A mile outside the town of Banff in Canada.
It’s just over two years since I moved full time to Park City, Utah, where my house is 6,800 feet above sea level. I lost ten pounds (without trying), eat whatever I want, have more energy, and get more work done.
It’s taken me these two years to realize that for much of my adult life, I have been pretty happy, but not as happy or energized as I could have been. The difference wasn’t relationships or work or family; it was that I am physically and emotionally better suited to living in the mountains.
The same may be true for you, too.
Aryn Schlichting, cofounder of Mountain Careers, says that many professionals dream of living in mountain towns, but they don’t realize it is much more viable than they might imagine.
“We call them dreamers. They still want to have a challenging professional job. They might be open to multiple geographic areas and towns. But they haven’t yet committed to moving to a certain place on a certain date.”
Mountain Careers maintains a website and weekly newsletter that share both specific job openings in mountain towns as well as links to related articles and advice.
“One thing that holds people back,” says Katie Wright, executive director of the Park City Community Foundation, “Is the desire to be near to family.” Wright, who moved to Park City from the east coast, admits that “it almost feels like an abandonment of your family, unless your parents also move out here, which is what happened for me.”
I completely understand this dilemma, and have wrestled with those issues. My solution is to create the most welcoming possible “vacation” getaway here for my family and friends from back east.
And yet...a happier you will be a much better companion to the people you love.
Wright recalls, “I don't know why, but I always wanted to live in the mountain west, and here I am and I'm extremely happy about it. There's no looking back, there's no regret ever. We are surrounded by interesting people and doing fascinating work.”
Mountain towns have many of the same challenges as communities everywhere, but the smaller scale of these towns makes it somewhat easier for residents to get their arms around issues and address them.
Wright describes ones day when the community foundation was focused on early childhood development and “we realized there's about 400 births a year in our county. So if we're working with young kids ages zero to three, that's about 1,600 kids at any given time. We thought to ourselves, there’s no reason why we as a community can't know that each one of those 1,600 children is getting what he or she needs.”
Since then, the foundation has collaborated with other programs and community leaders to expand and coordinate services for this age group.
One of my favorite sayings is: your environment always wins. We all know the wisdom of being active, staying healthy, cherishing nature, living in a vibrant community and maintaining strong relationships. But how do you do it? For some professionals, these basic goals can seem elusive in urban or suburban settings.
The good news is that mountain town employers are eager to welcome talented professionals.
For over 15 years, Schlichting has been a mountain town-based HR professional and/or recruiter. She says, “Many mountain town employers struggle. Unemployment in mountain towns is much lower than the national average. Employers generally say that finding sufficient talent is difficult and one of their top challenges.”
But at the same time, there are people all around the world stuck in a traffic jam and dreaming of living in Jackson Hole or Bozeman, Montana. The problem, says Schlichting, is not one of supply and demand, but rather that potentially interested professionals haven’t had easily accessible paths to explore what can seem like only a dream. That’s why they launched Mountain Careers three years ago.
Mountain towns have energy. They attract vibrant, energetic people as residents as well as visitors. I’m just saying, you could be one of them.
