I’ll be open with you, I quit my job and conventional life out of guilt and complacency.

I felt guilty every day that my dad was living by himself, fifteen-hundred miles away. My mother had passed away several years ago, he was recently retired and life was beginning to change gears for him.

My guilt was only compounded by the complacency I felt in the routine rhythms of life in Florida. I didn’t understand at the time, but venturing out into the world alone, forging my own path, had served its purpose. I finally had a grasp of who I am. I no longer felt or needed the growth that came with flying the coop five years ago.

Instead, I questioned – why I was choosing to live on my own so far from the people I care about? Was my engineering career in the panhandle worth it – a question I wrestled with often. Society told me my career had to come first. Were they wrong? I had become a very independent woman, would hightailing it back to Minnesota change that?

I no sooner asked those questions when my dad called with news of extremely high blood pressure. Having survived a cancer diagnosis years earlier, any health scare with him sends me into a state of panic.

The next morning, I received a letter under my apartment door notifying me that the owner of the unit I had been renting from for the past two years would be selling. I had thirty days to move out.

Within a week, I had requested two months of unpaid leave to go live in Minnesota with my dad. Instead, the company I worked for generously offered me one month of remote work, assigning me additional projects that I could do from a laptop.

I packed up my apartment, put everything in a storage locker, and loaded a couple Duluth Packs with my necessities.

I drove fifteen-hundred miles north, laptop in hand, with every intention to return to my career in Florida at the end of the agreed upon leave. But I underestimated the pull of home, family, and the wilderness I love.

For me, home is a children’s summer camp at the end of the Gunflint Trail of Northern Minnesota that my grandparents, Jim and Nancy, started in 1968. Since the first cabin was put up, my aunts, uncles, cousins, and even my parents have worked for the camp.

This place, rooted in family and wilderness, claimed my heart many years ago, but I placed my personal growth and career ahead of the claim that always tugged at me, which in turn took me far away. A decision I don’t regret, but we’ll get to that.

During the summer of my “sabbatical”, my dad was working as the maintenance guy. My cousins were the camp directors. Of the eighteen staff members and forty campers, I only knew my family when I arrived on a warm July evening.

For the next few weeks, I shared three meals a day in the dining hall with my dad, something I hadn’t done since I was eighteen. Every morning I had coffee with him and every evening I got to say goodnight in person. I sang with the cooks in the kitchen as we did dishes after dinner and went to all the campfire circles. During the day, I worked from my cabin.

I got a taste of the simplicity and fullness that comes with living so immersed in the wilderness, without the distractions of modern society.

By the time camp was over, I had one week left of leave. I was sitting in my Dad’s cabin, looking out over the Seagull River, when he said to me, “you know…you could always come spend the winter here with me.”

I smiled and laughed a little, “but Dad, I have a job I have to go back to.”

I thought he was just joking. I didn’t expect him to respond the way he did.

“All I’m saying is, I wish I would’ve had an opportunity to spend more time with my dad. You could find an engineering job in Minnesota once the winter is over. Just an idea”

I think that’s all he had to say. My heart decided then and there. By that point in my life, I was painfully aware that I was down to one parent who isn’t aging backwards, as much as I’ve begged him.

His suggestion gave me the permission I needed to make the decision.

A few weeks later, it was a hot Thursday afternoon in the south. I corralled my two managers into a conference room. Hindsight being 20/20, I think they knew what I was going to say.

Although I had a carefully crafted monologue in my head about why I had to quit, I was completely speechless for the first time in my life. All I could do was shake because I knew this was the “cliff jumping” moment I had heard people describe. I didn’t want to let my company down and this decision would leave my future unsure.

Luckily, I got the words out, made the leap. My managers and coworkers handled the situation with love and respect, seeing how important this was to me.

I’ve had two other milestone moments in my life but they were both events that happened whether I wanted them to or not.

This time, I was creating the change entirely on my own.

For the first time, I was directing the course of my life solely based on what my heart wanted. I realize how lucky I am to be able to do that…the empowerment of it all is not lost on me!

Needless to say, I followed through with the leap.

In review, I had spent the past six years becoming my own person. Going home, to the woods with my family, was the missing piece that would allow me to embrace the person I had gone out into the world to become.

So that’s why I quit my job – because my heart told me to do it.

I’ve been living in my little cabin, The Pepper Shack, since September. No running water, cell reception, or conventional heating…electricity and wifi for the win though!

The majority of my worldly possessions, i.e. couch, tv, collection of cute shoes, are stored away in the barn at my childhood home. I spent so much time filling my apartment with things that I now rarely think of.

I don’t go out to eat often and I never go shopping. Instead, I make meals for my dad, read by the fire, hike in the snow, and do all the necessary work to simply survive living mostly off-grid in Northern Minnesota.

I know it’s probably très cliché to quote Thoreau but the man had it right!

I’ve chosen this remote way of life in the woods because I’m wishing “to live deliberately. To drive life into a corner and reduce it to it’s simplest terms.”

The civilized world will be there whenever I return, but time with loved ones is fleeting and so is youth!

Warm Wishes,