The thing about wandering is that you never know where it’ll take you.
I grew up, as I like to joke, where the Oakies and Aarkies decided to stop wandering and put down roots… farm country, California, in a little town that butts right up against the Sequoia National Forest. It’s a nice enough place, a summer town with a sizeable lake that draws tourists to boat and fish and swim and leave a huge mess as American tourists do. By August, the valley’s slopes are golden with all the dried vegetation that makes for a picturesque sunset.. and raging wildfires.
My dad took off the whole month of July, and from time to time would decide that we should travel. Road trips on Goldwings were his preference, and that’s how I got to see Canada and all the states between there and California, with a loop through Idaho, Colorado, and New Mexico. We stayed a few days in Farmington before pushing on to get back home before August arrived. Other trips included the deep south, from Oklahoma to Louisiana with a few days in New Orleans, which cemented my deep seated desire to never, ever live east of the Mississippi if it could be avoided. (Mostly due to racism, poverty, and humidity, if you were wondering.)
The funny thing is, I never really considered leaving California, and even when my then boyfriend and I discussed it, it was always ‘well, we’ll stay in X for a few years, then see about coming back home to settle in’. What settling in entailed was living close to our families, with a huge question mark over starting one of our own… which was already asked and answered in my own mind, if not his.
So when the top dollar job offer came from Albuquerque, New Mexico, we loaded up like modern day Joads heading the wrong direction, with no serious intent of staying beyond a few years.
Growing up in the high desert did not prepare us well for the much higher desert. Winters back home were fairly mild, with a decent dusting of snow every two to three years, but temperatures remaining mostly above freezing.
Snow before Halloween was a huge shock to the system. And SERIOUS snow, that lingered beyond noon, was downright insulting. But there were friendly mountains that shaded purple in the distance, a wide river utterly unlike the Killer Kern I’d grown up on, and a huge small town where everyone knew someone, it seemed.
It was homelike enough, and far away enough from the various familial influences that we settled in. And grew up. And realized that as a pair, we were perfectly awful for one another and decided to part ways. That was a tipping point in life, where I could have made different decisions and chosen to set down roots almost anywhere. Starting over at any age is a little scary, I think, but the power in just having that choice, maybe for the first time in your whole life… I truly think it helped me redefine if not who I was, at least who I wanted to be.
After ten years living here, I feel like that’s the first time I chose to be here.
Twenty years later, and life has taken so very many twists and turns I never could have foreseen, and most of them stem from that road trip and the choices that were made since. Of the folk that made that trip with me, two have passed on, and two I don’t feel a need to speak to, and while I’m sad for that, that’s also a piece that has made up where I am now.
Thirty years ago today, I first set eyes on the Rio Grande Valley, knowing it was going to be home for awhile. I’m not sure that I’m done figuring out who I want to be, but I feel like I’ve made a pretty decent start. I have folk around me that are good to me, sometimes for reasons I don’t really understand, but just try to be grateful for. I have a home that me and the new mister have poured our hearts and souls into, and it’s ours in a way that nowhere else in the world has ever been to me.
It’s funny where life can take you… and funny the choices that you make that shape you. Here’s to thirty years in the Land of Entrapment that snuck it’s way into my heart when I wasn’t looking.
Curiouser and Curiouser 