tl;dr: Amanda and I have bought a home near Keeseville and will be moving there in the near future. Not right away, but “soon”. We have things in Potsdam to take care of before we can “transfer our flag”.

I was born and raised in Keeseville, NY. I attended college in Potsdam, NY. After college I lived in Keeseville and had several different jobs. Then I moved to Potsdam as part of one of my jobs for a computer store in Plattsburgh, NY, traveling back to Plattsburgh at least once a week. I moved back to Keeseville when I married my first wife. In December of 1996 I accepted a job at SUNY Potsdam and we moved to Potsdam a year later. I have been here ever since and have now spent a little over half of my life here.

Moving again is not something I ever thought I’d do. Potsdam has been very good to me. I have advanced in my career, it’s been a wonderful place in which to raise the boys, and the Arts and amenities abound relative to other communities in northern New York. I used to think, “home (my home town) is only 2 hours away!” That was and is still true. But the more I realize that there are fewer days ahead of me than there are behind me, the more valuable those hours become.

And then there’s Amanda. She has always loved the area around Keeseville—Camp, Plattsburgh, the Adirondacks. Many times over the years she would break the silence as we rode through the Champlain valley, the lake on one side of us and the mountains in the distance on the other saying, “We could live here!”

We had a house in mind and were waiting for it to become available. (A longer story for another time, perhaps.) But over the last year or so we would casually browse the real estate listings in the Keeseville area. Nothing really jumped out at us—until last October. It was a new listing just north of Keeseville in a little subdivision off route 9. We made an appointment to see it, loved it, got approved for financing, made an offer, and bought the house, closing on December 21st! (That last sentence is a wildly gross oversimplification of 2 months of dealing with realtors, bankers, and lawyers.)

And so we are moving to Keeseville! (Well, “Peru,” technically, if you go by Zip Code. Town of Ausable, but Peru Zip. Weird.) We aren’t moving right away. We have details in Potsdam to take care of first and are fortunate to be able to own and maintain both homes for awhile. But the new place is ours and we have begun the process of moving some of our things there. If all works out as we hope, we’ll be officially relocated by Summer. We will miss Potsdam and our friends here. But this makes sense for us in lots of ways I needn’t go into here, and we are looking forward to this next chapter in our lives.