This afternoon, while I was loading some boxes of books into the van to bring up to North Carolina, my wife sidled up to me and said:

Hey, you know what? We’re moving to the mountains!

It’s amazing how fresh that news still seems, even though we’ve known it now for weeks.

While it seems like much of what I have written about lately has revolved around preparing for the move, I think something else is going on here beyond the packing and clearing and de-cluttering: we are being presented with an opportunity to re-craft our home, our habits, and our daily lives in a more deliberate and intentional manner. And trust me, I get it: a change in geography does not necessarily mean an automatic change in lifestyle, but it does provide a fertile opportunity for rethinking why and how we do the things we do.

Right now, I am writing this post sitting at my kitchen table at what will be our home for the next year. I’ve sat in this spot before over the years, typing away at my ancient workhorse of a laptop, tethered to my cell phone as my only point of internet access.

But around the corner, in the other room, there’s now a bookshelf that has never been in this house before. It’s an old bookshelf–I had it in my bedroom growing up, and I’m pretty sure before that it was kicking around with my dad for a number of years.

It’s the first real sign that something is shifting, as parts of our lives, individually and collectively, start to resettle into our new home.

I’m still not sure where all of this is going to take us, but I am definitely in for the ride!