Dogs are Getting Groomed - Not Cowboys - at Country Suds in Greenwood, BC

Lifestyle Change

What if the end is only the beginning?

People are often confronted with significant changes and choices in life. We've all been through it. The start of a new job, the loss of a friend, sickness. Moving away from home or moving in with someone you love. Buying a car or choosing a house. Starting of a new business. Some changes are forced upon us due to circumstances. Others, we do to ourselves. 

Whenever a significant change occurs, we are confronted with at least two perspectives. The one view is a feeling of loss, decline, powerlessness, and the lack of control. The other a sense of gain, re-birth, strength, and a new beginning. 

It doesn't matter how small or large the change is. The key to success in life is how well we deal with changes. How good are we at moving away from what we had, towards something new? 

This is part of the TWO COWBOYS' EPIC GLOBAL TRAVEL & CULINARY EXPERIENCE - 2019! 

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Nature is in a constant cycle of decline and renewal. It should be natural to us as humans too to easily let go of the old and to welcome the new. Why is it so hard then for people to embrace the same fluidity of life?

It is because we trap ourselves in temporal illusions. Our imagination creates time, circumstances and places in distorted realities. In our silliness, we fear losing things long gone, while holding on to things that may never be. Our perspectives define our reality. The hardest task then is to tie our reality down to the truth of where we are now and what we need to give up to move forward.

When we are honest with ourselves, we will realize that every change is a goodbye to get a hello, an end for a beginning, letting go for something new. Without this realization, we risk being trapped in an illusory twilight of despair. It will destroy our spirit if we cannot say goodbye. We won't have a future if we do not say hello.

Greenwood

Greenwood City in British Columbia has been saying goodbye since 1918 when the copper mine and smelter closed. It's been saying goodbye for such a very long time that it became trapped in a very real twilight of despair and decay. Old buildings crumbled, people moved away, and businesses left town despite the city seeing an average daily traffic pattern over 3,000 vehicles during the summer months (Traffic Patterns, 2011). It may well be on the road to oblivion like its predecessors Phoenix, Bridesville, Sidley, and others if it doesn't embrace a future.

Because of the city's rich history and its record resistance to change, Greenwood also attracted people fearful of letting go. You can see it in the junk of the yard collections. The failed upkeep of its small houses, and the prevailing rust of the old clunkers in the driveways.

We think that Greenwood and the area are poised for change and on the verge of a millennial renaissance. It is the right time now for the City to move towards its tomorrow as more and more people drop out of big-city life, avoid daily commuting, expensive mortgages, and having too much meaningless stuff.

Greenwood could and should say hello to young families, college graduates, entrepreneurs, crafters, makers, small houses, new buildings and people that embrace lifestyle, simplicity and old-school authentic values. The mine won't give it a future. Instead, it should court producers, makers, and telecommuters - the foundation of a new economy.

The last thing Greenwood needs is a Mickey D's on the corner, Starbucks or a Safeway parking lot. Instead, it requires a butcher, doctor, grocer, candymaker, woodworker, cabinet maker, knifemaker, weaver, and it needs more people that realize that it is an affordable place to work and live - really live. It has the required vehicle traffic. Greenwood just needs to give people more reasons to stop, and some will even choose to bring their dreams, hobbies, businesses and jobs to stay.

Observations

Tammy Bowering moved to Greenwood and established her Country Suds Dog Grooming in 2018. She just realized that Greenwood has dogs that need grooming. Her love for dogs compelled her to say hello to her future, and she started her small grooming business. It's been growing steadily, and we are proud to feature her as part of our portfolio of Boundary Country stories.

Tammy is so passionate about the future of the City that she is now heading the Greenwood Board of Trade. It is an organization that was incorporated in 1899, just two years after the city itself was incorporated. The chief goal of the Greenwood Board of Trade is to promote economic and community development, networks with local and regional businesses, and to provide small business support.

The Cowboys are glad that we can throw in our support too for the future prosperity of Greenwood. It gives another opportunity for people to find a better way to work and live in the Boundary Country of British Columbia. It is a chance for us to have our chosen lifestyle.

Hendrik

Boundary Cowboy

We earn our livelihood by producing great content and supporting inspiring people, businesses, and communities. Please book us here so we can tell your story too.

Photos

City Hall

Powder Room

Grooming

Doggy Love!

Doggy Wash!

Two Cowboys are Getting Lost in the Boundary Country of British Columbia

Boundary Where?

When you tell someone that you are from the Boundary Country, they have no idea where it is. Where? The Boundary Country is in British Columbia. It is the strip of country nestled between the Okanagan and Kootenay Valleys that is hugging the US Border to the South of Canada.

It is understandable that people don't know much about the area. It dates from a different era. American miners poured across the border in 1859 during the Rock Creek Gold Rush. In subsequent years they were followed by the discovery and industrialization of the area's abundant mineral resources. 

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Copper provided the industrial base for development in the region, with many large mines and smelters, and associated mining camps and communities. At one time these settlements were large enough that there were two provincial electoral seats in the area - Greenwood and Grand Forks. At one time, Greenwood was even in contention for the Capital of the Province.

The communities of Boundary had three major railways connecting them to the rest of the world. The Kettle Valley Rail Trail and the Columbia and Western Rail Trail now form part of The Great Trail (formerly the Trans Canada Trail). Another trail, the Dewdney Trail ventures east from Christina Lake.

Several towns from this era have since disappeared or vanished beyond recognition. Among them are Eholt, Deadwood, Cascade Falls and Phoenix. Many more are following in their footsteps. When you drive through, it seems the rest of Canada forgot about the Boundary. Names like Phoenix, Beaverdell, Rock Creek, Westbridge and Bridesville means nothing to folks that are not from there. If you mention Big White, Grand Forks and Christina Lake, there may be a flickering of recognition.

Observations

Why bother with the Boundary Country?

We are not giving you a fluffy destination tourism pitch of nice weather, clean air, and great tasting water. It has all of that by the bucket load, coupled with a good dollop of history and natural variety. On the tourism front, it has the potential to outcompete with many destinations in Western Canada, even its closest cousin - Kelowna (yes, we know we are pushing it - hear us out).

Here is another angle. We think it is a place caught in a twilight zone between the end of industrialization and the potentialities of the neo-digital revolution. It combines affordable living and lifestyle, with digital reach and old-school faculty. Heck, the second busiest highway in BC runs through it, and it borders agricultural breadbaskets to the West, East and the South!

It is bound to be discovered by digital road warriors and the feck-this-9-5-life, time-to-become-an-artisan folk. It is similar to places like Revelstoke and Canmore. Only, it is still affordable. It offers the potential of natural living to highly educated people that are looking to break out of mad-rush city careers and cutthroat mortgages in favour of artesian lifestyles and meaningful lives.

Boundary Country offers plenty more space, affordability, quality living, good infrastructure, and all the possibilities to make a living working online, blowing glass, weaving, building furniture, spinning pots, brewing beer, blacksmithing, raising goats, roasting coffee, chocolateering, planting stuff, or running a butcher shop or deli on the side.

It offers a digital future with 18th-century charm - without breaking the bank.

You can still buy a plot of land for under $50,000, and build a nice little house for less than $250,000 in one of the many typical small towns. They all have the requisite infrastructure, lack restrictive and overbearing zoning, and are within striking distance by road and air to the leading centres in BC, Washington, Idaho, Montana and the world.

It is a transport corridor and a tourism destination without bounds, that offers nature trails, history, lakes, mountains, skiing, hiking, biking, boating, swimming, etcetera. It has the best weather and water in Canada - milder winters and balmy summers.

The only thing the Boundary Country needs is to be discovered by people looking for a better way of living. We think it has the potential. That is why we are here, and why we are telling the world about it. Prepare to hear a lot more about it from the Two Cowboys. Get in touch if you, like us, want to visit or relocate to this newfound affordable little paradise. Come and build something new here where it is still possible, where people once thrived, we can do it again.

Together with those that are already here, we look forward to welcoming you.

Merry Christmas. See you in 2019!

Hendrik
Boundary Cowboy

We earn our livelihood by producing great content and supporting inspiring people, businesses, and communities. Please book us here so we can tell your story too.

Photos

Passing Through

The View

Town Hall Greenwood

Golden Mornings 

Living Wood

Two Cowboys: The Best Memories In Life is Made at the Cabin in Bridesville, BC, Canada

Building Liberty

“There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? 

But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter?” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

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I've finally succeeded in buying a small plot of land where I can build my little castle. My land. Paid for, completely. My name on the title. With a 75 Gallon per minute well gushing sweet, sweet cold water. Pushing up from 300 feet under my heels.

The view is incredible. The sky, enormous. Behind me a mountain. On my left a pond. Before me the future. I can see for miles.

Here, I will be building my little house and making my new home. Modest and simple from wood and finished by hand. A refuge. A fireplace, a mantle. My anchor.

It has been a four-year-long journey towards simplicity, value and significance. It is only the start. Yet, Some of it already feels a world away. Far from the daily grind of playing to the masters of interest and tax. Smiling for a dollar. Dancing for preservation. I've left that world behind now. Like so many others, I too was living for the modest 25 cents in the Dollar.

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

This is a journey like no other. A journey of liberty, self-discovery and purpose. Learning. Life. Meaning.

It is beautiful.

Hendrik van Wyk 

Liberty Cowboy

P.S. We will share progress on this journey. Stay tuned for regular episodes of our trials and tribulations as we set up our new location in the Boundary Country of British Columbia.

We earn our livelihood by producing great content and supporting inspiring people, businesses, and communities. Please book us here so we can tell your story too.

Photos