A Geography of Decisions
How I chose a new state of being
When my brain is on fire, I need a forest or a river. Give me crisp air, insects to admire, soft lichens for my fingertips to trace. This is a trait my spouse and I share. We’ve been dutiful over the last couple of months (our state has been one of the most proactive in this time of pandemic), making no trips to wander in the woods or let the ocean tides wash over us. In fact, the last hike I took was on Leap Day, when the disabled hiking group I’m part of explored McLane Creek Nature Trail here in our town. On March 8, my spouse and I took a day trip to Snoqualmie Falls for our anniversary, but it was so crowded that we quickly left. Now a different anniversary has come and gone, and we endure a fierce longing for the natural world beyond our block.
We found ourselves in Washington just over a year ago, having made a quick but necessary decision during an impromptu trip. My spouse and I were exploring the glorious Columbia River and ended up at Cape Disappointment, an achingly beautiful spot in Pacific County, at the southwestern-most tip of the state. I’d finished an interview in Vancouver. It was the last day of March, and while the experience left me ambivalent about the job, I was doing mental gymnastics to figure out how we could just hire someone to go to Wyoming and pack our things for us. Not one part of me wanted to leave the Pacific Northwest that day.
I carried a piece of rain forest jasper in my pocket. My spouse had lapis lazuli. We cast our stones through the fog into the river, performing our own silent clarity rituals. Our visit ended with flavorful bowls of oyster stew in an old train car in Ilwaco. Fog blanketed the landscape, and my comfortable melancholy settled in atop it. Washington sure felt like home.
Thirty days later, we came to stay.
This was a much different tactic than the one I’d used back in 2018, when in the throes of depression and desperation, I accepted a job 1,341 miles away from our children. This decision to move from Birmingham, Alabama, to Sidney, Nebraska, came from a sadness so deep I couldn’t even share it with the forest in my back yard. I think I was born with wanderlust, but in dealing with the consequences of never following my heart kept me in place too long. I couldn’t shake the shame and disappointment I felt in myself about events of the prior seven years, and was grateful for the grace my heartbroken children showed me.
In Nebraska, my love and I reveled in the Panhandle’s violent thunderstorms, experienced a calving season, and drove with a joyful awe through the Sandhills region, with its otherworldly sun. We got so much snow on Easter that the drifts blocked our door in Sidney. Our short stay in Gering had us living in the literal shadow of Scotts Bluff National Monument. Prairie life in the summer meant chill highway pheasants, scorching 20 hour days, and a world-famous wide diurnal temperature.
Western Nebraska’s intensity wasn’t enough to keep us when I was offered an unprecedented opportunity in social work in Wyoming. Soon, we were living in Cheyenne, 90 miles west of Gering. Our Jeep Grand Cherokee spent her final day in this world with my spouse at Devil’s Tower. My new job required a lot of travel between Cheyenne, Laramie, and Rawlins. Wyoming’s beauty was ancient and wild. We talked to trees in Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Dubois, Jackson, and Snowy Range.
The Rocky Mountain West requires a lot of her people. After six months of blizzards (and on the cusp of a major health scare for my spouse), I was at the point where I would see snow in the forecast and my throat would start closing up. My eye would twitch, and I’d get that anxious itch. I did a lot of considering, and began researching my job options in the Pacific Northwest. I spent one of our completely-snowed-in days in March submitting resumes and making phone calls. The next day, an agency in Vancouver invited me to interview the next week. My spouse and I determined how we would afford to drive 1,171 miles from Cheyenne to Vancouver, and set out for adventure a few days later.
I didn’t get the Vancouver job that led us to visit Cape Disappointment and pitch our fates into the water. In fact, I was a finalist but never the chosen candidate for a few jobs in that area. Our final move was an act of faith that our rocks and the river would see us through. The risk of it all drew us in.
The soothing beauty of the land and sea made the nauseating stress of unexpected unemployment survivable. We saw more of the unmatched Columbia River, and took rambling drives down through Oregon, where all coastline is public land. The beach stole my heart the day I walked through a forest and into the ocean. I dreamed of ferns, mosses, and lichens. Washington’s vibrant and ancient forests nestled themselves in a secret place within my spirit.
Once I had work (and income), we spent our weekends exploring Olympic National Forest, Mount Rainier, and Capitol Forest. We hiked to Cape Flattery, the northwestern-most point in the continental US. In the woods, my brain took its ease. My overthinking and out-loud processing had overshadowed the previous weeks, when our future was uncertain. I could finally hear and treasure my inner silence.
Living near the state capitol, we have access to trees and flowers. Rhododendrons, strawberries, and camellias blossom right outside our patio door. Our city-center neighborhood has an abundance of color and green spaces. But almost 14 months after our river ritual and initial wanderings into the woods of Washington, I long to hold my love’s hand as we pay our respects to the land that beckoned us in like a tender lover, then invited us to stay.
