Building More Than a Place: What It Takes to Build the Life You Imagined

Most projects begin with an idea of what they might become. You picture the finished place, imagine how it will feel and make plans for how you are going to get there. What is harder to imagine at the beginning is how much the process will ask of you in return.

Valley of the Cross has developed in that way. The land and buildings have changed, but so have we. Over time, it became clear that creating the kind of place we wanted was not only about improving the physical space. It also meant becoming the people capable of living this way, caring for it and sharing it with others.

Austin came into the valley with years of experience hosting retreats and welcoming people into his home. He was already familiar with what it meant to create a space for others, to take responsibility for a group and to have people move through a place that was also part of his own life. For me, much of that was new.

I had imagined living somewhere like this long before I arrived here. During my travels, I had been drawn to places that felt simple, close to nature and open to people passing through. I volunteered on a farm in Canada and spent time in a beautiful off-grid space in the Hogsback mountains of South Africa, and experiences like those stayed with me. I loved the idea of creating a place where travellers, seekers and people needing a break from everyday life could come to rest, spend time in nature and feel welcome for a while.

What I had not understood was what it meant to be on the other side of that experience. Spending a few weeks somewhere beautiful and helping out is very different from being responsible for the place yourself. When it is your home, you are also thinking about whether the water is running, whether there is enough power, whether the guest spaces are ready, what needs repairing, what the weather is doing and what still needs to happen before somebody arrives. Quite quickly, the calm and beautiful place in nature you once imagined becomes something much bigger to carry. It is still beautiful, but it is no longer just a place to relax or add to with a few hours of volunteering in the morning. It becomes something you are responsible for every day.

Living off-grid makes many of those responsibilities much more visible. Electricity comes from our solar system, water comes from the land, and heating the houses through winter begins long before winter itself. Firewood has to be planned throughout the year by cutting back invasive species, processing the wood, letting it dry properly and making sure enough is stored before the colder months arrive. If one of our systems needs attention, there is no external supply of water or electricity to fall back on while we sort it out.

That has changed the way I think about time here. What we need in one season often has to be prepared in another. Winter rain can pause outdoor work, summer heat changes when physical jobs can realistically be done, and growing food, clearing land and preparing for the dry season all need their own planning. Materials are not always readily available, and some behave differently once exposed to the conditions here.

Summer makes this especially obvious to me. The garden needs tending, plants need watering every day, and caring for the land can take hours before we even reach the other jobs waiting around the property. I wanted a life where I could grow food, live closer to nature and be more connected to where things came from. I did not fully appreciate how much daily commitment sits behind that until I was the person responsible for keeping it all alive.

That has been one of my biggest personal lessons. The same garden I wanted because it represented a slower, more connected way of living can easily start to feel like another list of jobs if I let it. I have had to learn not to look around the valley and only see what still needs doing. Sometimes that means leaving something until tomorrow, sitting outside with a coffee, walking the land, or simply enjoying the place without turning every moment into work. I am still learning to balance every day.

This is not a project we are trying to finish before life can begin. This is already the life.

Building a place as a couple brings its own kind of growth, especially when it is also your home and a dream you are both deeply invested in. One of the biggest things we have had to learn is how to share the same project without letting it take over every part of our lives together. There is very little natural separation when you wake up in the place you are developing, spend the day working on it, host people in it and then sit down together in the evening surrounded by all the things you could still be talking about.

We have had to become much more conscious about creating that separation ourselves. Not every evening needs to become a planning meeting, and not every job needs to move forward at the same time. We have also become more thoughtful about what genuinely improves the way we live here, what supports the people who come to stay and what can comfortably wait until another season.

The Gathering Yurt is a good example of that. It was a long and drawn-out process of working out what would actually suit the valley, finding the right materials and raising the funds needed to complete it. There were several stages where we had to pause, rethink and continue when the timing was right. It now stands at the centre of the valley as a dedicated space for retreats, workshops and gatherings, and feels like one of the clearest expressions of what we have been trying to create here.

A lot of the change has been less visible. Guest spaces have improved, areas of land have been cleared and cared for, we have started growing more of our own food, and the systems behind the property have become better suited to the way we actually live and host here. None of it has happened through one dramatic transformation. It has been a process of building something, living with it, learning from it and then deciding what comes next.

Austin has continued to develop the way he welcomes and hosts people here, while I have gradually moved from understanding places like this as someone arriving into them to understanding what it means to be the person responsible for creating one.

I used to think about spaces like this from the perspective of the traveller: how they felt to arrive in, how peaceful they were and how easy it was to settle into them for a while. I now understand them from the other side as well, as the person who gets up in the morning and makes sure the place keeps working. What I understand now is that building a place like this is not only about what you create around you. It changes the way you live, the way you use your time, the way you work together and the way you understand responsibility. I still want the valley to be a place where people can arrive and feel some of the space and ease I once found in places on my own travels. The difference is that I now understand what it takes to make that feeling possible.

Christina