How we got here

Every time I came back from a destination (with a few exceptions - I’m looking at you Manhattan, KS) I was fully convinced I was going to pack up and move there. Whatever the synonym for “wanderlust” is that translates to “a strong desire to live somewhere new” is what I was suffering from. The problem? I’d stayed in one place for too long. My family and the majority of my friends were all within a 6-hour drive of my epicenter in DC and, at most, a 3-hour flight. I was becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable. I could travel and experience other cities across America and other cultures around the world, but always come back to the place I’d called home for the better part of my life.

I don’t think I can quantify the many factors that led to me finally getting over it, but I got over it. It was time to go and I didn’t know where, but I knew what. In no set order, these became my evaluating criteria:

• Job Market: I wasn’t independently wealthy but I’d become comfortable with a certain quality of life and needed to pick a city that would allow me to make a good living.

• Community: Remember that bit about almost everyone I know being in the same general vicinity? I was about to turn 34 and did not want to start from scratch making new friends. I should point out that when I was 29, my New Year’s Resolution was No New Friends. I’d long since stopped making resolutions and even allowed for a handful of new acquaintances and (gasp) a few new friends.

• Access to Nature: This may seem odd, but having whooped it up in Arlington for 4.5 years and then living car-free in DC for 4.5 years, my definition of #optoutside had morphed into drinking on rooftop bars. Frankly, I wasn’t trying to spend my late 30’s making news my mom couldn’t share with her co-workers.

• Love Connection: DC is notorious for being one of the worst places for singles. I loved my autonomy, but I didn’t hate the idea of sharing my free time and needed a less oppressive city.

• Mobility: I was not going to be able to buy a car on Day One and having lived that cyclist life for some time, I need a city that I could navigate easily - or at least a neighborhood closer to downtown.

• Coolness: See: “I’m looking at you Manhattan, KS”

Enter: Colorado

I made my first visit to Denver during Halloween Weekend of 2009. It was my first time seeing the Rockies and I was beyond impressed. I made a few return trips to Denver and one-offs to Breckenridge and Telluride, Colorado and found myself increasingly smitten with the state. I always figured if I landed somewhere permanently, it was going to be near an ocean or another major body of water. I never considered a landlocked state, but there was something about the majesty of the mountains and the impact their seemingly infinite magnitude had on my perception of myself as a single organism on this planet. I wasn’t quite ready for a cabin in the woods lifestyle, but Denver-proper was checking all my boxes.

Dear Denver,

In January 2017, before I began my great European adventure, I made a few stops across these here United States to visit friends and family. I did a tour through the Carolinas, Denver, New Orleans, Seattle, and Atlanta. My Denver trip was (initially) exclusively to visit my buddy, Nick. He moved out in 2006, after we graduated college, and was the reason I’d been visiting the state to-date. Before I headed out, I heard from my friend Russ for the first time in ages. Russ went to college with Nick and me, lived in the same dorm freshman year, and even majored in Physics with Nick. He was reaching out on a totally unrelated note, but when I found out he’d moved for the first time in 10 years from Ithaca, NY to Denver I insisted he meet up with us during my visit in a few weeks. One of the things I love about Nick is his dedication to curating an experience. I don’t know if he even knows this about himself, but he is a fantastic tour guide in that no single person gets the same experience as anyone else. True to form, he’d designed me an awesome weekend.

We scooped up Russ on a day trip out of Denver to Golden and Lookout Mountain. On the ride up, Russ was going on about a potential business opportunity and mentioned he’d started jamming with a member of Thievery Corporation. I don’t know why, but I opted not to ask any further questions.

On the ride back from Golden to Denver, Russ mentioned he was going to invite his buddy to meet us for dinner. Nick’s sister Natalie, who I absolutely adore, had recently moved back to Denver and was also going to come meet us out. We arrived at Highland Tap & Burger and grabbed a table while we waited for the others to join us. Natalie walked in the door and my heart overflowed. I was sitting at a table with four people who made me so happy and with whom I had many years of history. Hardly anytime had passed when Russ’s buddy who he’d been playing music with, is a member of Thievery Corporation, and my freakin’ friend who’d moved from DC to Denver 6 months prior, Jeff rolled in! Again, I don’t know why I didn’t press Russ, but to find out that the person he’d been talking about was in fact a mutual friend that none of us knew we shared was beyond mind-blowing!

At the end of dinner Natalie raised a glass to me. Everyone chimed in with, “to Shana!” I looked at all of them confused and said flatly, “but why?” One of them responded, equally deadpanned, “we’re all around this table because of you.”

It was in that moment that the weight I’d been carrying of being comfortable with being uncomfortable fell from the space between my neck and shoulder blades. I’d spent my life (with the exception of my 29th year) befriending people and their people and their families. In this moment, I felt community and I felt love (albeit, philia love, but love nonetheless). We’d gone from downtown Denver to nature in the foothills in 20 minutes earlier that afternoon. In 20 minutes in a car from my front door in DC, I would have still been in DC. The rest was surely going to fall in place and any angst I had about moving away from home washed away. Dear Denver, I’m coming for ya!

Saying Goodbye

When I got back from Europe in March 2017, I’d all but committed to the idea of making this move. Within 48 hours of my return I learned we were going to close one location of the small business I’d been pouring my heart into and my grandmother passed away. The decision pretty much cemented itself. My last day at work was the start of Memorial Day Weekend, which I spent in Denver scouting out neighborhoods and realizing my future. I came home and spent the summer saying “see ya later” to everyone I knew and loved all along the eastern seaboard. Saying goodbye was out of the question, this was where my life and those I loved were. But it was time for me to forge a new frontier and taking as much time as I could afford to do so was the only way I knew how.

Here are few highlights from my goodbye tour before I headed to Denver on August 28, 2018 - 6 days before my 34th birthday.