Some people are drawn to places similar to where they grew up. Others go for the exact opposite of the environments of their childhoods. The preferred habitats may be natural or human-made. When given a choice, people gravitate to where they can be most themselves and at peace.
Julian grew up in Miami, long before Miami Vice and other developments made the city a hipster magnet. Surfside, the city where his mother lived for years, used to be considered “God’s Waiting Room” before the high-rise condos and hotels oozed onto that barrier island. He escaped as soon as possible after high school. After a year at Georgia Tech, he finished his bachelors’ degree at the University of Wisconsin. He and his friends would spend summers backpacking in the Rockies and the Cascades. Our first vacation together was to Banff and Jasper National Parks in Canada, and we’ve since spent time in the Alps, Great Smokies, and Sierras. For years he had the idea of moving to Montana near Glacier National Park, and still brings up that possibility from time to time.
I made my own escape, from a farm in upstate New York to Dallas after graduating from Cornell. While city life holds a lot of appeal to me (job opportunities, great restaurants, diverse populations), I have the need to be near large natural bodies of water. My astrology-minded friends would tell me it’s because I’m a Pisces. I grew up 10 miles from Lake Ontario, and a creek was down the road from my childhood home. My sorority had a killer view of Cayuga Lake. We’d often gather on the back porch or look out the windows at the sunset over the lake and West Hill. My grad school apartment, on the aptly-named Grandview Court, also overlooked the lake. [One of my undergrad classmates wrote and recorded the semi-official anthem, “Ithaca Sunset”, many years ago.] Dallas and Greensboro don’t have much in the way of bodies of water. Dallas has two “lakes”, and the Trinity River is little more than a drainage ditch. There are two lakes on the north end of Greensboro, Brandt and Townsend. Even though we lived nearby, we never went up there. I used to walk around the ponds in Country Park, which was the extent of my aquatic views. We visited the coast twice, both times when we were looking to adopt our first male Russian Blue kitten, Jasper.
The Seattle area makes both of us happy, geographically speaking. We can be in the mountains in one or two hours. Mount Rainier looms over the skyline on sunny days. I’ve got Puget Sound and Lake Washington. The Sammamish in our back yard is a happy bonus. I think we’ll stay for a while.
Recent Comments