Rich beyond measure

I've imagined for years what it would be like to have free weekends and places to explore at the same time. I've wondered if I could get up in the morning Monday through Thursday and write or read or publish or edit, then spend Friday, Saturday, Sunday in the car with mountains in view. I've wondered if a world exists where I can do all of this and live in an apartment with a bedroom that has a door and closets that hold all the piles we used to throw on the floor for lack of alternative option.

Let me just say we've hit the jackpot here in Pullman. We are rich beyond measure in experience, passion, inspiration, work, and square footage. We are, without a doubt, living the dream.

In the last month, we've driven to Oregon three times. We have family a little south of Portland – family we never before spent a lot of time with because they lived across the country from us. Now they're a breezy 7-hour drive, part of which includes a view of Mt. Hood over the Columbia River. 

On one of those trips to Oregon, we climbed Mt. Hood. We started at midnight so we could see the sunrise at the top. This was my first technical mountain climb, which means it involved snow travel. We bought mountaineer gear a few years ago but the trip we planned was canceled. If you can't tell from the photo, I was seriously pumped. And seriously tired. I should coin a word that means both of those things at the same time.

Three cheers for work space! This is our second bedroom – a.k.a. the gear room / bike room / office. And all those boxes are books that are sad and neglected because we don't have bookshelves yet. Soon, my loves. Soon.

Painted Canyon - going West

We stopped even though it was raining. In North Dakota, where I grew up, it's as flat as you can get. The land grows more varied as you move west. Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora offers the first real glimpse along Interstate 94 of where we're going. As far as I could tell, the West began at Painted Canyon, so I got out of the car in the rain to see the way the grey sky couldn't diminish the varied shades of green set against red clay. It's gorgeous, but I don't want to live there. I want to keep going. I wonder if early explores thought this. If this is what it looks like here, what could be next? Let's keep going. Let's find the borders and touch the ocean. No matter what happens between now and then, here and there, it will be worth it just to see it. If we get the chance to do more than look over railings – if we can walk out there where the trails are hard to find and the goats acquiesce to our presence – we want to do it.

The move

We traveled 2,250 miles in five days. Well, I did. Ben left a month ahead of me, taking a route through South Dakota to visit family in Spearfish. I have moved 10 times in my 25 years. Seven of those moves were to different states. Half have been in my adulthood. I know what it takes to move – planning, packing, canceling, re-establishing, forwarding, loading, driving, unloading. I realized anew this year how poorly I handle logistics. I called it decision fatigue. I am overwhelmed by filing all the correct paperwork that establishes our uprooting and replanting in another city, another part of the country. This is why we bank, fix our car, order Internet, maintain cell phone contracts with large companies, I realized. Because eventually we will move and we will want to take as much with us as we can to cut down on the hand-wringing.

You think you're saving money for a moving truck, and others are willing to help puzzle all your belongings into a small truck and the bed of a pickup, saving you $200 that you have reallocated to white paint that will brighten a basement apartment that otherwise feels like someone else's house. Then you pursue residency in your new state, fearful that you will be pulled over and quizzed on the exact date and time you moved into your home to determine if you have elapsed the allowed 30 days to apply for a new drivers license and register your vehicle. Before you know it, you've bought paint and spent another $300 to become a Washingtonian.

Moving is an arduous process. You have to really want it. The internal rearranging required in a cross-country move is more familiar to me. I've practiced since I was 7 years old. Find your anchors: explore coffee shops, get a library card, call home, write it down.

We are far, far from home. But we're so happy. Far from home, all alone. But we're so happy. (Of monsters and men)



My dad drove me from point A to point B. We arrived safely. My mom helped me paint. We drove around enough to learn the main streets. Pullman is small, and everyone seems to support the university where Ben works. Shop windows, barns, and street signs root for WSU, where groups of freshmen wander the campus for orientation. Downtown has three coffee shops, each with their own vibe. We set aside our pride/souls to shop at Walmart in absence of Target. We prefer Safeway. For major shopping, we go to Idaho, where sales tax isn't 8 percent.

What other details will explain where we are? I listen to Pandora when I write, and the song that's playing at the moment is the same that inspired the name of a post I wrote about moving to Bowling Green. Everything changes – nothing changes. It's the flow of life.

We've been busy since we moved. If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw the mountain views and the trip home. I'm going to write about each of those soon.

I don't feel at home yet. I haven't developed a great routine and I feel a little lost. I assume it's because my books are still in boxes. It'll be sorted soon.

Great news:

We’re moving! To Washington!

Ben will join the outdoor recreation staff at Washington State University in Pullman, Wa., next month, and I’ll follow him a few weeks later.

Many of the people close to us know it was a choice between moving to Washington or moving home to Minneapolis. The choice was difficult, but, once we made it, it felt right.

Nearly three years ago, we vowed to be each other’s best friend - best friends with ambitions for big adventures climbing, hiking, and biking, building memories and growing together through shared difficulty and wonder.

So when it came down to it, we opted for the place where we imagine becoming better partners. In part, that meant choosing a place with great access to the kinds of ways we want to spend our time. More than that, though, we needed the freedom to choose how we spend our time. In Washington, Ben won't be gone every weekend, and I can attempt to work for myself, eliminating the two biggest barriers we've faced the last two years.

We’re thankful for friends (family, that’s you, too) who have stuck with us while we’ve lived far away for two years. We're thankful for new friends that have made Kentucky memorable - thankful for your support and love even while we front-loaded that our stay was temporary. We’re confident that, as we met new lifelong friends here, we’ll add to our circle in another state.

I recently reflected on a few older posts, remembering this is an adventure we’ve dreamed about for years. After all the weeks / weekends Ben traveled without me … after feeling the draw of wilder places – off we go!

Well, not quite yet. But it's time to prepare.

Life here

A robin perched on the roof across the driveway from my front door when I brought out some recycling, and I remembered how strange that felt last year, seeing robins in the winter. The daycare lady who loved birds always told us the robins were a sign of spring. I guess that's not true when you live south of North Dakota.

My word for the year is consistent. One of those habits I hope to hold onto more faithfully this year is writing, whether here or somewhere off the Internet. I purposely didn't start on the 1st because that feels like setting myself up for failure. I want to live a simple year, though it will hold big changes for us, and it feels most simple to focus on a handful of things where I rely on spurts of motivation.

Fittingly, I read a great bit of advice from a rock climber today, who said motivation is not the answer to accomplishing a goal. Establishing little habits more effectively moves you closer to where you want to go. It fell in line with something else I heard or read recently, though I don't remember where, that said setting goals isn't as good as developing processes that lead to your desired outcome. I said something about processes to my dad while we were home for Christmas and he said processes come easily to my sister and her husband – they seem to have a "system" in place for everything. My sister studied biochemistry – which is composed of systems and processes, he noted.

I wish I could blame my whims on being the artsier one of the two of us, but, as everything seems to, the thought led me back to my identity: Who do I say I am, who do I want to be? I'm talking descriptors here, not big fundamental definitions. A writer, a climber, a reader, a friend. Fun, easy-going, creative, skilled. Those kinds of things. And I figure I'm each of those in turn, and I know I don't have to be the same exact person every day, but I've noticed a lack of discipline to cultivate those interests or skills.

I can honestly say in 2014, I watched twice as many TV seasons than I read books. Yikes.

I spend a lot of time thinking in December and January. I'm quick to make light of resolutions, but I put a lot of stock in reflection and self-examination. I do year-round, but a new year offers that twitch of magic we miss when April or August roll around. I tried to draw out the holidays this year – still am, in fact. I still fall asleep looking at the lights on the Christmas tree. We're not ready to let go yet.

I feel lighter at the start of a year, as if when the ball drops, we cross an invisible barrier that shakes us free of some of our burdens. It's the magic. And part of it is that we're moving soon. That's what 2015 is for us – another move, another adventure. Who knows where we'll end up or what we'll do exactly, but it'll be a result of everything here and everything that wasn't here. The stuff we know now we don't want to live without. The people and the things – mostly the people, in my case – that help us live here.

I went in spurts last year, wishing graduation would come faster and feeling content to be here every day. But I've learned the danger of dreaming about the future (apart from it still takes the same time to get here) lies in its ability to persuade me that it must be better, and therefore the present most be bad. That's the world we live in – concepts exist only as long as they have an opposite to define them.

But maybe where we are is great simply because it's where we are. We love and play here, learning skills and tendencies we wouldn't find elsewhere. We live here – these years, this city, this too-small apartment. It doesn't look the same as it does elsewhere, but maybe that's the point.

She said my name with a country twang

Let me say first that moving is hard. It's been a couple of weeks already and we're completely moved in, but nothing prepares you for all the time you have in a day when you've unpacked every box and you're still looking for work (or, more accurately, waiting for the call back). One day I did four hours of yoga. And I've discovered I can do Sudoku. And I read a lot of news. None of these are bad, and I'll never have this kind of time every again, I'm sure. But it leaves me going to bed wondering why I even need sleep.  Anyway, I wanted to share some thoughts on moving to this new "city."

We drove 15 hours in one day then unloaded our Uhaul (graciously driven down by my parents) before calling it a night. Finally there is practical application for all the hours of road-tripping we've logged. It rained the next few days, but we did a lot of driving tours of the city and unpacked our entire 700-sq-foot apartment (which is a studio and is more of a duplex because we share a house with one other larger unit). We live downtown in a renovated house that is 106 years old. Our neighbors work at Western - same as Ben. There's a pizza place on the corner that we smell every night. We're waiting to try it. Bowling Green is small - its inhabitants highly varied. Downtown is small, but it does have a couple coffee shops, a breakfast place, several bars/restaurants, government buildings, a theater (not for movies), and a few consignment/boutique stores. The Daily News' office is there, too. 

It's charming. People read in the square over lunch and kids jump around in a fountain in the evenings. We run after the sun goes down and see some of the same people sitting on their porches. There are solid-colored brick buildings with colorful doors and lots of flowers. It's completely separate from the commercialized area of town with every chain restaurant you can think of and the mall which reminds me eerily of Roseville's in Minnesota - right down to the train. With the exception of Subway, which pretty much only opens for weekday lunch hours, I'm told. That's downtown between the candlestick maker and a clothing store. We found tattoed, fedora-wearing hipsters in a coffee shop that gave me a miel called the "Honey badger." It tasted like Spyhouse.

I've only just started taking pictures, but they're a great example of the fun surprise we get at sunset. From our apartment, the sun sinks right behind downtown, so anywhere we run or look orange, pink and purple dances in windows or behind church steeples. So...be charmed.