place

In recent days, I’ve begun thinking about what it would mean to live in Kentucky full-time, one of several possible eventualities for me and J and one that I’ve warmed to over the last six or eight months. I think about this most often as I wander through the woods behind our house here. When I’m out there, amidst the auburn leaves, it feels vaguely like the Vermont I came to love while a student at Middlebury. Modest rolling mountains and proud maples. Dogs run free and life feels somehow quieter. But then, in so many other ways, it’s just not Vermont. Bernie Sanders isn’t senator; there aren’t a half dozen yoga studios in spitting distance; there isn’t even a grocery store in town. The accents are thick and the verbs spasmodic.

I’ve always thought that in the realm of life’s major decisions, geography mattered most. Living on the east coast for more than a decade counted heavily in some equation of myself. But, as with most things, this began to shift in my late twenties and now it feels phenomenally less important. The cracks in the east coast allure began in North Carolina. I came to love the South, its easier ways, its kindness, its patience. A trip to Columbia, Missouri several years ago revealed a different midwest of hip college towns and affordable living. Summer visits to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula have been both restoration and revelation. And now Kentucky.

It seems like geography, for me, has come to be about a certain feeling. Because surely in a list of pros and cons, Kentucky is never going to win. It’s poor; its public schools stink; it's overwhelmingly conservative; it's unhealthy; it's powered by coal; it’s far from the friends that I love. But when I’m here, I’m calmer. I’m slower. I’m not as nervous or as worried.

That has to count for something in my latest equation of self.