This is a Citadel
I traveled to Chicagoland a couple of weeks ago for a family event.
It was the last time I would see my grandparent’s house (image above).
My Grandfather passed just over 2 years ago, and my grandmother was making the final preparations to move into an assisted living community with a number of other friends.
This home is the steadiest location in the entirety of my childhood. Moving from one suburb to another, parents divorcing, remarrying, hopping between houses, running off to college, then living in the South for nearly a decade.
Through all of that, this single location stood, like a rock in a stream of time.
Whenever I came back to where I grew up, everything else had changed, except for this place.
I remember emptying the bottom shelves of the kitchen cabinets and playing music on the pots and pans when I was 4.
The summers when my grandmother would pull a 35 gallon tin tub into the driveway, then fill it with the hose so my sister and I could play in the freezing water.
It’s where my grandfather reached into the top shelf of the front coat closet and handed an 8 year old RW a 1970s pump action BB gun so I could chase the squirrels and chipmunks through the woods (unsuccessfully).
It’s where my grandmother crept into the guest bedroom each morning and changed the sweat soaked sheets as I battled Mono for a week through college.
It’s where we came together as a family for the Jewish High Holidays, where year after year we would sit around the packed family tables and conduct our Passover Seder. Where we would meet for Shabbat dinners. Where my bris, my cousins brit milahs, birthdays, random nights, pizza parties, and stargazing happened.
It’s where we sat shiva when my grandfather died, and the neighbors came over and reminded me how I used to sneak into their yard to play on the swing set when I was 5.
The entire timeline of my life was punctuated by this single, stable, loving place.
What are we building for?
Tradition and shared value are what will bring and keep you together.
In the case of a family, shared value often takes the form of religion or lifecycle events, birthdays, births, holidays, deaths.
In the case of Bitcoiners, I believe we’re still exploring what that means, but we need places to explore it.
When I returned from Chicagoland I took another motorcycle camping trip to Wyoming. This time to camp near Medicine Bow National Forest.
I had my grandparent’s house top of mind.
While the National Forests are serene, they don’t necessarily bring people together around shared value.
I rode into the National Forest to camp at the below red dot, yet my sights were actually set on the space within the big red circle.
Because I’m struggling between two choices…
When the choice on where to purchase land and build a citadel comes up, I find myself stuck between two ideas (obviously life is not an absolutely clear either/or, but these distinctions help us understand the shades of grey between).
The first is a situation where we are very remote with large acreage. You may recall this as the Wild/Hill Meadow in my prior writing.
The second is a situation where we are near State or National Parks on less acreage (and likely closer to a town or city). You may recall this as the Retreat Center in my prior writing.
Because I want my Bitcoin Citadel to be an inherently social place, I find myself caught between:
a. if you build it, they will come, and
b. they will come and stay, but explore the surrounding area as well.
This is why I’m exploring the area between Laramie and Medicine Bow National Forest. It’s a roughly 30 minute trip from one to the other, and everything between is lush with rolling meadows and ample views of the National Forests on approach.
As I formulate my general thesis for my citadel building (it doesn’t have to be the same as yours, let me be clear.) I’m reminded how important community and social space is to me.
I find myself inclined to want a large covered community or coworking type space as well as an assembly of Tiny Homes, Glamping Setups, Camping Pads and RV Hookups.
In my mind, access to the open spaces and trails, plus the comfortable homey feel of a community space from which to work, listen to music, or just hangout and socialize, seems to me a near ideal option.
Let me throw a few ideas below share this nascent vision with you:
The vision is forming.
The process of building feels, to me, much like making a piece of art.
When you start with the raw materials, you have a general and very rough sense of what you’d like to make. As you chisel into the granite, or pour out paints, or even sort digital photographic files, and start to play, you find that the materials lend themselves to certain types of arrangements.
The materials inspire you, your vision becomes refined, the process begins to take on a life of its own and pieces begin to fall into place because ‘that just seemed like the proper place for it to go.’
I sense that we’re nearing a point where things begin to fall into place more easily, and we can start to make more direct moves in purchasing land, materials, seeking lending, and working with an agent.
NOTE: I make videos of my exploratory trips and share them on Youtube. If you’d like to follow along and see my recent experiences in Wyoming, you can do so HERE!
I hope you enjoyed this update. I’m loving the process of getting my thoughts down and hope you’re getting excited to build your own Citadel (or are actively in the process.)
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