Bee Tree Farm

When I was seven, our family started spending summers in a village north of Taos. Dad managed to find a home for next to nothing on 5 acres and a pond surrounded by apricots and apples. We’d have a big garage sale (my sister held a bake sale) the week before, laying out all our worn and loved possessions across the front lawn, hawking them for precious dollars to line our pockets for souvenirs from New Mexico. Summers there were cooler, especially considering that (back then and for a long time) our childhood home didn’t have air conditioning. It was a delicious luxury to open the windows at night in Arroyo Seco, exotic to hear the coyotes howl, and cozy every afternoon when the summer monsoons exploded in the sky, blew hard, dumped buckets, and then floated back over the mountains as fast as they come in. The calm left in their wake was scented with greasewood and sage, and me and my sister would sip our raspberry Blue Sky sodas, sniffing the air and feeling nearly feral out on the edge of those mountains.

People often ask about my attachment to New Mexico, and there it is. It made an impression over the years I never shook but has always felt like a pipe dream to MOVE there. You don’t MOVE there, I always thought. You visit and unwind and relax and dream. It always felt TOO good to me. TOO spiritual. I’m always TOO happy, dreaming TOO much when I visit. Surely those types of places are just for vacation. I always thought. I used to think.

But now we’ve entered the second summer in a row – this one arguably worse than last year – in which this born-and-raised Texan (who grew up without AC) simply can no longer bear this climate. I generally spend at least half of each day outdoors. That’s the entire point of choosing to live on a farm. It’s no longer possible to live this way for approximately one third of the year since it’s safe to say these temps will stretch for at least four months.

That’s not acceptable. It’s no longer acceptable.

To whisper, then shout, this in my head has felt like screaming into the wind, so now I’m saying it OUT LOUD to everyone who will listen and particularly to those who matter most: my family.

It’s not just the heat. Anyone who has visited our farm is aware that we live in an area of rapid growth spreading with exactly the same speed and destructive force of a wildfire. Every beautiful pasture, tree, and farm I’ve admired for nearly 15 years has been destroyed to make way for road expansions and more housing without regard to any sort of other necessary infrastructure (WE STILL HAVE NO GROCERY STORE.). What was once a farm filled with relative solitude is now surrounded by structures, construction for structures, or multiple families crammed onto properties without regard for trash disposal (oops did I say too much? I give zero fucks anymore). You can FEEL the squeeze of the city, its hot breath on our neck, the lines of people crowding in a way that’s inevitable, but we assumed would occur much later.

It occurred to me last week as I drove from the village where we stayed in New Mexico into a slightly larger town, that I’d not driven past a single strip shopping center for weeks. Instead our views were mountains and farms and big skies. The world was fresh air, summer monsoons, damp ponderosa and views that reached further than the imagination. Couple this with everything I already feel about the story of the southwest, the proximity to living history, the beauty of so much perfect imperfection. My heart burst a million times as I sifted through those familiar pebbles of thought: “I’m TOO happy here.”

Then, as we were frantically packing to leave between intermittent sobs from myself and my son, between having to excuse myself to run into the woods and rock back and forth on a boulder to calm the wailing, hugging a tree like I’d have to be ripped from its bark: my friend sent me a reel on Instagram. She wrote “I thought of you when I saw this.” The reel explained that humans are neurologically programmed to stay inside of a “familiar hell” even when they have discovered an “unfamiliar heaven.”

I almost fell off that rock, covered my mouth when I gasped, heart beating fast, the future and past of Bee Tree Farm in Manor, TX flashing through my mind like one of those near death experience movie montages.

There are so many moving pieces, and there have been so many signs that I now understand started almost two years ago. I don’t want to make excuses anymore for staying put within our familiar hell if we manage to find the means to claw our way out, to do what feels terrifying when I know we can be profoundly brave, especially when it matters most.

This isn’t a big announcement. Don’t read this post that way. It was my realization but it’s maybe one for you to make, as well, for whichever hell you live within. Whichever Unfamiliar Heaven you’ve experienced but were afraid to consider.

No matter what, there will always be goats.

After all, there is no heaven – or hell – without them.