Family Towns

Growing up, we didn’t fly very much. I remember once, for my birthday, my Mom’s present was to take me on a plane to Arizona to visit some relatives. I remember the awe of watching the plane take off. Much the same way I remember the wonder as my brain understood what a website was for the first time.

Because we didn’t fly, anywhere we went we were driving. With Albuquerque, New Mexico as our starting point, we drove to Montana, Missouri, Illinois, etc.

Whenever we would drive, I remember distinctly talking to my Dad about all these towns that we would drive through. Taking speculative guesses at why they were there based on what we saw. College towns? Refineries? Factories? Military bases?

On one particularly eventful trip, we drove the ~27 hours to Orlando, Florida to go to Walt Disney World. A core node in my brain revolves around city building and urban development because of Walt Disney (I’ve written about that over, and over, and over, and over again.)

On another trip we drove to Nauvoo, Illinois. It’s a town that has a unique religious importance for me because it was a city that my ancestors, early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, built with their bare hands, carving it out of a swamp until it eventually rivaled Chicago in size at the time.

In fact, in the very first blog post I ever wrote on Investing 101, I talked about different portfolio ideas I have that I aggregate information around, and one of them was “City Building.” In it, I mentioned a napkin that I wrote up when I was 11 and we were touring Nauvoo. The vision was to build a Disney-esque getaway location where you could enjoy an authentic frontier town experience.

The reason my mind is dwelling on the science of towns is because I’m off the grid this weekend in Luna, New Mexico along the New Mexico-Arizona border; population ~150.

Named after Solomon Luna, the wealthiest man in New Mexico at one point, but it was settled by Mormon ranchers in 1883. One of those ranchers? William Laney Jr. His father, William Leany, was born in Logan, Kentucky in 1814 and was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in 1833. He then moved to Missouri to join with the main body of the church. After being chased out of Missouri and Nauvoo, he moved to Utah.

His son, William Laney, Jr. was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1848. At the age of 35, he was asked to move with a group of Saints to settle in New Mexico. He was my great-great-great grandpa. Since then, there have been Laneys / Thompsons / Shupes living in Luna. My daughter’s name is Eve Luna Harrison.

The reason I’m in Luna this weekend is because all of my siblings and cousins are there with our kids alongside our 90+ year old grandparents who have property there. We’ll be riding ATVs, roasting marshmallows, testing the structural integrity of the tire swing that held us when we were 12, and exploring the nearby hills. Hills that our ancestors have walked for five generations.

To some extent, this piece is another entry in my Touch Grass series that I’ve written about over, and over, and over, and over again.

But in a broader sense, I believe that having structural “portfolio ideas” in your life is a critical aspect of opening yourself up to serendipity. “City building” is my portfolio idea. That’s led me down rabbit holes around urban development, architecture, city politics, community development, cultural artifice, and tourism as an industry.

Everyone should spend more time weaving their ideas into a select set of concepts that resonate with them at a high level and represent an opportunity to improve their thinking. And that broader framework adds more meaning to casual consumption of information.

For me, a big piece of that directional information ingestion comes from having Luna in the back of my mind. It’s certainly no Vail or Jackson Hole or Sun Valley. But it means something to me. And wanting to find ways to help it thrive is a compelling intellectual exercise for me, whether I’m successful or not.

So I’m off. To touch some grass and get out of my digital bubble. And who knows, maybe I’ll come back with some increasing clarity on the noise of everyday life that I’ll share with you later on. Until then.