I Have Found Me a Home

When I started this blog it was, in part, meant to be an exploration of what it is in me that has led to my restlessness, my inability to settle in any one place for very long. I was realizing that, while I love travel and would really rather do nothing more than journey from one place to another, the constant moving about was wearing on me.

I may have put the blog aside for a while, but the exploration - and the moving - has continued. I traveled from IL to Flagstaff almost two years ago for what was supposed to be a few months of helping my sister with her kids while she recovered from back surgery. One thing led to another, and before my time there was up I accepted a job in Tempe. For three months I lived in my tent in the beautiful Usery Park campground in Mesa three days a week (just me, the camp host, and the coyotes most of the time) and spent the rest of each week in Flagstaff.

Home Sweet Tent - Usery Mountain Park, Mesa, AZ

That same autumn my Mom decided to sell her house in Illinois and retire to Arizona. The two of us decided to rent a house together. She organized the IL end of the move while I conducted a house search and secured suitable living space on the southwest side of Phoenix.

I'd lived in Arizona before, but that was my first experience living in Phoenix. I liked Phoenix. I liked it much more than I thought I might. But the sprawl and the traffic started to wear on me about the time my daily commute went from 30 minutes one way, to 90 minutes one way. My job took me from one end of the city to the other at times, and with a few wonderful exceptions the entire Valley of the Sun began to feel like an endless sea of featureless, concrete-walled subdivisions strung together with strip malls. 

I began to miss wilderness, and the easy access to nature I'd enjoyed in Flagstaff and most of the other places I'd lived (Chicago included). I began to miss towns - real towns, the kind that have their own vibe, their own individual character. I recognized these longings as coming from the 'wanting what I don't have' side of me, and I systematically began working at figuring out ways to have those things I felt were lacking, while staying put.

After a year, Mom and I decided to move to a more happening part of Phoenix. We found a gorgeous Santa Fe style home to rent, and moved there in December of 2012.

At the same time we were moving to the new house, I was meditating on the question of where it was I really belonged. Phoenix just didn't feel like 'it'. Chicago had been the right place for a long time, but after living in sunny, dry climates I could no longer take the grey winters and summer humidity. I loved Flagstaff and Northern AZ as a whole, but every time I'd tried to live there in the past ten years I ended up getting called away elsewhere. 

In February of this year I received a call from an ex coworker, asking if I'd be interested in returning to Northern California to work with him at a small commercial development firm. I had an answer to my meditations, and a fast one at that. While I wasn't one hundred percent certain that the Bay Area was the answer I was looking for, I couldn't ignore that the company just happened to be located in San Rafael, where I had lived previously. 

Phone, Skype and in person interviews over the course of the next nine days ended with a solid job offer. Excitement mounting, I packed up the Jeep with the barest essentials (clothes, dog, tent, camp mat, sleeping bag, toiletries) and set off on the next leg of the adventure: getting myself relocated and housed in time to start the new job on the first Monday in March.

I left Phoenix during rush hour, planning to spend the night at Joshua Tree National Park. I needed a quiet night spent in the open desert before rushing headlong into the new venture. While I did not doubt that I had been given this opportunity for a reason, I was still not entirely certain whether I was making the right choice in moving so quickly. Perhaps I would have been better off to try to stay put and stick it out in Phoenix? I set up camp and strolled through the quiet, nearly empty campground under the stars that night, and again at dawn the next morning. Eventually the busy thoughts percolating through my head cleared away. All that remained was a sense of peace about what I was doing. That was enough. I broke camp, loaded up gear and dog, and made my way northwards.

That evening I drove the familiar freeways through the East Bay and across the Richmond Bridge into Marin County, my old stomping grounds. As I did, the chorus of an old Jimmy Buffett song I hadn't thought of in years crept into my head. It took up residence there until I was forced to dig out my iPod and play it:

I have found me a home.
I have found me a home.
You can have the rest of everything I own,
'Cause I have found me a home.

I rolled down the windows on the Jeep and Tanner and I sniffed the fresh, flower-scented spring air, with its underlying touch of salty ocean-ness. I had found me a home.

Marin County, seen from the Richmond Bridge.