Out October 13, 2026
Like Asheville,
or Better
One family, a year on the road, and the search for a life that fits.
Jonathan Baurer
“Better.” We all want it. Few of us can define it. Fewer still go looking.
In June 2020, while the world locked its doors, we sold our Colorado home, packed two teenage daughters into a truck and travel trailer, and drove into America with no destination. We carried one audacious ask: better. We could not have told you what it meant. Money, mountains, purpose, peace, some new version of ourselves. That was the point. We would know it when we became it.
What followed tested everything. Frozen furnaces in the Tetons. Breakdowns on the Devil’s Highway. A marriage negotiating thirty feet of trailer. And a parade of roadside strangers who kept showing up carrying exactly the message the moment required.
We ended up in the mountains outside Asheville. But this is not a story about arriving.
One
year on the road
Two
teenage daughters
Thirty
feet of trailer
The life you’re looking for is waiting on the other side of the person you’re willing to become.
It takes changing to change
Five books on one idea
Exploring Changes is an independent press in the mountains of western North Carolina, co-founded with my wife Alisha. Every title under it grew out of the same belief: that change is possible for anyone willing to look at their life honestly, and that the hardest part is rarely the plan. It is the becoming.
Also by Jonathan Baurer
The Guide to Gratitude
Positive Parenting Solutions to Raise Highly Sensitive Children
Loving a Highly Sensitive Person
No More Social Anxiety for Teenagers
The door is open
Occasional letters from the mountains outside Asheville. What I am writing, what I am learning, and where the next book is going. No pitch, no schedule you did not agree to.