After years of burnout at a Wall Street law firm, Allison Snyder left New York City and spent a year camping in the American West.
In early 2017, she moved to a valley just south of Telluride, Colorado, expecting a simpler, more connected life. At first, she was surrounded by trails, 13,000-foot peaks, and the seasonal rhythms of mountain living.
But the long-term tradeoffs showed up fast. Snyder said she longed for New York City by the end of her first year. She described the community as tight-knit, insular, and hard to break into. She also missed the diversity of city life, saying that in a town with fewer than 200 residents and an economy driven by real estate and tourism, there was little diversity in the population.
She tried to build a place there anyway. After beginning a relationship with her now-husband, who had lived in the area for almost 20 years, she said she was more often welcomed by others. Over the next five years, she volunteered with a nearby Nordic ski team and a local mentorship program, and worked part-time at a backcountry ski lodge.
She also spent a year in local government, using her legal background to research and address residents' concerns. But she said the work became frustrating because of resistance to change and gendered dismissals. She ultimately resigned.
By 2023, she said she was regularly leaving town for work travel and extending those trips to visit museums, explore cities, and spend time with new people. That travel helped her see that neither New York nor the mountain town fully fit the life she wanted.
Snyder and her husband have since sold their house in the mountains. For now, they are splitting their time between Northern Italy and Northern New Mexico.
For founders, the lesson is simple: a beautiful address is not the same thing as a better operating system for your life. If your calendar, network, and energy are all being shaped by one extreme, you may be trading one kind of burnout for another.
The real playbook is to choose the place that supports your margins, not just your mood. In Snyder's case, the answer was not more scenery. It was more balance, more variety, and more room to be fully herself.
