Strange to find this post on USS Mariner, but it is a credit to my collegue a the fish commision, Jeff Shaw. Gifted writer he is, puts me to shame.
But, Jeff is writing about the good old concept of “home” and that sense of place we hear about from time to time. I recently picked up Scott Russell Sander’s Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World (in my Bowling Alone series of reading), so Jeff’s post in especially meaningfull to me.
…
I inform our throng, since I’ve got a long drive home to Bellingham. This brings an unexpected query.
“Bellingham? Why,” Curto asks with furrowed brow, “do you live in Bellingham?”
He doesn’t say it with scorn, just bewilderment, the tone of voice you’d use to ask why a guy collects antique Palauan toothpicks. Something you figure people do, but have never considered doing yourself.
I think for a second. “Because I love it there,” I say. It’s an honest answer, if facile and incomplete, and for a moment it’s all I’ve got.
…
When I came to Bellingham, it was because my wife got a job. In journalism, you move roughly every two years until you get where you really want to go. The ‘Ham wasn’t supposed to be home, not really; the lovely and talented Ms. Shaw was always going to get a gig in the greater Seattle area. So it went.
This is the natural order. Waterfalls don’t flow uphill, rivers don’t run backwards to the headwaters. These patterns have all, in my experience, held true to form.
…
The unruly facial hair wouldn’t be conspicious in my town, with its complement of campsite monks, snowboard priests and kayak devotees whose faith is the mountain or threshing white rapids. The place’s apt nickname is City of Subdued Excitement, and the laconic pace and lack of pretense are appealing. I like pulling out my dress flannel and good ballcap for important meetings.
When you come, you’re issued a Subaru wagon so you can take your dogs (always plural) to Baker or the coast in rain, shine or snow. My basset hounds always roll with me into a friend’s office — the nerve center of a multi-million dollar foundation. Friends came to my scotch-and-cards birthday party with their rambunctious German shepherd and Rhodesian ridgeback in tow.
Neither of us asked first. Because in Bellingham, it’s expected.
But I’ve lived in low-key, outdoorsy places before. So what has me internally quoting poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s simple but elegant lines “I like it here / and I won’t go back / where I came from”? Is it that university towns are great, with their magical blend of intellectual stimulation and affordable beer? Or is it something else entirely?
…
Change is constant in all things. Bellingham isn’t exempt. Like I said, rivers never run backwards, and you can’t stop the onrush. You can sell your studio in San Diego, buy a place on Lake Whatcom, and have enough left to buy an entire herd of purebred poodles.
So these days, patches of new buildings that all look the same spring up by the dozens. They stand out next to the funky old Painted Lady Victorians done up in wild pastels, or the Craftsman style homes where hippies let their kids decide the colors, with a flurry of resulting purples and reds. The old places fit in here as pastiche homes for a pastiche town, a city formed by fusing three smaller burgs into a nonsensical conundrum of navigation.
One recently transplanted colleague, a wealthy sort and the proud new owner of a fresh-from-the-oven cookie cutter, drove by our house last year. The reasonably understated place got a telling outburst. “That’s so old Bellingham,” she said.
It was in no way meant as a compliment. Which is precisely why I took it as one.
…
When finishing a book I love, I manifest an odd habit. I tend to place the final section of pages between my thumb and forefinger to gauge how much time this particular story and I have left. As fun as the tale is, there’s always a touch of melancholy when you see it winding down.
This feeling amplifies the more stories you read, or the more places you live. Each is unique. The best, paradoxically, inspire the most regret as they pass. Colors get richer and quirks more endearing while the clock ticks.
The feelings are amplified now that I have substantial experience reading the handwriting on walls in successive temporary homes.
The ‘Ham — either as it is or as it is becoming — is certainly not all sunshine and roses. (As far north as we are, there’s precious little sun, and the soil’s iffy in places for rosebushes.) It seemed that the wife and I spent most of the first year looking for people to hike in the rain with. Tough to meet folks, friendly or no, when they’re always racing up a different hill or paddling to a San Juan island.
But you break in a new town like a fresh item of clothing. Comfort comes in stages. I live in Bellingham because, for now, it’s the shirt from the fondly-remembered concert, that pair of jeans that’s just threadbare enough.
…
Time to go home. For now.
On rereading it just now, I came back over Jeff’s line “either as it is or as it is becoming.” This thought may be above my pay-rate, but isn’t any place, town or community always “as it is becoming?”
