Oddly enough, my love affair with the Pacific Northwest began at least fifteen years ago, when I saw a music video featuring images of the Olympic Peninsula. At the time I felt I had seen a glimpse of heaven - The misty peaks blanketed in pines, the pristine waterways, and the expanses of beach strewn with driftwood captured my imagination, and not long after I found myself on holiday there, via Seattle. Vancouver, Victoria Island, the San Juans and the entire coast of Washington proved that my feelings at a distance were right-on. The majestic and otherworldly Rainier, the winding climb to the lodge at Olympic National Park, the strange, captivating drapes of greenery in the Hoh rainforest, and the presence of something unexplainable and ancient, made the place very hard to leave behind.
I made my way back to the area several times, and each time the same feeling of resonance returned, the same sense that I was 'home'. Going back to the flat, linear rigidness of Chicago, and living amongst mini-malls, where the only 'mountains' were landfills, I felt spiritually sore.
I made plans to head West in my late twenties, and had one foot out the door to do so (actually looking at quotes on rental trucks) but that same week I met a truly different gentleman that stalled me in midair - He was living and working in Chicago, so, as they say 'the things we do for love...'
I left Chicago when I was 31, following my beau East rather than West, to take up his faculty position at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, a town I had never heard of before. Now, there are many great things to be said about Ann Arbor - The Royal Shakespeare Company performs here, and the Dalai Lama stops by every once in a while. Zingerman's Deli, the thrift circuit, the Farmer's Market, the Ann Arbor Film Festival and Art Fair, and the general liberal leanings of the town make it a sort of 'Little London', a bubble of culture and academia 'surrounded by reality'. On the flip-side, (not being a college football fan at all) I am tired of game day, of the football traffic and the blue and maize craze, and I won't miss trying to cross central campus by car when classes have just let out.
Working fairly seriously as an artist, and having put much effort into going professional in the Ann Arbor Art Fair, Artisan's Market and local art shows, I've seen much interest in my work, but I can't make it as an artist full time. I've felt the pinch that everyone else is feeling here in the economically thinned state of Michigan - It's a tough call to be an artist wherever you go, but in a move West I'm hoping to relocate to a community where the opportunities are not as limited, where the population of artists and art-supporters is larger, and where there are sure to be like-minded, green-thinking free spirits like me.
Moving to and living in a place is not like visiting there, of course, so I know that there will surely be days where I see Mount Hood or Mount Rainier looming off in the distance, and I'll have to sigh and say "Another day". But when that blazing, sunny day off comes, I won't have to hop a plane to get to the snow-capped peaks, and just a short hike on the highway will find my feet splashing in the chilly foam of the Pacific.
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