that led to the present needs a new direction. That change in attitude led me to a change in latitude. 

I hadn’t moved in thirty-three years, that’s three plus decades of stuff that probably should have been repurposed years ago. To be precise, we didn’t just move, we relocated 2,700 plus miles.

By now it’s no secret Kat and I are moving to Montana. When I say that to people around here, Monroe, NY, they mostly look incredulous. Who does that? Everyone from moves to Florida or North Carolina.

It was taking too long to sell our house so we asked for help from an unusual source.

For most of the past 34 years I was either up at 0500 and driving to the Bronx, or on the TS Empire State in the middle of the ocean with 600 cadets. In either case the drill was to get up in the morning, early and get out the door to complete the daily checkoff list. Mostly, the list was what ‘had’ to be done that day, not what I might have wanted to get done.

 
Michael Maloy looked out the porthole at a gray sea, gray sky and what seemed like a hundred dark gray ships of all shapes and sizes. It was the 5th of June, 1944 and they were anchored somewhere off the east coast of England. ​