Growing up I thought people fell into two categories: City Mouse and Country Mouse. I loved Green Acres for how it neatly jibed with my view of life. There was Eddie Albert’s character, living out his lifelong dream to be a farmer, and Eva Gabor, longing for a penthouse view and wasting her exotic beauty (and accent) on Arnold the Pig and squeaky Mr. Haney.
I empathized with both characters. What could be better than farm livin’ and all those pigs, ducks, and sheep? Ask my sister, I even loved—I mean truly loved—the smell of manure.
Yet city life seemed grand, too. My best friend in third grade, Andrea Crespin, lived in apartments, and every time I went to her house to play, her complex was full of kids our age.
Later I discovered there were many shades of City and Country Mousedom. Some people were River, others Mountains, some even Golf Community. You could tell lifelong Desert people by the way the skin on their legs hung like drapes and their arms resembled beef jerky sticks. I heard Ocean people talk about the briny smell of the sea as if it were an aphrodisiac. I figured there were also people who swooned about the Tropics, although given that Gilligan and the Skipper were stranded on a desert island with cannibal headshrinkers, I couldn’t fathom that being a paradise.
Pop culture also informed my knowledge of city living: the Beverly Hillbillies, Buffy and Jody with Mr. French in a luxurious New York City apartment, and the Bradys and Partridges in their suburban surrounds.
When Jim and I got married and it came time to put down roots, we agreed we were more Country than City and narrowed our choices to the fertile Rio Grande valley or the wild and wooley Sandia Mountains. We dialed up realtor parents of a mutual friend and off we went house hunting.
One day sitting in a once-famous-but-now-defunct restaurant in the East Mountains of Albuquerque, Jim and I realized that while the mountains were beautiful in their own way, they were also filled with what at the time seemed like an awful lot of, well, survivalists. In the mountains we saw an inordinate number of rifles, barbed wire fences, barricades, and bomb shelters. Valley folk, on the other hand, were more likely to carry walking sticks and herd sheep in large pastures.
And so it was decided, we’d live in the river valley. It’s where we each grew up and where we ultimately decided to stay. I’ve run into a lot of people I knew from high school, and I’ve heard the same thing from most every one of them: You can take the boy (or girl) out of the valley, but you can’t take the valley out of the boy.
Is it as simple as where you grew up and what seeped into your growing bones? I spent all those years fishing for crawdads in ditches and hanging out at the river. I climbed cottonwoods and chased cotton through the month of June. I sometimes think that if you cracked me open, you’d find clods of fertile soil instead of blood. That after generations of being here, I’ve transmuted and become incapable of survival anywhere else.
I keep coming back to this theme: Place, Home. It’s like a Rubik’s Cube for me. What shapes our affinities to geography and why?
Help me figure it out. What calls to you? What particular geographic dimension bites you and doesn’t let go?
I am. I am beside the Missouri River. Deciduous trees that fill the wooded hills. Walks in shale bottomed streams. The rolling hills of northwestern Missouri that give way to the glacier-scraped river bottom. I am the bluffs that border this vast flat land in which the river runs. The bluffs that the native people used to send messages up and down the river for hundreds of miles.
I am a quiet man, in an isolated neighborhood not far from the smell of the stockyards (now gone). I am the boy who wandered in the wooded hills that surrounded our little peninsula of houses, who took refuge there when the “real world” proved to hard to handled, too painful, too scary.
I am peonies and lilacs and irises in spring. Peaches in summer. Black rapsberries and chiggers in fall. And the starkness of winter where everything lives only underground.
I have a jar of dirt from the basement of the only home I have ever known. Like a vampire, I will take that with me to the crematorium and they can mix it with my ashes. I was born of that place. It lives in my body and runs in my blood. No matter how far away I must travel, it will always be my home. I am of that place next to the Missouri River and in the hills and woods that run next to it.
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I am Ocean. No doubt. I must hear it, smell it and see it (in that order).
Growing up we lived in strawberry and orange grove country that was really a suburb of Los Angeles. I was 5 miles from the ocean and we never went to the beach. We did travel to the mountains a lot and we had a vacation home in the desert. I love two environs very much BUT, it was clearly my 5 summer vacations spent at sea that shaped me. We went on cruises and my most favorite place to be was leaning against the back railing of the ship watching the churning wake of the engines. The sound of the water as we sliced through it soothed me like no other. I’ve been on two cruises recently as an adult and it still works for me.
And now you know why Torrey Pines state reserve is My Place. A perfect blend of the mountains with the pines, the desert with the scrub chaparral all right above the ocean. I can never be far from there.
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I grew up in Manchester, a northern industrial city in England, and though I love the countryside to visit, I’m afraid I’m like Woody Allen, after a while the cicadas do me in. I’ve lived in many places but my favourite was Vancouver, BC. Beautiful views with a thriving city on the water. It’s my best of all worlds. When we moved to the countryside it nearly killed me…….
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Yeah, Jo, I think I would go a bit batty if I were truly isolated. Jim could easily become a self-sufficient hermit and not see folks for days. I could just see him thriving on his 20,000 acres, with the weekly trip to get groceries. (Not that we’d ever do that, but I’m sure he’d love that kind of life.)
Vancouver sounds perfect.
Wow, tpgoddess, the Torrey Pines state reserve sounds incredible. Mountains, desert, and ocean all together. Pretty cool. Interesting, too, how you can tie your love of the ocean to those sea-faring trips.
I know I can tie my fear of the ocean to watching Jaws at age 13. 8)
Really gorgeous piece of writing in that comment, Bob. I can related totally to the river flowing in your veins. So you have all four seasons, with plenty of snow in winter?
The area surrounding the Missouri River sounds gorgeous. I have never seen the Missouri—is it a large, wide river? Oh wait, I’ve been to St. Louis, MO. I remember seeing riverboats docked along it. I hardly got to see around much, though. As I recall, it was a very short shot in and out, back about ten years ago.
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The Missouri River around St. Joseph, where I was born and raised, is different than the river even 50 miles south here in KC and it changes as it flows across the state to St. Louis where it runs into the Mississippi. At St. Joseph, the river is wide with nothing built on its shores. Trees cover most of the banks. The water, a mil chocolate brown, boils and roils as it passes by. By the time the river reaches Kansas City the banks are covered with manicured parks, barges and industrial plants.
Two of the most beautiful places on the river are at Atchison, Kansas (home of Amelia Earhart), where you can drive to the top of a bluff and look down on the river at your feet (almost) and across and up and down the river valley…exquisitely beautiful in the fall when the leaves change colors or in the spring when new leaves appear. The other place is where I-70 crosses the river down around Booneville and Columbia. As you cross the bridge look to the left and you see the wide Missouri flowing like a brown satin ribbon past the river bluffs cut out of limestone and covered with trees. I have always wanted to build a small house on top of the limestone bluff amidst the trees and spend my days looking at the river.
We don’t have that much snow usually (not like when I was a child and we walked 20 miles to school in snow up to our knees…I am beginning to sound like my parents). We may have snow for Christmas…maybe a few nothing snows prior to that. Snow in January and February, but usually it all melts. Things have changed though with global warming so I can’t really predict what winter will be like.
I fell in love with New Mexico one night in December when my friend, Mariann, and her daughter (my god-daugther) went to Gabriel’s north of Santa Fe for dinner. I was ready to pull out onto the highway to go back to Santa Fe. I gasped. Snow as fine as confectioner’s sugar covered the stark landscape and a full moon lit the whole scene. I have NEVER seen snow so beautiful as that night outside Santa Fe. Even writing about it brings the image to mind.
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Yeah, the area where I saw the river seemed pretty industrial. The section in St. Joseph, where you were born, sounds wonderful. Why is St. Joseph in my head lately?–has it been in the news for some reason this past week or so? I wonder if someone was interviewed there that I heard on the radio. Hmmm.
What kind of trees grow along the banks? Cottonwoods, by chance? Also, I’m curious, how is that part of Missouri doing, economically? So many smaller towns have died, but small towns that have rivers seem to have a tendency to defy the typical course, as their beauty continues to draw tourists and artists and others.
Same here, Bob, about the snow. It snowed a lot in Albuquerque when I was a kid, but nowadays it’s rare when we get a huge dump that turns everything white for at least a day or so. We got one two winters ago, and that year the snow didn’t melt for days and days.
I love Gabriel’s, btw. Have you tried their guacamole that’s made in a fresh at the table? I can picture the scene you describe, with the light snow and the sparkle from the moon. Ah, that’s the part of winter I cherish.
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I can’t imagine that St. Joseph, MO would make the news for anything. At one time it was a thriving farm market town with a stockyards, several packing houses, a few beer plants and then it faded into nothingness. I don’t know where the people make there money because not many industries exist in the city or in the small towns around it. Very conservative now.
Cottonwoods grow along the banks along with other native trees (hickory, elm, maple, birch…the whole deciduous group).
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I’m currently ocean but if I could ever find my own “Northern Exposure” I be on my way there quicker than than Oliver could run from Lisa’s hard-as-a-rock biscuits and oil thick coffee. Not as far as climate or position on a map… but the way of life depicted on the old tv show. If you ever watched it yb, you might remember the odd collection of people that lived in the town where moose wandered through the streets. Nothing ever seemed abnormal to them. They accepted everyone as they were without prejudice. They had no crime. They cared for and respected each other and they lived in harmony in their eclectic little town…. Sadly, a town like this could only exist under a talented writer’s pen.
I used to think I could never leave the city…but as I age…and cars pile up freeways, people speak loudly on cell phones in restaurants or swear obscenities in front of elderly people…a small town in Nova Scotia, where I can ride a lawnmower, wear plaid shirts and sit on my porch eating ice cream while I wave at passing cars… well, it’s is starting to look really good 😉
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grew up in KC also–still return for family affairs–floated the missouri once. I am more of a river as it runs into the lake–a hillbilly now–maybe always was. And cicadas–love the way the drown out the noise of the tourists
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I am uncertain. I am happy at home on the great subtlety of the open prairies, but the endless horizons leave me restless and wanting to explore.
I don’t think I’ve seen enough to decide where I want to be. I should maybe try to find peace where I’m at first.
M
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Heather, yes, I know exactly what you mean. I had a crush on the lead character. The place was so peaceable and laid-back, and neither the cold nor dark factored in. Hey, did you know that the Native American woman, with the dry sense of humor, came from a pueblo in NM?
Re: small town living, there is something to be said for it. I live in a relatively small town now—about 7K according to the last census, and I know so many residents from the work I’ve done on municipal projects or with the local museum. It’s a very pleasant thing, being able to go into town and see a bunch of people I know. But, even with small towns, there’s certainly a big difference between one that’s, say, 700 people and one that’s approaching 10K.
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Scot, a hillbilly, eh? Interesting how you and Bob, two people besides me, grew up near a river, and still the river figures pretty prominently in your adult lives. Lakes, too, it seems would leave a profound imprint…I’m thinking now of the Great Lakes and a fellow writer (Jude, if you’re out there) who seems to have that kind of deep connection to that land and body of water.
michael, thanks for stopping in. Prairie, eh? We have some huge expanses of prairie in NM, and I’m always surprised when I meet people who make those isolated and at time harsh places their home. I think of ranching folks, in particular.
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I am a river. Flowing to the ocean. I have always lived near rivers and trains. And near, but outside of, larger cities. Honestly, even though I lived in the city of Minneapolis for 22 years, I prefer living outside of cities, just slightly, as I do now. That’s the way I grew up, too, just outside of larger cities.
I need access to the arts, to the culture and diversity of cities. But I was at a coffee shop in the heart of Minneapolis last night and, I tell you, I couldn’t wait to get back to the relative peace and silence of home. I do have my art studio in the city on quiet streets in Nordeast. I like it that way.
I was thinking about what you said, ybonesy, about mountains and valleys. When I lived in Montana, I lived in the small city of Missoula where 5 valleys came together. And I loved it there. Many of my friends lived up in the mountains and it’s as you describe — many strange people up in them there hills. A lot of survivalists seem to love to hide in the narrow canyons and forests of the mountains. There are also some nice ones, of course. But it’s a different breed. In terms of mountains, I prefer the openness of the valleys with a view of the mountains in the distance. The biggest thing I miss living in the Midwest are the mountains.
Either way, I like being near the flow of Water and Minnesota has a lot of it. But I have a Taurus moon and Taurus rising. So Earth and ground are important elements to me.
As I get older, I’m leaning more and more with heather. It seems like when I lived in the city, I became more tolerant of the rudeness and crudeness that can live there, side by side with the wealth and opulence. I’m not sure that’s something I want to be around in my later years or to continue to tolerate. I prefer the more sane environment of being just outside.
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yb, I grew up in the mountains of PA. I currently live at the base of one, so I know I tend to be drawn to mountains, but I am also river. Our camp on the Susquehanna River is somewhere that I always have a good time & enjoy the peacefulness of the flowing water. I guess I’m a little bit country & a little bit rock-n-roll! 🙂
D
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I am made of lake water. I grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan. I remember coming out of my childhood bedroom, with the Dutch door, each morning, to be greeted by the magnificent skyscape across that big lake. Lake Michigan had moods, some days calm and peaceful, smooth as glass with only gentle, rocking swells. Other days it was furious and pounding. The waves hammering the shore would vibrate our brick house. I could feel it lying in my bed at night.
I live on the Wyoming prairie now and two of the reasons I love this dry place are that we have the same wide skyscapes here, where we can see the storm fronts approaching and we enjoy a slower-paced, friendly rural life.
But, my heart’s home is on a small lake in the far north woods of Wisconsin. It is a place that looks very much like the land described by Mary Oliver’s poetry (which is actually written about the northeast.) It is the destination of my lifelong summer vacations. Every time I go there I re-discover what it really means to relax … to let go.
I fancy that I will move there to live someday. I say that I would like Mary Oliver’s life of recording what I see all around me each day. Some people tell me that moving there will be one sure way to wreck a great summer vacation.
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I live on two islands. One has bridges and is civilized. The other has no bridges, and you can only get there by a small ferry with limited and crazy hours or by boat. My preference is the bridgeless one..Drayton Island, surrounded by alligators.
So I guess I am like your Jim, and I never tire of cicadas.
I said all that to say…I am all and none of the places you named. Maybe it goes back to childhood..I really didn’t have what I would call roots…so I learned to embrace wherever I had a home.
I wish I could live everywhere to experience it all!! 🙂
I seem to have a restless spirit.
Hmm…could be I have a gypsy-heart! 🙂
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Ybonesy,
I am definitely a New Mexican. Love the mountains and I love the desert. Mostly what I like are wide open landscapes.
Ironically my condo in Venezuela is only 150 meters from sea, but there is that feeling of open-ness. I do enjoy looking at the activity on the water. There is definitely something dynamic about it.
When visiting the USA this summer, I drove from Silver City, New Mexico to Amarillo, TX, then to Kansas City, then back across Kansas to Salida Colorado. The Colorado mountains are nice, but I found the prairies of the Texas Panhandle, and the Flint hills and rolling plains of Kansas just as beautiful.
On my way back to Albuquerque, the day before my flight (the day you left for Vietnam), I stopped in at the Owl Bar in San Antonio for a hamburger. It was about 7:30 or so (approaching dusk). After my quick supper, I went outside and enjoyed the cool evening of San Antonio. It smelled of a combination of desert (creosote bush) and alfalfa. It was silent, then a scream of a parrot (at least it sounded like a parrot to me). It was a really neat moment in time. I got back in my borrowed truck and headed north via the old road through Luis Lopez and Socorro.
Desert more than anything.
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Oddly enough, I fear I am a freeway person.
Growing up in the San Fernando Valley, we always lived near I-5, the Golden State Freeway. Eventually, we lived as close to the freeway as a house could be. I would sit up on our roof sunbathing and wave to the passing cars. The freeway was my neighbor and I never felt an antipathy towards it and the noise and exhaust.
Twenty some years later, I find myself in another community, 400 miles away from where I grew up, very close to the freeway. I look out my window and I can see the freeway flow by. The sound of traffic is my white noise.
I didn’t do this intentionally. I just happened to really like this little community, and the part of town I could afford happens to be very close to a freeway. Maybe it’s all very unconscious. Maybe it’s all I think I deserve. Maybe I find the flow soothing, as one would a river. Maybe it’s just my karma.
I like to think of myself though as a water person. My little home next to the freeway is also a mere couple, three blocks from the San Francisco Bay. Growing up we weren’t near a natural body of water, but I was always in the water – whether it was a pool at school, a friend’s house, where my dad worked, or at the beach. Yes, I am definitely most comfortable where there is water.
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LB, it turns out, I know what you mean about the freeway being your white noise. I, too, lived for a time as close to a freeway as you could. My place backed up to the freeway, and my bedroom window opened out to the freeway (living room opened out to the other side, opposite). The sound of the traffic flowing was soothing, and it reminded me almost of how as a young child I always feel asleep in the car. I just never could stay awake even if we were only driving from one side of town to the other.
And now, I can hear traffic from a state highway, different than a freeway, but sometimes in the morning, when the traffic is highest, it lulls me back into a sleep after it initially wakes me.
Interesting, too, the comparison to river flowing.
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MM, your description of being outside after eating at the Owl Cafe…well, the parrot, reminded me of your pet parrot. What was his name? Funny how you’ve become attuned to that particular sound of a bird, and even if it wasn’t (I suppose it could have been a domesticated one that got loose), still that’s what came up in your mind. You’ve lived a long time away from NM, ya know.
Interesting that you seemed to prefer the flat prairie/expanse over the big mountains. Salida is, of course, gorgeous. Actually lots of valley intermixed with those mountains. But yeah, totally different feel from the constant horizon. I wonder if there’s a correlation between your love of the road trip and your love of vast expanse. They seem related.
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Suz, how cool, those two islands. Well, except for the alligators. I have one of those morbid fears/fascinations with alligators attacking people. If you happen to stop back over here, please do tell me if any attacks have happened as long as you’ve been there.
And so you live there full time? That sounds very exotic, btw. The kind of thing I’m sure I overly romanticize. But yeah, Jim could handle it. I would say I could and then find out I missed all the stuff (galleries, people, coffee shops, museums, etc.), but he really would be able to.
Yeah, too, it does make sense that your wanderlust would stem from not having roots as a kid. Seems one would either *seriously* take root somewhere (the kid who just could never get accustomed to not having them) or you’d want to continue seeing all there is to see.
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QM, diddy, breathepeace—thanks for your comments. I didn’t realize I hadn’t been back over here to the post to read what had come in.
QM, it sounds like you have the best of both worlds, especially with your studio in an urban area (and not your typical urban area). Makes it perfect for going to the studio by day, then to a cultural performance at night, or vice versa. Then home for the peace and quiet.
And yeah, the mountains of Montana sound so dramatic. I’ve never been. Jim has talked a lot about them. Missoula. You guys talked about that town when you visited, yes? Hey, have you noticed your streak on living in cities/states with Ms?
diddy, no wonder your name is diddy! 8) River with Mountain is pretty darned wonderful. And isn’t PA about the greenest place one can go to in the US?
breathepeace, the Dutch door really stood out in that description. I take it the top half would be open all day in the warm season. When I hear you talk about the spot on a small lake in the woods, I hear so much appreciation in your voice that my take is it’s a must-move eventually.
Although, I don’t know if you’re like me on this point, but it seems almost a bad idea to move into a remote place and/or very small town in older age. My one hesitation is access to great medical care. But, gee, I guess it all depends on how old or young one is and how good their health is.
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Except for a year in Madrid and a year in Boston, I’ve always lived in the suburbs, metro Chicago and Metro Atlanta.
This is a very thought provoking subject (not to mention funny with all the references to TV shows from my era), because I often felt like I belong nowhere. I think I’ll blog about this and link back.
Good post, yb!
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ybonesy, it does feel like the best of both worlds, having a studio in the city, living just outside (#22). You know, a curious thing has happened as I’ve aged — I get clearer and clearer about what matters to me. The question I have to keep asking myself is — am I willing to do the work to have those things in my life. By work, I mean internal and emotional, and the external details of figuring out how to make money, be a writer and artist, and live.
You know what strikes me as I come back to this post is that when I go on vacation, I like to get out into the country, into the elements. But I still gravitate to places that are close to bigger cities. Like Duluth and Lake Superior. When I was younger, I might have gone on a wilderness canoe trip or something like that — to a galaxy far, far away from people and civilization. These days it’s enough to get a beach cabin by a Great Lake. Or go to a little island off the coast of Georgia. But I still want to be outside, to experience different bodies of water and land.
About Montana and Minnesota, I hadn’t noticed the “M’s” until you pointed them out. 8) Yes, I think Jim and I did talk about Missoula. I will always have a fondness for that part of western Montana. I did a lot of growing up there. And I just love the land, Big Sky, and rivers. It’s truly a beautiful place. Open spaces.
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[…] excellent essay Are You River, Desert, Mountains, Ocean, Lake, City, Or None Of The Above?, found at the blog she writes with QuoinMonkey, red Ravine. For most of my life I’ve wanted to […]
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This is a great question. I grew up on the Mississippi, that mighty river always a part of the background fibers of my childhood. Then went to school in Chicago where my dorm was literally across from Lake Michigan, separated by 8 lanes of traffic. I have always lived near some type of water, though never the ocean, and I find water soothing. Thought I needed water.
But in the last week I’ve been roaming mountains, and now I’m exploring deserts. And honestly – I think I could live anywhere as long as I had easy access to nature. I think big city life would throw me too many unnecessary challenges, though like QM, I like to be close enough for the goodies – the arts, the vast variety of music, the diverse cultural events.
But if I had to choose, I’d have to go for wide open spaces. I’d never choose to live in the center of a metropolis again.
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I remember you writing about the eight lanes of traffic, Bo. Yikes. (Of course, the morbid side of me wants to know the stats on deaths from trying to cross that highway to get to the lake.)
Your trip sounds like it’s having the desired relaxing effect. The wide open spaces you’re in must be stunning right now. I’m thinking of Arches and the Dunes and how they must be brilliant reds and terra cottas and tans these days, with the light angling as it is.
Christine, I read your piece and will comment on it soon. Wonderful conclusion, that you’re outside the geological spaces but belong to Writing. Writing is home. I wish I would have known that truth the year I was lonely in Spain. If only I would have just sunk into the home that writing offers.
QM, interesting insights about your vacationing preferences. They really do seem to mirror your living preferences. One thing I’ve noticed is how darned hard it is to prepare for the truly isolated experiences. All the food packing and preparation, etc.
BTW, I went to bed last night to the realization that I’d made a typo in this post. I used the word “jived” when I really meant “jibed.” I don’t know why it struck me, but I changed the error today.
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Oh, my gosh. That jived and jibed thing is so weird. I just used that in a comment in another post (before I read this) and had to correct myself in the same way.
Yeah, I go for more of the creature comforts than I used to when I would vacation. I’m not as into roughing it. And you are absolutely right — the prep for a simple camping trip to go to a cabin with few modern conveniences takes a lot of work.
I remember when we’d do those long canoe trips where we had to paddle out after being dropped into the Canadian wilderness by an airplane — it took weeks of planning. We had to plan all the meals and bag them; we were carrying everything on our backs.
But even the simple car camping trip takes a lot of planning. Once you get there though, it’s smooth sailing. Unless it rains or snows. Ayeeeee. It’s snowing up in the northern reaches of MN today.
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yb: I grew up in the ‘burbs. Strip and shopping malls were my turf. I’ve retraced those adolescent steps a number of times and can’t believe I lived there. It isn’t a city, not by a long-shot, or rural. It’s a bizarre wasteland.
I started going to the near-north in my part of Canada after college, 60 rough acres a friend owned. That called to me. I went back again and again, walking the forest trails endlessly. I moved there eventually, living four years among old-growth pine trees and a crystal clear lake. It was the silence I loved most.
I now live in a city of 12 million. The one square mile around my apartment is home to 50,000 people. The country mouse is now a city mouse. I like it, the hustle and bustle, but am truly at peace when visiting my in-laws farm. Rice paddies, oranges groves, gentle hills, and the same sort of silence I found in the Canadian wilderness.
I’m a confused mouse, I think .
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Stevo, you must be an easy-going, adaptable guy, because to go from the strip-mall ‘burbs to the old-growth pines and lake of 60 acres to one of the world’s most densely populated neighborhoods—well, that’s some variation for one single person. 8)
The strip mall wasteland sounds familiar. Maybe a half-dying part of town? The 60 acres, and in Canada no less (one of my favorite countries for the progressive nature of health care and environment, among other things) sounds wonderful. And having traveled to huge cities in China (and 12 million is small compared to some) I can also see the allure of living there for a few years. I think the expat experience is pretty cool, and I wouldn’t mind doing that myself. (I’m kind of adaptable myself.)
QM, wow, you should write some day a post about the being-dropped-by-plane Canada canoe trip. Sounds like an amazing experience!
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Well, I mean, we didn’t actually jump from the plane. But it was a small plane where we loaded our two canoes, 5 people, the pilot, and all of our Duluth packs and flew over Canadian wilderness to land on this tiny gravel bar on the Nahanni River. Then the pilot flew away, leaving us in a little pile of dust. It was an amazing trip, something I’ll probably never experience again in quite the same way.
There were mostly good things about that trip — but also all the conflict and tension that happens with a small family of people I didn’t know very well; things that come up without the distractions of TV, phones, radio, familiar surroundings, the comforts of home. We eventually worked things out. It would make a good story. I think that may be a separate memoir though. We’ll see!
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QM and yb:
There’s a great book about a Canadian plane crash / canoe trip (as well as academic faculty life at Canadian Uni) called Moodie’s Tale by Eric Wright. It’s humorous and I highly recommend it.
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Stevo, thanks. I’ll check it out.
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I’ll have to check that out, too, Stevo, being the morbid plane crash voyeur that I am.
Yeah, QM, sounds like it has the making of a memoir. You could start with an essay, though. 8)
BTW, Bob, wasn’t Obama just in St. Joseph, MO, this week? I swear I saw someone there on the news, and I’m pretty sure it was one of the candidates.
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[…] excellent essay Are You River, Desert, Mountains, Ocean, Lake, City, Or None Of The Above?, found at the blog she writes with QuoinMonkey, red Ravine. For most of my life I’ve wanted to […]
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[…] we call Home shape who we are, who we want to be, who we will become. North, South, East, or West, the geography of land, water, and sky influence our work, filter into our vision, help us hone our craft, whether we are aware of it or not. And the […]
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[…] I know the entire theme song to Gilligan’s Island, Beverly Hillbillies, and Green Acres. I might know others but those are the only ones I can think of […]
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[…] -related to posts: haiku 2 (one-a-day), Are You River, Desert, Mountains, Ocean, Lake, City, Or None Of The Above? […]
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