Good Morning.
Several years ago I had a conversation with a woman who had spent her entire life on a ranch in western South Dakota. She wanted to know what it was like growing up in New England with all those trees and mountains and said she'd get claustrophobia if she couldn't see twenty miles down the road. I told her she could get a place at the beach and look out across the ocean but she said it wouldn't be the same and she was right.
I never felt hemmed in when I lived in the northeast, but I was in southern New England where the hills are gentle. Mountains tend to make me melancholy, especially when the day is coming to an end and even during my favorite time of
year when the sugar maples pepper the landscape. I feel the same way about the Rockies and the Black Hills; I like the last
days of September when the aspens turn a brilliant yellow in marked contrast to the evergreens, but I'd rather look at them when the sun is high in the sky.
Having grown up with traffic and department stores, I'm drawn to the energy of a city but only if I can get to the ocean without much effort. I need water, preferably big water. I need the sound of the waves almost more than the sight of them, the ones that crash onto the shore with an exclamation point and those that are more of a comma. I once purchased a sound machine with the noises of my longing but it was a lousy substitute and I got rid of it at a rummage sale.
Out among the big square states there are no rocky shores to be pounded and few trees to block the view, just acres of crops planted in precision rows and livestock grazing in the peace and quiet. I understand why the ranch lady loves it; she has
a visceral attachment to the natural surroundings of her earliest years on this earth. People in the south don't care to live in the north because they actually like the hot, sticky weather and the trees dripping with Spanish moss that line the rivers and bayous. When I went to New Orleans twenty years ago I remember walking up the jetway at the airport and almost being knocked over by the humidity, even though I grew up with a measure of it. Southerners thrive on it. It's an excuse to sit on the veranda with a glass of sweet tea or lemonade and they can even do it in February. People in the north prefer a distinct change of seasons although plenty of them head south after a few weeks of winter.
The folks in the coastal areas would not be comfortable in the desert and southwestern dwellers don't want the prairie, the mountains, or the humidity. They want the famous dry heat they brag about and colors like adobe red and burnt umber. They'd be restless among the sugar maples of Vermont or the Colorado spruce because they need their cactus. In the northwest the residents are happy to live with huge amounts of rain because they want a deeper shade of green than the oddly-shaped prickly stuff outside of Phoenix. In California folks are partial to the mountains, the ocean, the desert, the cities, or the wine country, and it works out quite well because they can live in one setting, visit the others when they feel like it, and be home without ever leaving the state.
Most people move at least once during a lifetime and many do it several times because of job opportunities. It doesn't matter.
Any dramatic change in what you look at and hear and even smell will provide an interesting adventure but never replace what you feel in your bones. It's called being homesick.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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