Deb and Chris ask Doug Cunnington all the questions about turning side-hustles into enough passive income to retire early.
ListenEpisode 025 - They Rescued Their Marriage in an RV: Eli and Kelly Pyke of The Far Green Country
After the traumatic birth of their first child, Kelly and Eli found themselves in a struggling marriage and a life their former, adventurous selves wouldn’t have recognized. Their attempt at revival was to hit the road for 11 months in a 1995 32′ Fleetwood Bounder, after scrounging together the money to buy it and renting out their home.
Listen in as they talk with Chris and Deb about:
- where the typical, fear-driven American mentality led them–“Get a good education. Get a good job.”
- what led up to their decision to dramatically change their daily life
- how they were able to make it happen
- their goals/hopes/dreams for the trip
- how reality compared with their aspirations
- the bests and worst of extended travel, with three people, in a confined space through all seasons
- how the trip allowed them to “dive into the darkness”
- what this decision did for their marriage and roles as parents
- why they decided to share it all in a documentary on Amazon
- what’s happened in their lives since
- what we can expect from their new documentary, The Far Green Country 2: At Road’s End
Quotes from this episode:
- “Life has a way of putting bumps in the road, just when you least expect them. It’s through these trials that we grow, so long as we can push through them.” – Kelly Pyke
- “Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive and go do it.” – John Eldredge
- “What can I say? I come alive on the road and in beautiful places, and at this point in my journey, I needed to come alive.” – Kelly Pyke
- “The only difference between a roadblock and an adventure is my perspective.” – Kelly Pyke
- “Beauty and wilderness, remote settings, places separate from the business of daily life…These places allow me to pause; to be present to each moment as it passes; to make room in my life to attend to the vulnerable places inside me. That seems to be the best place to cultivate change.” – Kelly Pyke
We leave you with this thought:
In the first Far Green Country film, Kelly quotes John Eldredge when he says,
“We have grown dull toward this world in which we live in. We have forgotten that it is not normal or scientific in any sense of the word. It is fantastic. It is fairytale through and through. At what point did we lose our wonder at it all? Even so, once in a while, something will come along and shock us right out of our dullness and resignation. We come around a corner and there before us is a peacock, a stag with horns as big as he. Perhaps we come upon a waterfall and the clouds have made a rainbow in a circle around the sun, and for a moment we realize that we were born into a world as astonishing as any fairytale.”
That is the call, right, the never-ending journey of this life–to be so present, so completely grounded in the one and only moment that truly exists, now–that we see the astonishing wonder of even our simplest experiences?
For so many of us, myself included, it does take a shock to wake up to the wonder of it all, to the reality of this world that’s as astonishing as any fairytale. For me, it was a looming expiration date placed upon me by doctors and diagnoses. For Kelly and Eli, it seems it was the disillusionment of adulthood, parenthood, and marriage, precipitated by repeated traumas, struggles, and getting caught up in the drift of life through societal norms and expectations. I went to sleep. Eli and Kelly went to sleep. Something made us wake up, to realize that even though we were living, we weren’t really alive at all.
As Kelly says in their documentary, after feeling once again inspired by the words of John Eldredge, “ ‘Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive.’ What can I say?” she goes on. “I come alive on the road and in beautiful places, and at this point in my journey I needed to come back to life.”
Have you been drifting through life, asleep to the callings of your soul and the fantastic fairytale that it all is? Are you drifting through the dullness and resignation of what life should be, what we’re modeled to repeat by the world around us? What will it take for you to come back to life, to shock you out of that dullness and resignation, allowing you to see what life could be and move toward it?
Eli and Kelly put something in their own path to do just that when they scrounged together $15,000 dollars to buy a motorhome and rearranged their life so that they could get out and do what it took to wake them up to the life they wanted to live. They made it happen, and continue to do so today, with every choice they make in the direction of their one, unique path in this life with intentionality. You can too. As Kelly and Eli have shown us, with every choice you make, you’re making your life, whether you’re asleep to those choices or not.
May you come alive today, friends! May you be shocked out of any dull and resigned drift and into the astonishing, fantastic, fairytale that your life truly is. May you get still and quiet enough to hear the unique callings of the soul within you and choose to step toward them. AND with each alive, awakened step, may you come upon and come closer to the peacocks, the stags, the waterfalls that are meant just for you. After all, you’ve got just this One Life, what better day to Live It! than today?
Other resources from the show
- Watch The Far Green Country on Amazon (free with Prime)
- Watch Far Green Country 2: At Road’s End on Amazon
- Check out their site, thefargreencountry.com to get merch, get updates, and/or get the low-down
- Follow them on Instagram @thefargreencountry
- Learn more about Front Row Dad’s on their site frontrowdads.com
- Get our free, Stop the Drift workbook at gobucketyourself.com/drift
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