Ah, Wildness and Wet
I feel like the first line of Rebecca -- "Last night I dreamed I went to Manderly again." Except in my case, it's Oregon. Every night for the last few weeks, I've dreamed of moving back.
I miss mountains, rivers, and hikes. Most of all, I feel like I'm cheating myself out of a life and my boys out of their childhood. I know that sounds a bit presumptuous. After all, people can -- and do -- make lives wherever they're planted. And children are easy to please. Give them a loving home, gentle words, and lots of encouragement, and they'll make peace with the world.
So, what's with my grass-is-greener syndrome? Is it really all just in my head, or is there something legitimate here that I need to be exploring?
You see, I've only ever lived in two places that felt like home: Mexico and Oregon. The thing they had in common was green mountains, a proximity to the wild, and a more relaxed and hardy culture. Every other place that I've lived, I always felt like I was in transition, like I wasn't quite settled where I wanted to be. Even here, even now, when we actually own a house and make it more and more ours with each passing day, I still feel like I'm in an impermanent place.
I once heard a homily on this subject when I lived in Duncanville and struggled with these feelings. The speaker concluded that we aren't supposed to feel at home anywhere, that we are supposed to feel like Abraham -- like sojourners on our way to a promised land. As deeply unsettled as I felt, I still conceded his point. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps we're filled with longing for other places, and they're all really just a longing for God.
That is, after all, what Saint Maximos the Confessor says to me every time I pray. I look at his lovely little icon, and he holds up a scroll preaching "God is the true goal of all longing, all desire, and all love."
I believe that.
Yet I also believe that God can plant desires in our hearts, in order to lead us toward the good.
I guess I simply need to pray.
In any case, whatever the conclusion of my inner dilemma, I do feel the tug on my heartstrings to Oregon at just about every turn these days. Even today, Rod Dreher posted on his Crunchy Con blog about his trip to Alaska with his son, how good it was for his boy, and reminding me of how accessible public lands are in Oregon. I don't want to deprive my boys of the outdoors, so I let them play outside for hours a day. But it's all in my backyard. And honestly, where else are they to go? Our neighborhood is not particularly walkable, nor is our town. It's more than 2 miles to the grocery store with no sidewalks or even shoulders for pedestrians to walk in. We'd be consigned to walking in ditches, with cars racing past at highway speeds. Our parks are all miles away, requiring long drives for not very much pay off. By that I mean that our parks are not any place more special than my back yard. The views aren't any lovelier; the playscapes aren't any more fun; the trees aren't any larger or shade giving (and in many cases, the trees are smaller or non-existent!).
Valerie thinks that's a credit to my backyard, and perhaps she's right. Perhaps I should really try to appreciate what I've got.
But it is so hard to do! I can't look at a horizon without wishing the low clouds were actually mountains. I can't look at my oak trees without wishing they were madrones. And I can't think about homeschooling my boys and doing "nature study" without wishing for some real nature around me.
Let's face it. I live in a place that even the native Americans didn't like. It was inhospitable even to them, with their well-adapted naturalist ways. I can only live here thanks to the wonders of industrialization and lots of cheap oil. Without cheap oil, I couldn't get anywhere. This is a place designed around cars -- a vast urban and suburban sprawl. When I lived in Medford, everywhere I needed to go was within a mile walk. I walked to work, to the grocery store, to the bank. We had to drive 17 miles to church, and it felt like an eternity. In fact, the distance felt so big that it was often a deterrent to going to shorter midweek services. Why drive thirty minutes to a service that is only thirty minutes long? We would go weeks without visiting our friends in Ashland because they felt so far away! Every trip to Ashland cost us $9 in gasoline, and sometimes that felt like too much! Compare that to here, where we commonly drive 30 miles into Austin just to run an errand, where we can't walk anywhere except within our own neighborhood, and where almost all our friends live a twenty minute drive away (something we don't shy away from doing). The difference is astounding.
Last week, after waking up from a dream about Oregon again, I decided to look at housing options online, just to find out what it's like there. We still couldn't afford to buy, thanks to the influx of folks from CA. But, we could rent a comparable house there for far less than our mortgage here. And we could rent a much nicer house for the same price. I could even rent a house a little bit farther out on a couple of acres with a year round creek and considerably more space for the same amount I pay in my mortgage here. I don't know if paying a mortgage has changed my perspective, or if the bottom really has fallen out of their rental industry, but WOW. It'd be a chance to do something like garden, keep chickens, have a goat or two. (Okay, so I can garden here, but it'd have to be in my front yard and it couldn't look like a garden). And I also remember from living there before that in general, the cost of living in my beloved Rogue Valley is about 10-15% less than the cost of living here.
About half way through my online search, Steve came in and asked me to stop. "Just ask yourself if this is helping you or hurting you," he said.
Maybe a little of both? I don't know.
Later that day, I posted a status update on Facebook mentioning my frequent dreams about Oregon, and my aunt commented saying that Oregon is really far away. She, like the rest of my family, live here in Texas. Honestly, they are what keeps me here. I replied, "Yes, you're right. Oregon is 2200 miles away. Orizaba is half that at only 1100 miles away. I should go live there."
I miss mountains, rivers, and hikes. Most of all, I feel like I'm cheating myself out of a life and my boys out of their childhood. I know that sounds a bit presumptuous. After all, people can -- and do -- make lives wherever they're planted. And children are easy to please. Give them a loving home, gentle words, and lots of encouragement, and they'll make peace with the world.
So, what's with my grass-is-greener syndrome? Is it really all just in my head, or is there something legitimate here that I need to be exploring?
You see, I've only ever lived in two places that felt like home: Mexico and Oregon. The thing they had in common was green mountains, a proximity to the wild, and a more relaxed and hardy culture. Every other place that I've lived, I always felt like I was in transition, like I wasn't quite settled where I wanted to be. Even here, even now, when we actually own a house and make it more and more ours with each passing day, I still feel like I'm in an impermanent place.
I once heard a homily on this subject when I lived in Duncanville and struggled with these feelings. The speaker concluded that we aren't supposed to feel at home anywhere, that we are supposed to feel like Abraham -- like sojourners on our way to a promised land. As deeply unsettled as I felt, I still conceded his point. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps we're filled with longing for other places, and they're all really just a longing for God.
That is, after all, what Saint Maximos the Confessor says to me every time I pray. I look at his lovely little icon, and he holds up a scroll preaching "God is the true goal of all longing, all desire, and all love."
I believe that.
Yet I also believe that God can plant desires in our hearts, in order to lead us toward the good.
I guess I simply need to pray.
In any case, whatever the conclusion of my inner dilemma, I do feel the tug on my heartstrings to Oregon at just about every turn these days. Even today, Rod Dreher posted on his Crunchy Con blog about his trip to Alaska with his son, how good it was for his boy, and reminding me of how accessible public lands are in Oregon. I don't want to deprive my boys of the outdoors, so I let them play outside for hours a day. But it's all in my backyard. And honestly, where else are they to go? Our neighborhood is not particularly walkable, nor is our town. It's more than 2 miles to the grocery store with no sidewalks or even shoulders for pedestrians to walk in. We'd be consigned to walking in ditches, with cars racing past at highway speeds. Our parks are all miles away, requiring long drives for not very much pay off. By that I mean that our parks are not any place more special than my back yard. The views aren't any lovelier; the playscapes aren't any more fun; the trees aren't any larger or shade giving (and in many cases, the trees are smaller or non-existent!).
Valerie thinks that's a credit to my backyard, and perhaps she's right. Perhaps I should really try to appreciate what I've got.
But it is so hard to do! I can't look at a horizon without wishing the low clouds were actually mountains. I can't look at my oak trees without wishing they were madrones. And I can't think about homeschooling my boys and doing "nature study" without wishing for some real nature around me.
Let's face it. I live in a place that even the native Americans didn't like. It was inhospitable even to them, with their well-adapted naturalist ways. I can only live here thanks to the wonders of industrialization and lots of cheap oil. Without cheap oil, I couldn't get anywhere. This is a place designed around cars -- a vast urban and suburban sprawl. When I lived in Medford, everywhere I needed to go was within a mile walk. I walked to work, to the grocery store, to the bank. We had to drive 17 miles to church, and it felt like an eternity. In fact, the distance felt so big that it was often a deterrent to going to shorter midweek services. Why drive thirty minutes to a service that is only thirty minutes long? We would go weeks without visiting our friends in Ashland because they felt so far away! Every trip to Ashland cost us $9 in gasoline, and sometimes that felt like too much! Compare that to here, where we commonly drive 30 miles into Austin just to run an errand, where we can't walk anywhere except within our own neighborhood, and where almost all our friends live a twenty minute drive away (something we don't shy away from doing). The difference is astounding.
Last week, after waking up from a dream about Oregon again, I decided to look at housing options online, just to find out what it's like there. We still couldn't afford to buy, thanks to the influx of folks from CA. But, we could rent a comparable house there for far less than our mortgage here. And we could rent a much nicer house for the same price. I could even rent a house a little bit farther out on a couple of acres with a year round creek and considerably more space for the same amount I pay in my mortgage here. I don't know if paying a mortgage has changed my perspective, or if the bottom really has fallen out of their rental industry, but WOW. It'd be a chance to do something like garden, keep chickens, have a goat or two. (Okay, so I can garden here, but it'd have to be in my front yard and it couldn't look like a garden). And I also remember from living there before that in general, the cost of living in my beloved Rogue Valley is about 10-15% less than the cost of living here.
About half way through my online search, Steve came in and asked me to stop. "Just ask yourself if this is helping you or hurting you," he said.
Maybe a little of both? I don't know.
Later that day, I posted a status update on Facebook mentioning my frequent dreams about Oregon, and my aunt commented saying that Oregon is really far away. She, like the rest of my family, live here in Texas. Honestly, they are what keeps me here. I replied, "Yes, you're right. Oregon is 2200 miles away. Orizaba is half that at only 1100 miles away. I should go live there."