Manifesting Idylwild

When we started to casually look for what would become Idylwild, it happened so quickly. It often takes people two to four years to find their place. But in retrospect, we see why we found it right away.

You see, Christian had a dream way before we met to retire on 40 acres and live on the land. In fact, he had even taken a trip to Wyoming specifically to scout out real estate. But he decided against Wyoming because of the harsh and long winters.

When it was clear that we were committed to spending the rest of our lives together, Christian started us on the path of choosing where we might live after his retirement. We were in Washington State the first time that we explored the question, and over the next few months, we started talking about what it was that we were looking for.

In true manifesting form, we started putting together a list of what we wanted. Christian was clear that he wanted flowing water, rock outcroppings, and undulating terrain. He wanted to be within 2 hours of a city for medical care, and within a 30 minute drive of a hardware store for all his projects. I personally wanted more nuanced things – enough land to take daily walks with my dog, places to sit and just be, and a substantial amount of trees. And of course, we had a budget.

In consideration of all of these features, we started our search in northeastern Alabama, at the start of the Appalachian mountain range. We started looking at undeveloped land in our price range and around our ideal acreage. We found a real estate agent and decided to take a trip down to visit in February of 2022. But when we honed in on what was available at that time, there wasn’t much that met our criteria.

So we expanded our search across the state line – to Tennessee. We had a phone conversation with our new real estate agent to share what we were looking for. She set up a weekly listing search for us that focused on southern-middle Tennessee based on what she heard our interests were.

While combing through hundreds and hundreds of listings, it felt like we were looking for a needle in a haystack. It was not honestly easy to find all of the features that we were looking for, especially with our budget. We wrote the features down, daydreamed about them, and had faith that we would find the property. We weren’t in a hurry – Christian wouldn’t retire until 2025, and we needed to stay in Illinois until our daughters graduated high school in 2027.

As our first trip drew near, we set up a series of property visits in northeast Tennessee (with another real estate agent in that coverage area) and southern-middle Tennessee that seemed to meet our criteria. Even if we ended up in Tennessee, there were so many areas of the state that we could reside in, so we wanted to make sure to start our exploration in more than one geography.

That weekend we looked at 10 properties across the state. But we were only on our second stop when we found THE ONE. The property wasn’t even an option until our real estate agent handed us the description after we looked at the first property. What was to become Idywild had just come back on the market the day before and was everything that we were looking for  - aside from the additional acres and higher cost.

Once we had our feet on this land, it didn’t take long for both of us to independently know that we had found what we were looking for. Beyond all of the physical attributes, we felt it in our bodies that this was the place that was meant to be home. “And that was just the beginning of the rest of our lives.”