We’re hurtling across the continent in a loaded down Jetta, San Francisco a thousand miles in the rearview. In the middle, both geographically and figuratively. Life as we’ve known it for the past few years has stopped but the next phase hasn’t started yet. The last few days of watching the mountains, salt flats, deserts, and forests of the American West pass by have been a chance to reflect on what it means to leave.
We drove out of San Francisco in a prime moment. We had found our groove in the last year. Careers starting to boom. A close knit group of friends. Knowledge of the secret views of the city and hidden staircases, the dive bar gems, the best way to avoid the hills on a bicycle, the right 15 minute window to jump on the train to avoid the rush. Even the worst aspects of the city – the overcrowding, the expense, the erraticly insane and in-your-face homeless – had quieted down to a dull hum behind the intense vibration of all the things that make the place great. San Francisco had become not just our city, but the place we loved calling home.
And now we’ve left it. Maybe to return. Maybe not.
This isn’t the first time I’ve left a place before it felt like I was done. I lived in North Carolina for three years before going west. I had just hit my stride there too when a bit of post-gradschool transitional turmoil and a rum-fueled conversation with a friend had me packing up my car and driving towards California without much of a plan. By the time I hit Denver, it was ohshitohshitohshit whathaveIdone, realizing I had left something special behind for no clear reason.
I regretted the move immediately and loathed California, for no other reason than it wasn’t full of the people I had grown to love. I was angry at myself for not fully appreciating what I had going in North Carolina, a fool for believing the grass was greener.
But it worked out. The grass was pretty green.
Cat and I came together completely an unreservedly. My professional life opened up in a way that it wouldn’t have in almost any other place. We made new and wonderful friends without losing any of the old ones. I even found myself embracing the big city life, something I had believed antithetical to my self-styled (and admittedly ridiculous) rugged individualist persona. San Francisco shaped up to be another wonderful and irreplaceable phase of my life, all early regrets rendered null.
Now I’m going back the other way, headed east. This time with a wife, a boat waiting for us in the islands, and an open-ended adventure in front of us. We just pulled into Denver almost three years to the day after I last passed through – this time I’m not saying ohshitohshit. Once again I don’t know what I’m getting into, but I’m sure it will be beautiful.
“He had a big pile of driftwood stacked against the south wall of the house. It was whitened by the sun and sand-scoured by the wind and he would become fond of different pieces so that he would hate to burn them. But there was always more driftwood along the beach after the big storms and he found it was fun to burn even pieces he was fond of. He knew the sea would sculpt more, and on a cold night he would sit in the big chair in front of the fire, reading by the lamp that stood on the heavy plank table and look up while he was reading to hear the northwester blowing outside and the crashing of the surf and watch the great, bleached pieces of driftwood burning…He thought that it was probably wrong to burn it when he was so fond of it; but he felt no guilt about it.” – Ernest Hemingway -Â Islands in the Stream
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