The decision to move down south came after years of going back and forth in my head if I was willing to leave my forested homeland. While I’m not from the mountains, my parent’s old house is in a hilly countryside just west of a popular metropolitan city. We always had the best of both worlds—we lived in peaceful tranquility and only had to get in the car and drive 30 minutes to quench any thirst for shopping or dining. Even when I moved into the city 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 girl in my last year of college whose family lives down south. While I would have done anything to stay in my home state, I eventually married this woman so my decision was made so I could stay with her. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not terrible living down south as a northerner. I miss the snow a little during certain winter holidays, but I love the warm weather in the south throughout much of the winter. I even know people down here who don’t use central heating systems in their homes because the need for heat down here is intermittent and random. A lot of people get by with a space heater or two, but my wife and I purchase a heat pump. Imagine an air conditioner 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 home in the summer, the heat pump behaves like a normal air conditioner, extracting the heat from indoors instead.