HOW WE GOT HERE

             On a dark and stormy night about five years ago Becky was wrenched out of a deep sleep shrieking: “You’re going to retire in a few years!” 
            “Yes,” Michael grumbled into his pillow.  “Looking forward to it.” 
            The next morning Becky picked up the loose thread.  “Well, that settles it!  We’ve got to find the perfect place to retire!”
            Michael looked outside at the San Francisco Peaks rising majestically above their little mountain town of ponderosa pines and said, “I thought we were already in the perfect place?”
            Becky noted the six foot snowdrifts, the wind that was bending those ponderosa pines as if they were rubber, and the red-artery on the thermometer that had barely crept above zero:  “Like I said:  we’ve got to find the perfect place to retire.”
            To drive home her point she shoved open the window and in wafted the ubiquitous, burnt-Spam smell of the Nestle-Purina factory.  Yes, dog food in the making.  
            And so began a five year quest to find the Holy Grail of residences.  To put this in perspective, our search lasted half as long as the Trojan War and was 20% longer than the Civil War, World War II, or the tenure of any one term U.S. President.  
            Step One was to compile a list of all the qualities we were seeking in our proverbial perfect place.  For instance:  
  
                    *Goldilocks climate (not too hot, not too cold, but four distinct seasons)
                    *Close to a major airport (not a puddle-jumper postage stamp pad squeezed between the one-room                                              schoolhouse and the post office).
                   *Affordable (otherwise our No Brainer Quest would have ended in a hammock on the white sand beaches of 
                     Costa Rica).
                   *Closer to our granddaughter (more on this later)

            Our initial Perfect Place List was as thick the L.A. phone directory. In retrospect,  it reminded me of the “Ideal Husband Lists” some bright-eyed young coeds draft their freshman year of college:  six-foot-two or taller; dark eyes; no receding hairline; pre-law or pre-med major; likes snowboarding (not skiing); has read the complete works of J.K. Rowling; and so forth. By their senior year the list has dwindled to a few essentials: warm body; has job; uses deodorant; does not belch after meals (or during); loves me at least half as much as his X-box.
            Our Perfect Place List likewise lost the war of attrition.  By year four, the L.A. phone directory had been whittled down to two essentials:  Goldilocks climate and affordability.  
            For the record, we visited cities and towns throughout the Southwest--St. George, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Prescott, Phoenix, Tucson and just about every locale in between. Our Goldilocks climate criteria ruled out anyplace above the Mason-Dixon line and swamp-style humidity eliminated any state below it.  California Dreaming was either too crowded, too expensive, or both.  And Phoenix?  It’s like living on a hot griddle six months of the year.  Make that eight months.  
            But why the $#*&%! Payson?  More than one well-intentioned friend has posed that question, and sometimes without the expletive.  In fact, Payson was nowhere on our radar screen.  Then one day a year ago we took another futile tour of  some Phoenix homes trying to convince ourselves that, yes, after 28 years of high mountain living in the shadows of the San Francisco Peaks we could, surely, find happiness in the bland, horizontal flatness of the Valley of the Sun That Never Sleeps from April to November.  That afternoon we took the alternate route home, up the Beeline Highway, making a long, slow climb past  rock-scapes of stunning size and colors.  When we finally leveled out in a little three-traffic-light town we noticed something that had been missing from all of our other potential residences:  pine trees. Ponderosa pine trees.  Not the reaching-to-the-sun pine trees of Flagstaff, but tall enough, thick forests of them interspersed with rolling hills heavily frocked with a bipolar blend of mountain and desert flora--manzanita, oak, yucca, cactus, pinon, and some odd species of juniper that look as if they were imported from another planet.  Colossal, cyclops-looking boulders brooded on granite cliffs and bulged indiscriminately along barely traveled trails.  Crystal creeks and streams ribboned this unexpected gift.  Yes, the town was small, a fourth the size of Flagstaff, but there was a sense of rural living, of wilderness in your backyard, far removed from the stop-and-go, concrete-and-asphalt freeway life we had both abandoned, by choice, many many years ago.  And there was an added perk:  the panoramic backdrop of the Mogollon Rim thrusting above it all, stretching in horizontal line from one end of the sky to the other, like a never-ending table meticulously set for an outdoor lover’s feast.                   From the beginning of our quest, we had had one other criterion:  wherever we moved, it had to be as good or better than Flagstaff.  Driving through the little rim country town, we looked at each other and smiled. Maybe, we thought. Just maybe. . .