About Our Southwest Shift
A Tale of Two Trails
From DC Monuments
to Sedona Vortexes
I was a child when I first envisioned the desert as my home. During a family relocation from Hawaii to the Deep South, my father pulled off the road in Death Valley and sat me on a rock as he stood there, scanning the vastness. “It’s so quiet out here, a man could go crazy from the silence!” he mused. My seven-year-old self countered: "Our family is so noisy, I’d rather live in the desert!”
From the Windy City
to the Wild West
They say you can’t outrun your roots — but you certainly can trade a Chicago winter for a Sonoran sunset. After decades of navigating the city grid where I was raised, I swapped concrete canyons for the real thing in 1977.
Victoria's Vision Quest
Jerry's Tucson Trek
As a French-born American, moving felt natural due to my dad's frequent job transfers. At 18, I ran away to the West Coast, and eventually launched my successful writing career on the East Coast. At 50, I relocated to the City of Light. After Paris, I made my home on D.C.'s Capitol Hill. Gradually, the urban lifestyle I loved left me weary and frustrated.
Mentally, physically, and emotionally, I was burned out from years of dedicated public service to not-for-profit, academic, and federal government organizations. Add to this scenario the impact of working with top brass at the Pentagon, and living just two blocks from the U.S. Capitol — where all my neighbors were senators, congressmen, lobbyists, and other politicos. These negative vibrational realities compelled me to reassess aspects I once appreciated about my life as a city girl.
In 2014, my adult daughter's suggestion to go on a "vision quest" inspired me to trade the marble monuments of our nation's capital for the crystalline energy of Sedona's red rock vortexes. Navigating a 16-foot moving van 2,500 miles across the country solo, I began to recreate a new reality in my thoughts — and quickly manifested positive results from those realigned energies.
In retrospect, I’m happy I summoned the courage to let go and move on. What I got in return was wide-open spaces and the life I envisioned.
The best part was, after packing up yet again and leaving Sedona in the dust, I met my soul mate at a Tucson drum circle.
As Jerry likes to say, each time I moved, I came even closer to meeting him. And now here we are, living the life we both imagined — individually and as life partners. That's vision!
❤ v!ctor!a
Meeting Victoria at a local drum circle was the catalyst for a new chapter I’d been calling toward me. We knew we were intentionally attracting this shared reality — co-creating a partnership rooted in mutual purpose, light, and the joy of constant discovery.
🌵Jerry
From the lush depths of Madera Canyon to the silence of Sabino Canyon, I found my rhythm. I’ve backpacked the Catalinas and summited Mount Wrightson — the highest peak in the Santa Ritas — multiple times. Even today, every summit is a reminder: I didn't just relocate — I arrived.
Those worries were my silent passengers along the ribbon of highway to the Grand Canyon State.
As the flat, gray horizon of the Midwest shifted into the vastness of the plains, my apprehension gradually subsided. I felt fortunate to have friends waiting in Tucson who helped bridge the gap, helping me network before I even unpacked.
And once I settled in, those initial anxieties evaporated like the morning fog atop the mountains surrounding Tucson — specifically, the Santa Catalinas, Rincons, Santa Ritas, Tortolitas, and the Tucson Mountains. I didn’t just gaze at those peaks — I climbed them!
I was eager to escape frigid winters and perpetual gridlock, but as I loaded my car and headed west, the scale of the move started to sink in. I wasn’t just driving — I was venturing into the unknown.
The cross-country drive was punctuated by equal parts exhilaration and anxiety as I pondered: How long could I survive on my savings? Would I find a job that paid a decent wage? Would I make new friends easily? Could my body tolerate Tucson’s scorching summers?