When have you said, “I could live here”?

Thirty years ago I drove a red rental car into Silver City, New Mexico, on my way to the Gila Cliff Dwellings and the rest of my life. I’d just moved from Brooklyn back to California. My back-east boyfriend would soon join (and then dump) me, but I didn’t know that yet.

My companion on that road trip is still my best friend. She can’t remember much about Silver City except that the town’s curbs were knee-high in the historic downtown (to thwart floodwaters), and that I told her, “I could live here.”

There was nothing overtly amazing about this former mining town. But the way the wide streets invited walking, along with the quality of the air, and the desert-meets-mountain vibe — it just felt right. Plus the downtown looked like artists were trying to make a go of some of the abandoned storefronts.

Looking for home has been a constant for me. Something in me feels that where I grew up doesn’t quite allow me to be my fullest self, probably because it mires me in old habits and familial roles.

Everywhere I go, I wonder if this is the place, a town or city or outpost where I can leave my old self behind and start fresh. Many places catch my fancy. But I don’t often say, “I could live here.”

Yeah, I know: Everywhere you go, there you are. But I want to turn that on its head, and say: If you find the right place, you find yourself. Or you find the self that can take the journey you now need to take. There are many right places in a well-lived life.

When I moved to Costa Rica and was researching my guide, Living Abroad in Costa Rica, I visited scores of cities and towns in that Central American nation with just such a question in mind. I made a science of it, talking to expats about why they’d chosen their particular spot. I learned a lot about what it takes to be a successful relocator: one who doesn’t just lug their problems to a new place and then get mad at that place for not solving everything.

I discovered that you need more than a new place: you need a new role for yourself in that new place. It’s less a matter of where you end up than who you’ll be in this new “where.” Will you be the grump on the hill who starts drinking at breakfast, or will you found the towns’ first bilingual library? I had a role in Costa Rica — finding out as much about the place as possible, and writing about it. After that project was realized, I was ready to move on. Yep, my name is Erin and I’m a serial relocator.

Looking for a new home is inextricably linked to looking for a new self. People move at pivotal moments in their lives: after quitting a job, retiring, getting divorced, the kids leaving home, the death of a loved one. You’ve lost something, and are often both devastated and somehow lighter for the experience.

Fast forward thirty years. I’m on a road trip with my husband of 9 years. Late-in-life love is the sweetest, fruit left on the vine to fully ripen. We live in San Francisco, an hour south of his aging parents and an hour north of mine. We have ties here that bind. But we can get away for a few weeks, and our plan was to explore the back roads of Southern Utah: places as gorgeous as the state’s national parks but where you can go days without seeing anyone.

On the heels of writing about how trip planning must now take into account climate crisis-fueled weather, our plans were foiled by an Arctic storm that dumped rain and then snow, making our unpaved back roads of choice impassable in our beloved car-camping Subaru Forester, whose all-wheel drive is but a scrawny cousin to actual 4-wheel drive.

We had to reinvent our trip, on the fly. First step: drive south. Get into temperatures that allow hiking and camping. And hey, why not drop down to Silver City?

Sometimes it takes a few life cycles before you circle back to a place you instinctively knew was right for you — you just didn’t know why, or when.

Silver City was even better than I remember it. With fewer than 10,000 people, the town supports several bookstores. Storefronts are painted in hues of southwest psychedelia. There’s a university. Downtown has galleries, good restaurants, and live music — we saw a great Latin band called Nosotros. We’d just missed a printmaking festival, and were a week early for the Southwest Word Fiesta.

We talked to a plein air painter on a side street and a bookstore owner on the main drag. Both sang the praises of the town and of one Diana Ingalls Leyba, who has a gallery downtown and puts together community art projects that produce some of the most amazing street art I’ve ever seen.

I still felt as if I could live here. Better yet, David felt the same. We peered into vacant buildings and imagined what we could fill them with. We’ve been checking the real estate listings. One really caught our eye: a haunted mansion built in 1890, along with an entire block of historic cottages to go with it. We can’t quite manage the $1.4 million price tag. Maybe you’d like to pitch in? I don’t know if I’m kidding or not. I do know that we all think about big moves. New selves. A renewed sense of purpose. Maybe we can all think about that together. Which is to say, hit me up, with your ideas, musings, or places you’ve visited and thought, “I could live here.”