“But I ain’t a turnin’ back/To livin’ that old life no more”*
Posted on October 15, 2006 - Filed Under Uncategorized
*Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show. This is the song, the only song, which calms Maggie when she’s upset in the backseat of the car. I mean, she literally stops crying when she hears the opening fiddle and stays quiet throughout the entire song. Once, on the way back from St. Augustine, Erin and her parents had to play it four times just to keep the Pie from screaming her head off. We’re not quite sure why it has this effect but I am personally very pleased about; I would be very happy if my little girl grows up appreciating bluegrass.Â
We’re here! We finally made it. 2800 total miles. Roughly $260 in gas, so for you number freaks that works out to approximately 25 miles per gallon (assuming an average price of $2.25 a gallon). It was quite a trip with many and varied challenges, although we were able to finish it without having encountered any major problems and not having incurred any significant scrapes and bruises. Now on to the difficult tasks of finding a place to live, starting work, facing a winter in Idaho, and adjusting to the extremely different landscape (we will be posting pictures soon).
It’s too soon to say how we really feel about the area. Our initial feelings are that it is a great place to raise a family because of how kid friendly it is. There is very little crime here. The town has everything one really needs as far as the day to day necessities of life: grocery and drug stores, a few places to buy clothes, a small number of restuarants, and what seems to be a pretty friendly population. There’s no mistaking the fact that it is a small town and has all the features of such, which will undoubtedly present both frustrations and times of happiness.
Erin and I were talking last night about the adjustments we’re going to have to make. It seems that maybe living here will present the opportunity to learn what it means to appreciate nothingness. That might sound wierd. What I mean is that life in a normal town, one is able to have pretty much everything they might want without too much problem. Here, such access seems to be questionable at best. Adapting to living here means one of two things: you either drive to Twin Falls or Boise to get those things or you learn to live without them. We, of course, would like to live our lives in such a way that we adopt the latter of these options. Obviously, there’s a threshold we wouldn’t dip below. We’re not going to give up good food (but we’ll probably learn to cook more of it at home), nature (although we may learn to appreciate that the desert is also nature), entertainment (rather than movies, concerts, CDs, and walking around downtown, we will hopefully find and enjoy manifestations of that elusive concept of hobbies we have always sought but never come upon), or contact with ‘civilization’ (big cities offer a warped version of this…we hope to build personal friendships as a way of connecting with people). What does all of this boil down to? I think something closer to the simple life we seek. Underlying Erin and I’s personalities is a sense of anxiety, an attitude of ‘go, go, go’ and not slowing down to live life, to be in the moment. Living in an area where’s there’s ‘always something to do’ doesn’t facilitate this. It’s going to be quite a change. I hope we’re able to come out of it in four years being much more in contact with our individual and corporate essences; I believe the lack of such contact is the explanation for that underlying anxiety.
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Congrats on your arrival. Glad to know you are HOME. Hope you get settled without any problems the animals and Magggie adjust well!!
i am so glad you made it okay it will take time to adjust living in a small area will be really different it will give you time to appreciate and cherish what you have mainly each other the love you have for one another will help you get through i will pray that you find a place to live and jason your new job will go well for you love mom
Congrats on your arrival!
Robin, the boys and I went camping along the Oregon Trail into Wyoming. Not sure if you two are history buffs, but you “sit” right in the middle of Trail territory in Idaho. I wish we could have gone further, but maybe you 3 can pick up where we left off.
Check out Fort Hall, Shoshone Falls, Three Island Crossing, Craters of the Moon, and/or Fort Boise.
Here’s a site for the Idaho portion of the trail.
http://www.isu.edu/%7Etrinmich/00.map.id.html