Dear Graham,
Thirty-one years ago, we moved to our home in Nederland, Colorado, in Saint Antons on Rocky Knob Lane. Tom discovered the house on one of his home-searching journeys, and for both of us it was love at first sight.
The home sat on three beautiful acres surrounded by ponderosa pines, with a lovely aspen grove to the west and peekaboo views of the Rocky Mountains. It was March when Tom first found the house, and snow still covered the ground. We closed in April, after the snow had melted and the skies had turned that deep Colorado blue.
We moved into the house on April 1, 1995. A few friends helped us load a U-Haul in Boulder with our modest belongings and drive them up the mountain. It was a warm day, and after unloading everything, we sat on the deck sharing sandwiches and cold drinks while admiring our sweet spot in the mountains.
We had been in the house only three days when we awoke to a snowstorm. This was not a gentle spring snow but a fierce mountain dump. By the end of the day, nearly three feet had fallen, and Tom and I looked at each other and said, “Oh my, what have we gotten ourselves into?”
As it turned out, we had gotten ourselves into something wonderful: a life in the mountains where we hiked daily, skied, snowshoed, and spotted elk, moose, deer, and coyotes in our backyard. We hosted Thanksgiving dinners, Christmases with family, and Fourth of July parties there, and over the years the house became woven into the fabric of our lives.
The house had been built by two Nederland craftsmen, and it was beautiful, with floor-to-ceiling windows that allowed the outdoors to flow in. The first floor had an open floor plan, and through an archway was a smaller room where every Christmas we placed a tall spruce tree decorated with our favorite ornaments and white lights.
And Graham, every Christmas your mother came to celebrate with us there. She loved that house, and at one time I imagined someday gifting it to her and her siblings. She especially loved Christmas in the mountains. But, as you will most likely discover in your own life, things do not always unfold as we imagine they will.
As Tom and I grew older, the winters began to feel longer. When we were younger, skiing and snowshoeing carried us through the cold months, while summers and falls were filled with hiking. We still hike, but four years ago we stopped skiing—partly because Tom’s knees were hurting him, and partly because skiing had become so expensive.
At the same time, I was growing tired of working as a realtor. Every year it became a little harder, and I kept hearing a voice inside me saying, “I can’t do this anymore.” Tom and I began talking seriously about retirement and where we might spend the next stage of our lives.
I longed to live near the ocean, but every place I researched in the United States felt too crowded and too expensive. Then a neighbor who had moved to Panama encouraged us to visit.
In December 2024, we flew to Panama City, then on to David, rented a car, and drove to our friends’ town of Boquete. Tom especially liked it there. I found it lovely, with its green hills and colorful flowers, but it felt a little too much like Nederland. I kept hearing a quiet voice asking, “What about the ocean?”
Our friends encouraged us to visit Las Lajas. We drove there from Boquete, and once we left David behind and headed toward the coast, everything changed.
We rolled down the windows and listened to the birds as we drove beneath blue skies over green meadows dotted with cattle and goats. It felt as though I had stepped backward in time—perhaps into California in the 1940s or ’50s.
The hotel was simple but welcoming, with lush grounds shaded by palms. But the very best part was the beach—a vast stretch of sand where we could walk for hours in either direction. Sand dollars lay scattered along the shore, and we gathered them carefully in our hands and carried them back to our room.
I fell in love with the place and realized that if we moved to Panama, I needed to live either on the beach or very near one.
The only problem with Las Lajas was that it was not really a beach community. There was no true town, and most of the homes were second homes, so I could not quite picture us living there full-time.
While we were there, we met a Canadian woman traveling around Panama searching for a beach town where she could retire. She told us about a small town on the Azuero Peninsula called Pedasi and encouraged us to visit.
At the time, we didn’t have enough time to make the trip. Pedasi was five hours away, and we were scheduled to fly home from David just a few days later. Still, I tucked the town’s name into my memory, and once we returned to Colorado, I began researching it.
A year later, in January 2026, Tom and I finally visited Pedasi and found it charming. We saw several homes that could have worked, but one day a woman took us to a neighborhood bordering Destiladeros Beach.
We had never heard of the beach and never imagined that, within our budget, we might find a home with ocean views and a short walk to the water.
That day we met José, our Spanish angel, who showed us a house he owned overlooking the sea. The views stretched from both floors. It was just a two-minute walk to the beach.
Once again, it was love at first sight.
The house is a warm yellow stucco home with expansive windows, wide verandas, and beautiful views of the ocean.
Our Colorado house felt rooted in the mountains—solid, sheltering, wrapped in pine and snow. This house feels open to the elements: sun, salt air, wind, rain, and sea. In Colorado, life gathered around the woodstove and spruce trees glowing with Christmas lights. Here, it gathers around verandas, ocean breezes, and sunsets that turn the sky pink and gold.
It feels perfect for this next chapter of our lives. We moved into the house on April 17, 2026.
And then something happened that reminded me so much of our first days in Colorado.
For two days the sky had hung heavy with clouds, and that morning they finally burst open. The first great rain of the rainy season came pouring down, and then the electricity went out.
At first our instinct was to escape to Venao, where we imagined our favorite restaurant would surely have a generator. But after driving only a couple of miles, we realized that was probably not such a good idea. We had no experience driving in Panamanian rains and worried the roads might flood and leave us stranded.
So we turned around and headed back home to our darkened house.
We lit candles, and I made lunch on the gas stovetop. We sat together listening to the rain hammer the roof, the rooms glowing softly in candlelight.
And suddenly I was carried back to those first days in Colorado all those years ago—the unexpected snowstorm, the uncertainty, the feeling that life had swept us somewhere entirely new.
Back then, it was snow piling high outside mountain windows.
Now it is tropical rain falling beside the ocean.
Different landscapes. Different seasons of life. Yet somehow the very same feeling: that we have stepped into the unknown together and may once again have landed somewhere wonderful.
With love,
CC
