Notes from the Other Side

on the rootlessness of moving and watching driftwood do it's thing

I’m sitting in my new-to-me office in my new-to-me rental in a new-to-me city in a new-to-me state. It’s overcast and the sky is textured with a spectrum of cloud cover; some so bright it makes the sky look white, all the way to heavy voluptuous grey. It’s spring in the Pacific Northwest and the flowers and trees are blooming. The earth is damp, but a breeze comes and fingernail sized pink petals detach from their bloom to twirl and spin ecstatically before reaching the ground where they stay and serve as reminders of their moment of flight. This act feels like snow flurries on a warm day and makes me wonder if this is where we got the idea for confetti from.

It’s incredibly soft and romantic here. Wet and lush. Alive and inviting without being overwhelming. Fecundity and decay in an overt symbiotic relationship everywhere you look (which is the earthy kind of sexy I most enjoy). And yet, I am having a hard time settling in. Leaving the mountain has been hard. But staying was harder. Between blizzards and wildfire, weekly multi-day power outages, lack of infrastructure to support people when this happens, and the heating up of public right-wing hostility, we’d been thinking about leaving since September. There’s so much to say about the last few months and the factors that led to this choice, but a succinct way to say it is that I could feel the simmer starting to boil. Being someone who makes a point to thread myself into the place I live, leaving is always a heartache; even when it’s clear it’s the right decision. But it’s especially hard when it’s not only the ache of leaving the town I was in, but the region I’ve lived in most of my life and have ancestral roots in. I’m still untangling the sequence of events and my feelings about them.

We don’t talk about the rootlessness of moving enough. We become the places we live. When we move, our roots are ripped from the soil they’ve learned to grow into and just dangle vulnerably in the wind until they find soil again and the shock wears off. The only mention, from those outside of my closest circle, of how destabilizing and fragile this process is are people parroting that “moving is one of the top five stressors in life” before changing the subject to interior decorating. Interior decorating is my secret if-I-wasn’t-doing-what-I-am-doing-I-would-be-doing-that job so I will happily match the conversational turn, but we are really doing ourselves a disservice by not acknowledging how very tender this process is.

I’ve found myself in suburbia. The house I live in is the sturdiest house I’ve ever lived in. It’s has heat and air, good windows, no mold, and plenty of space. I am incredibly fortunate to live here, and there is a beckoning towards softness and sweetness present in the neighborhood I’m in. But I can’t feel the wind when it blows. I can’t hear if the rain starts. If I’m inside I can control the temperature, which is an incredible blessing, but then I’m disconnected from the temperature it actually is. Homes like these are little islands of controlled comfort; on one hand I’m licking my wounds from the lack of infrastructure on the mountain and enjoying feeling safe, but the other hand feels too clean and longs to be back in the wild with the coyote howls and the wind chapping my face. There’s no right or wrong or good or bad here. I keep catching myself trying to make that so (“It’s good you get to feel comfortable after so much climate trauma! This is good!” or “It’s bad that I’m more disconnected from nature! This is bad!”). The truth is I am where I am and every place teaches us something; I’m just struggling to being open enough to receive the lessons just yet. And that’s just the place to let a yield happen. In the struggle. I’m struggling to root in. I’m struggling to feel held. I’m struggling with the identity shift that comes with moving.

Ecopsychologist Mary Gomes says of embracing a bioregional vision, “It involves a change in our sense of identity, so that we allow our surroundings to grow into us, to let the land reclaim us like ivy growing over an old house, or wildflowers pushing up through cracks in the pavement”. This is a value of mine I've been living into but hadn’t put words to yet. I breathed that mountain into me. I breathed WitchHouse (thankfully spared in the LA fires) into me before that. Before that, the LA River. They are all intrinsically a part of my being and shaped me cellularly in very distinct ways. I know that will happen with this place too, I long for the readiness to let this land claim me like I have let other lands claim me, but sense that it’s going to take me some time to get there.

I don’t know what point I’m making, if I’m making one at all. I only know I don’t want to travel this part all on my own.

Today I walked by the river. I live within the Deschutes River watershed by the mouth, and what once was, and what would still be, an estuary if not for the dam that creates the lake here. Because we’re here by the mouth, the river is wide and slow as it meets the lake and though I wanted fast rushing water to match my inner experience, I found myself on a boardwalk watching a piece of driftwood float slowly by. It was about 4 feet long with spindly branches erupting from it at odd angles. It had no symmetry to it and even its asymmetry just felt somehow out of place. I felt a mirror here. The driftwood made it’s way downstream in a predictable direction for a while. And then the wind picked up a bit, causing ripples to move on the surface of the water in a few different directions. I wondered how the wind would affect the driftwood’s path and assumed it would loose course or meander around in these differing directional ripples for a bit before finding it’s way again. But the driftwood slowed down considerably as it approached. Then it’s path was altered slightly, but it very gracefully moved through the ripples; not unaffected, but not thrown off or having to effort to stay the course. It eventually ended up in the same place it would have been had there been no wind. Why? Why wasn’t the driftwood taken by the water that was taken by the wind? Because of the gravity pulling it towards its destination. The Earth pulls the water of the river towards it, and towards lower elevation, along with the other beings in the river; the driftwood, the sediment, the fish and water birds if they let it. The wind rippled the surface of the water, this is what we can see. But it’s not all there is. Something under the depths of the water guided the driftwood towards the inevitable. How important to remember the unseen forces when we fear destabilization.

May we hold our loved ones close, even if they’re far away; and may we attune to the kinship offered from the land we’re in, especially when our hearts ache.

-Stevie J. Guiol