We weren't running away from anything. Our life in Mill Valley was about as good as it gets. Careers we loved, best friends nearby, family close. That's what made it hard to leave. We were running toward something, a specific version of life that had a strong pull on us, not away from one that wasn't working.
In 2021, we moved our young family from Mill Valley to Aspen, and five years in, the reasons we came are still the reasons we stay.
That distinction between running toward and running away matters, because the default story about people who leave the Bay Area for a mountain town is an escape story. Burnout, a rough year, a company that didn't work out. That wasn't us. And if you're reading this from San Francisco, Silicon Valley, or Marin with a life you love and a question you can't quite shake, it's probably not you either.
The summer everything shifted
The hook for us was the summer of 2020. Our son Beau had just been born, and COVID gave us the chance to spend the entire summer in Aspen, where my wife Lindsay grew up. For the first time, we weren't visiting. We were living regular weeks here, with a newborn, and starting to picture what an alternative path for our family might look like.
The detail I always come back to is our e-bike. We spent that summer towing Beau around town in a trailer behind it, running errands and getting wherever we needed to go. Compare that to a daily life organized around the car, and the contrast was stark. Every small thing in a small town carries less friction, and we noticed the difference almost immediately.
Becoming parents shifted what we valued, too. My work life was a structured Monday through Friday, up and out early to commute from Mill Valley into San Francisco, home in the evening. We started asking what we wanted daily life to feel like, not someday, but now, while our kids were young.
The community we didn't expect
Lindsay's Aspen roots gave us a head start socially, and we assumed her network would be the foundation of our life here. What surprised us was something else entirely.
We arrived to find a whole cohort of families in our same life stage who had made nearly identical moves from other major metros, for nearly identical reasons. People with successful careers in bigger cities who had independently run the same calculation we had and landed in the same place. Everyone showed up having made the same bet on the same values, and friendships formed quickly around that shared experience.
That dynamic didn't end with COVID. We watched a similar wave arrive from Los Angeles after the fires. The social landscape here is not a closed local network that outsiders have to crack. A meaningful share of this community got here the same way you would, and people are open to newcomers because so many of them were newcomers themselves.
The Aspen brand and the Aspen reality
Aspen carries a brand of exclusivity. Celebrities, fur coats, wealth on display. Those things exist, but they're a small slice of the whole picture, and they have little to do with everyday life in this community. The people who live here full-time are grounded, accomplished, and values-driven, and many of them stepped away from high-pressure environments on purpose. A long weekend doesn't show you that side of Aspen. Spending real time here does.
The cost reality
Housing here is expensive, likely more expensive than you think, no matter where you're coming from. Prices are high, and the quality of the housing stock often doesn't match them. We came from a home we loved in one of Mill Valley's best neighborhoods, and it was a shot to the ego to discover that entire segments of this market were out of reach and that our purchase would involve compromise. That's true for almost everyone, at almost every level. Coming in with eyes wide open is part of doing this well.
It also helps to understand that the valley is bigger than Aspen. Aspen, Woody Creek, Snowmass Village, Basalt, and Carbondale each serve different lives, and many families who start their search in Aspen end up happier somewhere else in the valley. We rented in Aspen first and bought in Basalt, and I'll share more on that decision in a separate post.
Five years in
Lindsay and I rarely go out for date nights. Instead, we'll pick a day during the week, go for a hike, a bike ride, or a mid-day ski, and grab lunch afterwards. I say the same thing to her every time, and she rolls her eyes every time. If we were on vacation, this would be the highlight of the trip. Instead it's a Tuesday, and we're back to work and the kids by early afternoon.
That's the trade we made. Not a perfect life for a flawed one, but ordinary weeks built out of the things most people save for vacation. Five years in, it hasn't gotten old.
