I love houses and often have one foot out the door, ready to try on a new one. The world is full of so many options. Our first house, which we bought right after we got married in 1970, was a modern redwood and glass, but we’ve also lived in a 100-year-old foursquare built from a Sears kit and a ranch that had its own city block. I’m not one to stay put, so the 28 years in our last house was a highly settled patch for me.

That home, built in 1992, had an open floor plan, high ceilings, a screen porch, two decks, a front porch, and a walk-out patio on a wooded lot. It lived large but was relatively small by today’s standards—about 1800 square feet plus a finished basement. Josh was in college, Ellen in high school.

But within a year of moving in, my parents decided to give my siblings and me a bequest rather than waiting until they died. That allowed my brother and me to buy mountain property in Colorado, my home state. With family help, we built a 480-square foot cabin on my portion of the land. My brother built a bigger home a quarter of a mile away. It was both a refuge and a magnet for family reunions. The land is remote, on a rocky road that looks like a creek bed. It’s one of the quietest, most tranquil places in earth. Living there year around was not an option, but we wanted to spend as much time there as we could. I was still teaching, so our time in the mountains was limited to six weeks a year.

Then Josh graduated from college and moved to Europe, with occasional stints back on the East Coast. Ellen moved to upstate New York, met a wonderful man, married him, moved to Vermont, and blessed us with two grandsons.

Our lives were happening all over the place; we wanted to be here and there and everywhere, but physics interfered.

We spent summers in Colorado and traveled during the rest of the year to see our kids. That left the house empty for nearly five months a year. When we were home, we lived in less than half of it. And all those porches and decks and trees increased its maintenance exponentially. It felt wasteful, and the workload got harder as we got older.

We began seriously considering moving to Vermont so our grandsons could sit on my lap forever. Joe was still making furniture in his downstairs workshop; he needed a place with a big enough garage, basement, or shed for him and his tools. I was still writing and needed an office.

But Vermont, while gorgeous, is a rural state. Ellen and her husband live on a mountainside with a drop-dead view, but miles from even a small town. Living near them meant houses with acres rather than yards, often on gravel roads, many built more than 100 years ago. That seemed more than we wanted to take on at this stage of life. Plus, there was no guarantee they would stay in Vermont; pulling up roots and heading across country could be risky. Younger friends here told me that their parents had moved to be closer to them and it often felt confining because the parents left much of their support system behind.

We make friends easily, but we have spent more than 50 years building relationships here. Did we want to leave that community? And did we want to sign up for longer winters? Did we want to move even farther from our Colorado cabin? It all felt daunting. Rather than dipping our toes into a move, we would be diving in headfirst. That could hurt.

But there are different ways to build strong family bonds. We began making longer trips to Vermont, scheduling visits for the boys’ plays, choral performances, baseball games, and whatever. During Covid we had regularly scheduled Zoom games with them. At dinner after one of those sessions, our youngest gave thanks “for games with Grandma and Grandpa. And just for Grandma and Grandpa in general.” Even 1200 miles away, we are a part of their lives. And they no longer want to sit on my lap anyway.

Colorado was our next choice. But we had one unsuccessful search after another; nothing we found could match what we already had in Iowa. We’d look at a house, compare it, and say, “nah.” Plus, we wanted to live in a city, as we already had a mountain cabin, and the more we looked elsewhere, the better Des Moines looked. It was finally getting the national attention it deserved for its livability, arts community, great restaurants, nature trails, and limited traffic. Seemed like a good place to live. It was no longer just the capital of a flyover state. And it was way more affordable than Colorado.

Then, in 2013, a fire started less than a mile from our cabin; we escaped before it roared through our valley, but we smelled ashy smoke breathing down our necks as we raced away. It burned 13,000 acres around our cabin, and we lost more than 70 percent of our trees. Eleven years later, it has recovered only minimally. (I wrote about this in my book, Burn Scars: A Memoir of the Land and Its Loss.) At the same time as our fire raged, eight fires were burning in the state. Colorado was enveloped in smoke. Some scientists say the American West is being hit harder by climate change than other parts of our planet—droughts, wildfires, extreme heat, water shortages.  We put our move on hold.

Our Iowa friends welcomed our change of heart and mind and encouraged us to enjoy our roots here. Joe returned to his shop and to volunteering at two local hospitals and one non-profit. I took on several consulting gigs. But the house, which we considered new, was beginning to show its age. Our windows and siding had signs of rot, right after their warranties expired. We replaced the windows and siding. Our appliances needed parts that were no longer available, so we replaced most of them. Our travel budget got strangled by house repairs, but my consulting earnings gave us a boost. We could handle it, so we stopped looking. Sort of.

Through this all, we had looked for other homes in Des Moines. Staying here in a smaller space had its own logic. We’d be between Colorado and Vermont and close to an airport to fly off to see Josh. Travel would be easier with less house burden. We could justify those gas-guzzling flights a bit more if we consumed less house and land. We weren’t entirely convinced, but it was worth a thought or two or 76,571.

We toured single family houses, condos, townhomes in Des Moines. It was part hobby, part research. But we always came home and said, “Why would we leave this for that?”

In 2008, right before the housing market crashed, and 12 years before we actually moved, we looked at a condo in a cool midcentury brick-and-glass building across from a large park. We loved the building, but the condo was overpriced. And its view was nice, looking north toward a lovely, established neighborhood. But the apartments across the hall, on the southern side, overlooked over the park. Wouldn’t it be cool, we thought, to have a place on that side, shaded by that huge locust tree? It would be like living in a treehouse. But nothing was for sale there. 

In Part 3, I’ll introduce you to The Treehouse.