Our path to Belfast has been a long one with many twists and turns. We are now in our sixties and thus have a biography that includes four grown children, six grandchildren and two longhaired dachshunds.
We are currently living in Austin, TX where the record-breaking drought and heat of the last year have left us more determined than ever to be in a part of the country that allows us to live more lightly on the earth. But our interest in co-housing, and an eco-village in particular, is really the culmination of many years of commitment to being good stewards of the earth.
Coming to the stark realization that life in central Texas is unsustainable and that an eco-village would help us achieve our goal of living a sustainable life, it wasn’t long till we found our way to Belfast Cohousing and Ecovillage.
To back up a bit - Bobbie is a native Texan. Gil is from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. We started our life together in Dallas but found our true home in New England in the 1980’s. We lived in and near Boston for the better part of 15 years before returning to Texas to be near children and grandchildren in 2000. As we approach retirement and our grandchildren are more focused on peers, our longing to be in New England and near the ocean has roared back to life.
Gil has worked for IBM for much of his career, moving from telecommunications to professional project manager in the 1990s as he spearheaded a major project for the campus of Boston College. Bobbie was a homemaker and active volunteer until the kids entered college and she resumed focus on her own education. She likes to brag that she “crammed four years of college into sixteen years” before starting graduate school. She found her way into the fascinating world of neuropsychology and behavioral neurology, and has specialized in helping patients whose neurological deficits impact their daily lives. (Here’s a link to her professional website.)
While keeping busy in our work, we also discovered the joy of gardening for “the three B’s” – birds, butterflies, and bees. We were recently interviewed for a local gardening program on PBS (take a peek at the YouTube clip). We have not, however, mastered vegetable gardening and will thus be looking for lots of teachers when we move to Belfast Cohousing. Indeed, we eagerly look forward to living amongst so many wonderful people who not only share our commitment to sustainable living, but to learn from those who are many years ahead of us in practicing that lifestyle.
