So things feel different, much more polarizing. For one, we both have really good jobs. Laurel works with an amazing group of people at UW and they obviously value what she brings to the table. I work for a leading company in the outdoor industry, a company that has a vision I can believe in. My team is awesome and I will miss them as much as they miss me. We are also leaving a really core group of friends. Of course we left friends the last time but everyone was younger and more flexible. Coming and going seemed to be part of the normal cycle. This time our friends are firmly rooted with jobs, houses and children. This time it is more permanent. We are leaving them and the normal cycles may not bring us back together soon.
So why the hell are we leaving?! It comes to this; there are just too many people in our favorite places! Muir said it this way, “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity”. We are the tired, over-civilized people and need to find wildness. But so is everyone else and finding wildness among thousands of others is not wildness at all.
In 2010 we chose to live in a sleepy town near Seattle to be away from the hustle of the city. Now I can barely get across town in the afternoons without sitting in traffic. Trailheads near our house overflow, even on weekdays. Finding a spot to park at the local MTB trail can be difficult, not to mention the backup of cars just to get to the lot. And soon, I fear, I will find people in my favorite fishing spots.
Everyday Seattle gets a little less green.
So this time when we go in search of necessary wildness it's with a greater sense of loss for everything we are leaving behind.
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