Jan 5, 2022·edited Jan 5, 2022Liked by Chris La Tray
"I wonder how other people reconcile feeling “stuck” somewhere? Is this you?"
YES! I moved to Washington DC for graduate school in 2009 (remember the heady days of the Great Recession?) I graduated college in 2008, moved home with my mother for a year, applied to graduate school like everyone else, moved to a city I could never afford even then, racked up six-figures of student loan debt, managed to finally get a decent job with the federal government in their largest cultural heritage institution, got married, bought a house in the suburbs, and have hated living here since the beginning.
This job I have, it is permanent and it is good work that I believe in. My coworkers are creative and smart, my managers particular but trusting. I could literally do this forever. But living here, especially the last few years, is becoming less and less tenable, spiritually. It is expensive, the traffic so bad that it snowed 8 inches and folks (even the Senator!) were stuck on the road for more than 24 hours, and the vibe...well the vibe has never been that good, but it's even worse now.
Over the holidays I went back to Michigan, where my husband and I are from and where our families mostly still live. It was cold and it was dark and it was quiet and it was so beautiful. My husband and I have a tradition when we drive home for the holidays that we spend a night just the two of us in the city we met, where we went to college. It is easily the most romantic thing we do. Every time we stay an extra night because it is one of those places where our souls clicks into place and we don't want that feeling to end. This trip was the first time that moving back home, to this city specifically, felt incredibly urgent. That *not* living there was wasting the most important parts of my life: my happiness, my family, a sense of peace and belonging I have never felt in DC.
I resent that at 22 I was made to feel that staying home was the wrong choice. That people like me moved to places like DC because we think we matter, that places like this are meant for people like me. I don't want to be that person anymore. I want to go home.
It's funny, I mull over this a lot specifically because I lived in other places for 20 years and intentionally made a move back home. A lot of people around me have expressed stuckness feelings over the last couple years because it's hard to get away, but I feel fortunate in knowing that I *chose* to come back here.
It is getting increasingly hard in Whitefish, though it's long been a place where people with means earned elsewhere buy houses sight unseen. What I hold onto is the knowledge that people have been trying to run away and find something better for thousands of years. There's a niggling part of my mind that keeps dragging me to the less populated parts of eastern Montana recently, reminding me of its beauties and open space, but what happens when the planet hits 10 billion people, or 30? This is where I really try digging into "there is no way out but through, and together" because time will come when running away to live in a cabin in the woods isn't an option for anyone. I want to try to help understand what we're running away *from* and how to make it better.
As you know, I've been bitching (probably too often) about how Livingston has morphed from a town of interesting artists, hunters, and tradesmen into a bougie suburb of Bozeman full of rich retirees. But I own this house, and where would I go? Where would we go? is the conversation I have the most often here now.
But on the other hand we have Himself's cabin on the edge of Emigrant peak up the end of that dead end road. I've got neighbors like Hippie Mike 2 doors down who helps out with odd jobs and who showed up at my door yesterday, so thrilled to share a 5lb chunk of the elk he got last weekend. And there's the Parade of Tiny Children from the day care around the corner, who crack me up a couple of times a week. So here we are.
We moved from my hometown area of Sonoma County, surrounded by vineyards, where I had always felt at home, but it was no longer at the bucolic place I had grown up. A county below us, Marin county, has always been known for wealthy white yoga hippies. A lot of them had moved north to Sonoma County, and it had become a real place of haves and have nots. Wealthy white folks in giant double-cab pickup trucks and horse trailers, and struggling Hispanic service workers. Private schools are now “country day schools” and wine clubs and whiteness rules. We left there and moved east— a shocker of a move for a Californian. Haven’t we been told always to go west?
We chose this foothills town in the Sierra because of the Yuba river and proximity to snow/Tahoe/mountain life. Home prices were dirt cheap. We sold our tiny home and bought some thing four times the size for less money up here. It was an old Victorian and we spent 2020 fixing it up and making it warm and livable with insulation and double paned windows. It’s been kind of a dream, although this is heavy Trump country here — or was.
Covid transplants turned this county blue. A high cost of living in California and the ability to work from home has turned lots of places blue as Californians head east and south. That’s not a bad thing for the country. Our money has not necessarily helped the housing industry elsewhere. Home prices elsewhere are comparatively low and we have money, often cash, to spend. I’m sorry for that.
We bought into a small town of 12,000 people, that has grown by 2000 people in the last year and a half as people fled the Bay Area. It’s noticeable in that amount of time, harder to park downtown, a little more traffic, new stop signs. That’s a pretty significant jump in population. It’s all part of the Covid trend.
Funny, we bought that little house in Sonoma county during the foreclosure/recession of 2009 to 2011. They were giving houses away practically at that time. As both divorced, coparenting five kids, one in college, and lots of debt, we couldn’t get a loan, but we scraped enough together (cashed in life insurance and 401ks) to buy that little house for $53,000. The bank was happy to give it to us (Deutschebank, of all banks, lol). And we were able to sell that for $370,000 by 2020. Nuts. But that’s California real estate.
Now we’re living on his Social Security and my writing income, in a small town in the foothills, feeding the birds and the squirrels and hearing rumors of bears and mountain lions. I’m listening to the snow melt all night, every night, since Snowmageddon between Christmas and New Year’s. Home is a new place now. I’m not sure I have a point. Moving east, toward the rising Sun, has felt like the right thing. Maybe we were too far west, almost falling off the continent. Maybe we have something to cling to now. #deepthoughts
I have Euro and Asian ancestry, and I have never felt at home anywhere. Right now, I'm stuck--can you call it stuck if we voluntarily moved here 7 years ago?--in a rural area north of Santa Fe, NM. I'd lived in San Francisco and Oakland/Berkeley all my life and when my husband proposed it, I said, "Sure, I'll try it."
I love the peace and quiet, but I have yet to make any close friends--a known thing amidst the old families here. The house is too much of a "before" and we don't have the funds for an "after". I miss the ocean and good Asian food. I think a rural home is not a good choice for our downslope years. I want this, but next to a diverse city, and I know I sound so spoiled for saying that.
You've reminded me of how many plans I'd made for 2020. Several health issues were resolving and I was so excited to jump into things again. I try not to think about it.
We just bought a house in a place where my soul feels at home unlike any other place I've been. We've been going there for 20+ years and looking for a place there for half that time. Our thought was that we would rent it out until our kids get out of school (because we love their school here at home), but Covid/Trump has revealed some stuff about home that makes it feel less and less like home, despite the work we've done to really root ourselves here.
We don't know what to do, but I find myself in the position of being on both (all?) sides of your question: part of the people pushing up pricing in our favorite place + feeling stuck here largely because of jobs and affordability + having a hard time reconciling my love for two wildly different places. First world problems, to be sure.
I especially loved and related to this bit: "I realize my heart is near to bursting from the beauty of it all and the gratitude I have that I get to live here." Thanks for the reminder.
My feeling stuck had manifested in rage. My therapist tells me to look deeper. But it’s the system, capitalism particularly, that enrages me. The housing market once again only works for those with great means. Living in my hometown for the past 13 years, it’s changed a lot, and it’s become a community of retired out-of-staters and no one of working age so all the jobs that are open here pay shit wages.
I've pondered the idea of being stuck in a place. I’m closing in on twenty years of being in the same town, a marvel to me. My childhood was as an Air Force kiddo, moving every three to four years. I cherish the idea that I can drive by the hospital my children were born in, that they’ll have the novelty of it being mundane when I had to do an extra trek to the hospital where I was born.
I realized that I kept fighting my childhood conditioning, with pangs of restlessness pangs every three to four years. It was like clockwork. But, when I was younger, I desperately wanted to grow roots in a town. I did everything traditional to drive those roots deeper – marriage, kids, establishing a reputation without real intent but with real-world consequences. People know me from writing, but they also know me coming into the same restaurant to get menudo and the same bakery to get bolillos. Both are valuable, but both still seem frightening. Still.
I had an interview with an artist, years back, that I think about now and then. His gallery was across the street from his house, whimsically decorated, with his studio almost as a treehouse in his backyard. Everything that you’d want an artist to have, including his rebellion of building a window to peer downtown and have it covered with drywall when the inspector came by. I asked him the same question people had asked me for years, especially right out of college, why hadn’t you moved to the big cities? He had a ready answer, “I’m happy to be a big fish in a small pond.”
It made sense, but I didn’t like it.
Now, I think about how one can outgrow a place, at least for a time. So, it’s not stuck as much as outgrown, like a plant in a dozen of my pots around my house. I know those roots I buried have me now; the gift of a garden is what I’m trying to give to my children’s childhoods, for better or worse.
I would like to know where your hole in the wall restaurant is located?
I relocated from Iowa ,almost 18 years ago.
I still cannot get over the awe and beauty of Montana.
I hike a lot of trails here in Missoula, and the beauty of being " in" Missoula, but up in the Mountains with the calm, the quiet, the vistas, is beyond putting into words what it does for my heart and soul.
Yes, Missoula has changed. The housing and people here are a determent to the Missoula I fell in love with. The new people have changed the feel and vibe of Missoula and Montana.
Me, I still wouldn't change where I am for the world.
My Montana born and bred husband, sometimes does not see the beauty, to him, ho hum, Montana.
Over the years, he is seeing the beauty again, because I don't stop talking about it. Lol!
My Illinois daughter in law, told me that they went to Colorado for vacation this summer and her highlight was being in the mountains on a trail.
Lightbulb moment, I live in the Rockies, and I climb a lot of trails in the Rockies. I am so blessed.
Maybe ideally, Missoula is not what it was, even 18 years ago, but we have the views, the mountains and a wonderful playground to explore.
Well, the redwood trees have been here way longer than I and I've lived by the Russian River for almost fifty years. I often wonder what they think about the changes.
I was 99% signed up for the Buffalo Ranch seminar... then I drove to Yellowstone/Lamar over Christmas. The drive home was brutal, a whiteout for nearly 100 miles. Not sure I can put myself through that again so soon. Let us know when you do something closer to Missoula/the Bitterroot.
I wish we heard owls here. We do see a lot of deer, the occasional coyote, a bear in the yard once in a while. I wouldn’t trade this spot for anything.
Bozeman has changed immensely in the years since I moved here 1979. More so I the last three years. Yes, the usual, different values, traffic, affordable housing, and increased class division.
Also, it has diverse restaurants, new cultural institutions, art, a spiffy new American Hall. Feel like we have a Vince to help mold, in our own way, the community we want. You do that Chris, every day. Thanks for your joy. And sorrow.
The Lamar Valley is my old neighborhood. I lived beyond the plowed road outside Cooke City in the early '80's, back when the Lamar was the least-traveled part of Yellowstone. My husband and I got married in the little log chapel between Cooke and Silvergate 39 years ago last month. I cherish our memories of skiing in the backcountry during those long winters, the solitude and spectacular scenery, the wildlife. Of course, that area has changed in four decades. One reason we can't go home again is that it doesn't exist anymore! We've been fortunate to live and work on beautiful, remote ranches in Montana and Idaho for the last 35 years. Now that we've retired, I hope we will always have access to trails and the quiet; they restore my soul. What a privilege! Enjoy your time in the Lamar next month :-)
I was raised in a suburb of NYC in Bergen Co., New Jersey. The community in which we lived was quite beautiful. There were trees and shrubs and flowers of every description that decorated every street. And, my Dad created an oasis of joy on the little plot that was ours. A maple, a dogwood, a hawthorn, azaleas, rhododendrons, a grove of cherry trees, summer vegetables, roses, snap dragons, zinnias, asters, tulips, daffodils. All of this and located on a dead end street. And, at the end of the street, a large tract of forested acreage bordered by a park complete with a baseball diamond and a basketball court. It was a place I never wanted to leave. But. Things change. When I was 12 my Dad ‘s big, beautiful heart failed him and he passed suddenly. My Mom remarried two years later and we moved on, first to another New Jersey suburb, and then to Florida from which the first day of arrival I was planning my escape.
I am so very grateful for the childhood with which I was blessed and as an adult have endeavored to recreate the beauty that was my gift. New Hampshire has proven to be the perfect place to do that.
"I wonder how other people reconcile feeling “stuck” somewhere? Is this you?"
YES! I moved to Washington DC for graduate school in 2009 (remember the heady days of the Great Recession?) I graduated college in 2008, moved home with my mother for a year, applied to graduate school like everyone else, moved to a city I could never afford even then, racked up six-figures of student loan debt, managed to finally get a decent job with the federal government in their largest cultural heritage institution, got married, bought a house in the suburbs, and have hated living here since the beginning.
This job I have, it is permanent and it is good work that I believe in. My coworkers are creative and smart, my managers particular but trusting. I could literally do this forever. But living here, especially the last few years, is becoming less and less tenable, spiritually. It is expensive, the traffic so bad that it snowed 8 inches and folks (even the Senator!) were stuck on the road for more than 24 hours, and the vibe...well the vibe has never been that good, but it's even worse now.
Over the holidays I went back to Michigan, where my husband and I are from and where our families mostly still live. It was cold and it was dark and it was quiet and it was so beautiful. My husband and I have a tradition when we drive home for the holidays that we spend a night just the two of us in the city we met, where we went to college. It is easily the most romantic thing we do. Every time we stay an extra night because it is one of those places where our souls clicks into place and we don't want that feeling to end. This trip was the first time that moving back home, to this city specifically, felt incredibly urgent. That *not* living there was wasting the most important parts of my life: my happiness, my family, a sense of peace and belonging I have never felt in DC.
I resent that at 22 I was made to feel that staying home was the wrong choice. That people like me moved to places like DC because we think we matter, that places like this are meant for people like me. I don't want to be that person anymore. I want to go home.
It's funny, I mull over this a lot specifically because I lived in other places for 20 years and intentionally made a move back home. A lot of people around me have expressed stuckness feelings over the last couple years because it's hard to get away, but I feel fortunate in knowing that I *chose* to come back here.
It is getting increasingly hard in Whitefish, though it's long been a place where people with means earned elsewhere buy houses sight unseen. What I hold onto is the knowledge that people have been trying to run away and find something better for thousands of years. There's a niggling part of my mind that keeps dragging me to the less populated parts of eastern Montana recently, reminding me of its beauties and open space, but what happens when the planet hits 10 billion people, or 30? This is where I really try digging into "there is no way out but through, and together" because time will come when running away to live in a cabin in the woods isn't an option for anyone. I want to try to help understand what we're running away *from* and how to make it better.
As you know, I've been bitching (probably too often) about how Livingston has morphed from a town of interesting artists, hunters, and tradesmen into a bougie suburb of Bozeman full of rich retirees. But I own this house, and where would I go? Where would we go? is the conversation I have the most often here now.
But on the other hand we have Himself's cabin on the edge of Emigrant peak up the end of that dead end road. I've got neighbors like Hippie Mike 2 doors down who helps out with odd jobs and who showed up at my door yesterday, so thrilled to share a 5lb chunk of the elk he got last weekend. And there's the Parade of Tiny Children from the day care around the corner, who crack me up a couple of times a week. So here we are.
We moved from my hometown area of Sonoma County, surrounded by vineyards, where I had always felt at home, but it was no longer at the bucolic place I had grown up. A county below us, Marin county, has always been known for wealthy white yoga hippies. A lot of them had moved north to Sonoma County, and it had become a real place of haves and have nots. Wealthy white folks in giant double-cab pickup trucks and horse trailers, and struggling Hispanic service workers. Private schools are now “country day schools” and wine clubs and whiteness rules. We left there and moved east— a shocker of a move for a Californian. Haven’t we been told always to go west?
We chose this foothills town in the Sierra because of the Yuba river and proximity to snow/Tahoe/mountain life. Home prices were dirt cheap. We sold our tiny home and bought some thing four times the size for less money up here. It was an old Victorian and we spent 2020 fixing it up and making it warm and livable with insulation and double paned windows. It’s been kind of a dream, although this is heavy Trump country here — or was.
Covid transplants turned this county blue. A high cost of living in California and the ability to work from home has turned lots of places blue as Californians head east and south. That’s not a bad thing for the country. Our money has not necessarily helped the housing industry elsewhere. Home prices elsewhere are comparatively low and we have money, often cash, to spend. I’m sorry for that.
We bought into a small town of 12,000 people, that has grown by 2000 people in the last year and a half as people fled the Bay Area. It’s noticeable in that amount of time, harder to park downtown, a little more traffic, new stop signs. That’s a pretty significant jump in population. It’s all part of the Covid trend.
Funny, we bought that little house in Sonoma county during the foreclosure/recession of 2009 to 2011. They were giving houses away practically at that time. As both divorced, coparenting five kids, one in college, and lots of debt, we couldn’t get a loan, but we scraped enough together (cashed in life insurance and 401ks) to buy that little house for $53,000. The bank was happy to give it to us (Deutschebank, of all banks, lol). And we were able to sell that for $370,000 by 2020. Nuts. But that’s California real estate.
Now we’re living on his Social Security and my writing income, in a small town in the foothills, feeding the birds and the squirrels and hearing rumors of bears and mountain lions. I’m listening to the snow melt all night, every night, since Snowmageddon between Christmas and New Year’s. Home is a new place now. I’m not sure I have a point. Moving east, toward the rising Sun, has felt like the right thing. Maybe we were too far west, almost falling off the continent. Maybe we have something to cling to now. #deepthoughts
I have Euro and Asian ancestry, and I have never felt at home anywhere. Right now, I'm stuck--can you call it stuck if we voluntarily moved here 7 years ago?--in a rural area north of Santa Fe, NM. I'd lived in San Francisco and Oakland/Berkeley all my life and when my husband proposed it, I said, "Sure, I'll try it."
I love the peace and quiet, but I have yet to make any close friends--a known thing amidst the old families here. The house is too much of a "before" and we don't have the funds for an "after". I miss the ocean and good Asian food. I think a rural home is not a good choice for our downslope years. I want this, but next to a diverse city, and I know I sound so spoiled for saying that.
You've reminded me of how many plans I'd made for 2020. Several health issues were resolving and I was so excited to jump into things again. I try not to think about it.
We just bought a house in a place where my soul feels at home unlike any other place I've been. We've been going there for 20+ years and looking for a place there for half that time. Our thought was that we would rent it out until our kids get out of school (because we love their school here at home), but Covid/Trump has revealed some stuff about home that makes it feel less and less like home, despite the work we've done to really root ourselves here.
We don't know what to do, but I find myself in the position of being on both (all?) sides of your question: part of the people pushing up pricing in our favorite place + feeling stuck here largely because of jobs and affordability + having a hard time reconciling my love for two wildly different places. First world problems, to be sure.
I especially loved and related to this bit: "I realize my heart is near to bursting from the beauty of it all and the gratitude I have that I get to live here." Thanks for the reminder.
My feeling stuck had manifested in rage. My therapist tells me to look deeper. But it’s the system, capitalism particularly, that enrages me. The housing market once again only works for those with great means. Living in my hometown for the past 13 years, it’s changed a lot, and it’s become a community of retired out-of-staters and no one of working age so all the jobs that are open here pay shit wages.
I've pondered the idea of being stuck in a place. I’m closing in on twenty years of being in the same town, a marvel to me. My childhood was as an Air Force kiddo, moving every three to four years. I cherish the idea that I can drive by the hospital my children were born in, that they’ll have the novelty of it being mundane when I had to do an extra trek to the hospital where I was born.
I realized that I kept fighting my childhood conditioning, with pangs of restlessness pangs every three to four years. It was like clockwork. But, when I was younger, I desperately wanted to grow roots in a town. I did everything traditional to drive those roots deeper – marriage, kids, establishing a reputation without real intent but with real-world consequences. People know me from writing, but they also know me coming into the same restaurant to get menudo and the same bakery to get bolillos. Both are valuable, but both still seem frightening. Still.
I had an interview with an artist, years back, that I think about now and then. His gallery was across the street from his house, whimsically decorated, with his studio almost as a treehouse in his backyard. Everything that you’d want an artist to have, including his rebellion of building a window to peer downtown and have it covered with drywall when the inspector came by. I asked him the same question people had asked me for years, especially right out of college, why hadn’t you moved to the big cities? He had a ready answer, “I’m happy to be a big fish in a small pond.”
It made sense, but I didn’t like it.
Now, I think about how one can outgrow a place, at least for a time. So, it’s not stuck as much as outgrown, like a plant in a dozen of my pots around my house. I know those roots I buried have me now; the gift of a garden is what I’m trying to give to my children’s childhoods, for better or worse.
I’ll tend to my branches and leaves in time.
Chris
I would like to know where your hole in the wall restaurant is located?
I relocated from Iowa ,almost 18 years ago.
I still cannot get over the awe and beauty of Montana.
I hike a lot of trails here in Missoula, and the beauty of being " in" Missoula, but up in the Mountains with the calm, the quiet, the vistas, is beyond putting into words what it does for my heart and soul.
Yes, Missoula has changed. The housing and people here are a determent to the Missoula I fell in love with. The new people have changed the feel and vibe of Missoula and Montana.
Me, I still wouldn't change where I am for the world.
My Montana born and bred husband, sometimes does not see the beauty, to him, ho hum, Montana.
Over the years, he is seeing the beauty again, because I don't stop talking about it. Lol!
My Illinois daughter in law, told me that they went to Colorado for vacation this summer and her highlight was being in the mountains on a trail.
Lightbulb moment, I live in the Rockies, and I climb a lot of trails in the Rockies. I am so blessed.
Maybe ideally, Missoula is not what it was, even 18 years ago, but we have the views, the mountains and a wonderful playground to explore.
Enough for me.
Well, the redwood trees have been here way longer than I and I've lived by the Russian River for almost fifty years. I often wonder what they think about the changes.
I was 99% signed up for the Buffalo Ranch seminar... then I drove to Yellowstone/Lamar over Christmas. The drive home was brutal, a whiteout for nearly 100 miles. Not sure I can put myself through that again so soon. Let us know when you do something closer to Missoula/the Bitterroot.
I wish we heard owls here. We do see a lot of deer, the occasional coyote, a bear in the yard once in a while. I wouldn’t trade this spot for anything.
It is funny how many people fall in love with a place, then move there in droves, destroying what makes it beautiful.
Bozeman has changed immensely in the years since I moved here 1979. More so I the last three years. Yes, the usual, different values, traffic, affordable housing, and increased class division.
Also, it has diverse restaurants, new cultural institutions, art, a spiffy new American Hall. Feel like we have a Vince to help mold, in our own way, the community we want. You do that Chris, every day. Thanks for your joy. And sorrow.
The Lamar Valley is my old neighborhood. I lived beyond the plowed road outside Cooke City in the early '80's, back when the Lamar was the least-traveled part of Yellowstone. My husband and I got married in the little log chapel between Cooke and Silvergate 39 years ago last month. I cherish our memories of skiing in the backcountry during those long winters, the solitude and spectacular scenery, the wildlife. Of course, that area has changed in four decades. One reason we can't go home again is that it doesn't exist anymore! We've been fortunate to live and work on beautiful, remote ranches in Montana and Idaho for the last 35 years. Now that we've retired, I hope we will always have access to trails and the quiet; they restore my soul. What a privilege! Enjoy your time in the Lamar next month :-)
Hi Chris,
I was raised in a suburb of NYC in Bergen Co., New Jersey. The community in which we lived was quite beautiful. There were trees and shrubs and flowers of every description that decorated every street. And, my Dad created an oasis of joy on the little plot that was ours. A maple, a dogwood, a hawthorn, azaleas, rhododendrons, a grove of cherry trees, summer vegetables, roses, snap dragons, zinnias, asters, tulips, daffodils. All of this and located on a dead end street. And, at the end of the street, a large tract of forested acreage bordered by a park complete with a baseball diamond and a basketball court. It was a place I never wanted to leave. But. Things change. When I was 12 my Dad ‘s big, beautiful heart failed him and he passed suddenly. My Mom remarried two years later and we moved on, first to another New Jersey suburb, and then to Florida from which the first day of arrival I was planning my escape.
I am so very grateful for the childhood with which I was blessed and as an adult have endeavored to recreate the beauty that was my gift. New Hampshire has proven to be the perfect place to do that.
Sincerely,
Melissa