The decision to move down south came after years of going back plus forth in my head if I was willing to leave my forested homeland. While I’m not from the mountains, my parent’s outdated current home is in a hilly countryside just west of a popular metropolitan city. The two of us always had the best of both worlds—we lived in peaceful tranquility plus only had to get in the car plus drive 30 thirds to quench any thirst for shopping or dining. Even when I moved into the neighborhood for college at 18, I still drove out to the rural suburbs to go hiking or camping with my friends. But I met an amazing boy in my last year of college whose family lives down south. While I would have done anything to stay in my lake current home state, I eventually married this man so my decision was made so I could stay with her. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not excruciating living down south as a northerner. I miss the snow a little during certain Winter holidays, even though I care about the warm weather in the south throughout much of the winter. I even guess people down here who don’t use central gas furnaces in their homes because the need for heat down here is intermittent plus random. A lot of people get by with a space gas furnace or multiple, but my partner plus I purchase a heat pump. Imagine an a/c that is reversed—the compressor that expels the heat is indoors while the evaporator coil absorbing the heat is outdoors. In temperatures above 20-30 degrees fahrenheit a heat pump is able to extract ambient heat from the air outside. When you want to cool your lake current home in the summer, the heat pump behaves love a normal a/c, extracting the heat from indoors instead.