What I Love and What I Miss.
East Coast/West Coast showdown.
Yesterday I ran to the grocery store to pick up stuff for dinner. I filled the flimsy paper bag at self-checkout and seconds after picking it up the handles broke and the bag hit the floor, spilling out my groceries. The two self-checkout attendants watched me blank-faced as I scrambled to decant my floor groceries into a new bag. Nobody said a word or offered to help. “This would never happen in the south” I muttered under my breath.1
Here’s the thing, in Oregon people are perfectly friendly in a fresh, new world kind of way but they aren’t southern friendly. Every time I fly back East I connect through Charlotte because the second I walk into the airport I feel surrounded by familiarity. Southern accents everywhere, airport staff who call me honey, delicious humidity. It’s the best.
However. However. In the south, there are strings. The southern friendliness can be a front hiding all kinds of things: judgment, wariness, pity, contempt, misogyny, you name it. People are super friendly to your face but under it they might be trying to figure out who you are, who your people are, who you voted for, how to classify you. Mostly I don’t play into that kind of thing but it’s certainly there and I don’t miss it. But, I do miss a lot of things about Virginia and also love a lot of things about Oregon.
What I love about Oregon:
Mountains nay VOLCANOS. A glimpse of a snow-covered Mt Hood never fails to thrill me and I audibly gasped the first time I saw Mt Rainier (which, yes, is in Washington.) We have mountains in Virginia, of course, but they’re ancient, soft little mountains. Out here, we have actual damn stratovolcanos! All over the place! It’s exciting, honestly.
The forests are incredible. Douglas firs, ferns galore, waterfalls! It’s a magical Ewok village up in these woods. Mountain biking and hiking through it is unreal. And the coast! So beautiful and wild and dangerous. I love it.
Nobody out west cares who you are, who your “people” are, what you do for a living or where you went to college. I find the west coast to be a totally different vibe but the Pacific Northwest is even more so. Crunchier, less concerned with appearances.
It’s so casual here that I wear jeans to work and I still somehow feel overdressed. There’s just a laid-back feeling about all of it that I have really leaned into.
I still haven’t gotten over being close to a whole new set of places. Next month we are driving to Roslyn, WA which is where Northern Exposure was filmed. I mean, we can just DRIVE there. And we can drive to Bend, Seattle and Vancouver! Both of them! Last year we drove to Sacramento which took a while but still. We drove to California.
The winters are rainy and grey, true, but it never feels as cold here as it does back east because of the lack of humidity. And, oh my god, the summers here are glorious. For 3-4 months it’s dry and sunny and warm every single day and it cools down at night, which is a novelty.2
The strawberries here are next level and the wine ain’t bad either. Portland has some amazing restaurants but the best burger I’ve ever had is in Tillamook.
What I miss about Virginia:
Cicadas, lightning bugs, honeysuckle. These were always the markers of spring/summer for me. The sounds of cicadas as background noise, the first lightning bug flashes in June, the smell of honeysuckle as I brushed past it on the bike trails.3
People, of course. Obviously I miss my people and the sense of belonging I left behind. I wrote a little about homesickness recently, so I feel like I’ve already covered some of the existential feelings related to home.
I miss living in EST. You don’t realize how much control the Eastern Time has over almost everything until you leave it. I used to text with certain friends after dinner and now by the time I’ve eaten dinner they’re all in bed asleep. Losers. (J/K)
Thunderstorms. Big, crazy, thunder-and-lightning torrential downpour storms that blow through like a freight train. I miss the excitement of it. On the very rare occasion that we get thunder here I’m always amused by the online comments, like, “What was that thunder-like booming sound?”
Cardinals. My favorite birds - zipping across the singletrack, cheer-cheer-cheering at us to fill the feeder, just that flash of red or the more subtle brownish-red always pleased me. I’ve read that seeing a cardinal is a spiritual message, which feels about right.
Local mountain bike trails. This is a very specific thing but in Richmond there is a huge network of mountain bike trails right in the city. I could get in a full ride after work without having to load up my car and drive, minimum, 45 minutes to get to the trailhead. Portland is represented as bike-friendly but they do not mean mountain bikes.
Humidity. Okay, hear me out. I just love how plump and dewy it make my skin feel in the summer. I love the feeling of a full-body thaw when you come out of an overly air conditioned building and into the full heat and humidity of summer. Blissful. My joints are warm, my muscles are warm, it’s just all good. (The opposite is true in the winter: wet-cold is the fucking worst.)
Pimento cheese. Iced tea. Hanover tomatoes. The nachos at Little Nickel.
After I indignantly told this story to my husband I paused and said, “wait, do I sound like my mother?” He nodded and I huffed.
Though sometimes there are forest fires and that part is new to me and really sucks. You don’t get everything.
I do not miss brushing past the poison ivy and I definitely don’t miss mosquitos (which exist in OR, but nothing like in VA.)
I haven't seen lightning bugs in decades. I grew up in rural Ohio, and you would look out in the evening and the whole backyard would be sparkling. At least we still get crazy thunderstorms in Chicago.
Oh Honey. I feel you. When I moved from NYC to Philadelphia--even though it is "just down the road"--I felt a homesickness so strong that it knocked the wind out of me sometimes. And it was for the little things: The newsstand at Sixth and Greenwich. The Greek coffeeshop coffee. The clock at Grand Central. You know, stuff.