Transcription
Why do you live where you live? Many people don’t seriously question this. They just accept that wherever they are is where they ended up, and they continue to grow where they were planted.
Others move for practical reasons, drifting on the tides of work, school, and family demands—the choice is made for them by others, and they roll with it.
And then there are shiftless scumbags like me, remote workers with no dependents, no tether to any particular place, and for us, every move is an existential decision. Who are you? Who do you want to be? What are your values, your goals? How do you want to live? Your location is the stage where it all plays out. It determines the range of your experience, what will and won’t be possible. There might be no choice more impactful than where you choose to call home.
Four years ago, I chose a desolate patch of land in the central Washington wilderness, because I thought I was done with humanity. I felt alienated from everything and wanted to escape into my own private world. I thought I would use the solitude to plunge deeper into my art, free from the distractions of society, and maybe eventually become part of the rural community, meet people with simpler lives, and build purer connections away from the chaos of modernity.
But after four years of grinding out an existence, building up this property from an empty patch of dust to a semi-functional homestead and attempting to start a life here, I’ve had to accept the truth…that shit ain’t happening. I explained at length in a previous video, but here’s the TLDR: it’s beautiful and peaceful out here, but it turns out beauty and peace aren’t enough for a fulfilling life. Turns out I still need novelty, excitement, and connection with likeminded people, which I was never quite able to find out here. I did some deep creative work and learned a lot of new skills and perspective, but the experience has run its course.
To quote another privileged dreamer who tried to escape society and lasted half as long as me: “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.” So, like Thoreau, I am scampering back to civilization in search of a richer life than this empty land can provide.
But WHERE? I’m far from wealthy, but I have a flexible life. So the choices for change were endless. Do I sell my homestead and build another one closer to town? Do I get a house IN town, but still stay rural? Or do I return to the CITY? But wait, zoom out—there are millions of towns and cities! Do I stay in Washington, the 4th most expensive state in America, and keep living life on hard mode? Do I even stay in AMERICA? Or do I flee this collapsing empire and all its daily atrocities and start a new life abroad?
I spent months agonizing over this. So much research. So many conversations, debates, so many pros and cons. But here’s what it boiled down to: the main reason I’m leaving the peace of my beautiful wilderness…is people. Connections. A sense of being rooted. So why wouldn’t I return to my roots?
Yes, the expat life is tempting. I would love to live like a king on my meager income in some tropical paradise, or lounge in cafes in some idyllic European city where everyone’s healthy and beautiful. But I know who I am. I know my tendency toward isolation and never really feeling like I belong, even in the places I grew up. Now cut me out of my root system, transplant me across the world to a foreign culture with a language barrier, and I’d end up even more isolated than I was HERE.
And yes, there’s a middle path, somewhere quiet and cheap that’s still close enough to visit my people…but I find that it doesn’t work like that. There is a profound difference between visiting a community and LIVING in it. Even an hour’s drive is enough to cut you off. When I moved to the Outpost, this was my plan. Spend most of my days alone in the wilderness, then drive over the mountains when I started to miss everyone, have some fun in the city, then return to my wild refuge. But it just doesn’t work.
I arrived in civilization feeling like a traveler, a tourist. I had no connection to the soul of the place. Fun city activities like eating out, going to a show, seeing a movie, they all felt foreign and uncomfortable, like obligatory stops on the tourist checklist that I was just eager to check off so I could relax. And the people too. There was a disconnection. It always felt good to meet up, catch up, but catching up is not the same as BEING IN their lives. Experiencing the week together, witnessing the same local events, being part of the same world. I believe it’s possible to MAINTAIN relationships over distance. But I’m not sure it’s possible to inhabit them.
There is a group that gets a lot of sneers. TOWNIES. People who never leave their hometown, never go out and explore beyond those boundaries, people who are content to stay rooted. There’s a common assumption that this is a wrong way to live, that everyone needs to break away from familiarity and go try new things and new places. And I do think there’s something to be said for exploring at least a little. If you literally never leave, how do you know what you like? What do you have to compare it to? Exploration brings perspective and teaches you who you are.
BUT. If you don’t find anything you love out there? If nothing transforms you or compels you to abandon what you know? I make a case for coming home. Here’s something people don’t like to admit: the value of ROOTS. Progressive American culture has no appreciation for roots. It places all its value on world travel, living abroad, moving to the big city, reinventing yourself. Your hometown is something to escape from. Your childhood friends are holding you back. You need to go somewhere else, meet new people, start a new and more fulfilling life.
But there’s a problem: TIME. Time is not replaceable. Unless you were a military kid or some other special circumstance, you probably grew up in a single region. You probably spent your formative years marinating in the spirit of that region. It shaped you in a thousand subtle ways. And you probably spent at least your first couple decades being part of its community. School friends, work friends, friends of friends, and family. You knew people and people knew you. You grew your roots and tangled them with everyone else’s. And it took a lot of TIME. For me, it was almost 40 years.
I traveled a lot, I saw the world, but I always lived in Cascadia, within a few hours of my origins, and even at my most anti-social and reclusive, I remained connected to those roots. Then I moved over the mountains, and experienced real isolation for the first time. Still in the same state, but a 4 and a half hour drive through harsh mountain passes is more than enough to sever those connections. I experienced having no one to reach out to. Not knowing anyone or being known by anyone. Starting over with nothing, like pitching a tent on a patch of empty land. And I realized how much I’d undervalued that root system.
No matter where I go, wilderness homestead or expat island paradise, I lose something I spent 40 years building. I lose a vast, complex tangle of interwoven connections. It can’t be transplanted. It can only be grown. Slowly. Over the course of an entire life. And that makes it irreplaceable.
I’m not saying my root system is rich and rewarding. I don’t have a crowd of close friends in the Pacific Northwest and I’ve never felt deeply connected to any particular community. But I do have a presence. The feeling of belonging that comes from all those years of living here. There are people I can reach out to, people who know me or know of me. If I want to do something, I can find people to do it with. Start a band, host a party, whatever it is, I’ll find collaborators among friends or friends of friends. And above all, my family is here. My best friends and closest confidants with whom I’ve shared a lifetime of joys and griefs. How can I value anything over this? Nicer weather, cheaper rent, better politics, healthier culture, sure, it’d be great to have grown my roots THERE. But I grew them here. So I’m staying here.
A few weeks ago, I packed up my meager belongings and vacated the Outpost. It was intensely bittersweet. Every rugged survival item I stuffed in a box felt like a loss, and saying goodbye to that version of myself hurt more than I expected. This is it. My last sunrise at the outpost. I am gonna miss this. Goodbye, outhouse. Goodbye, in-house. Time to move on. Every time I relocate, a piece of my identity splits off to be left behind. That goofy old uncle who spent his winters hauling a sled of groceries to his shack in the wilderness, where he lived alone with his cat and dealt with such simple concerns—staying warm, staying fed, staying sane. I will miss that guy.
But I’m excited to meet whoever I become next, in the small coastal city of Bellingham. My life here has barely started. The transition has been slow, and I made it even slower with the insane decision to build my own furniture from scratch. (More on that later!) But now that I finally have a desk where I can gather my thoughts and share them, I’m starting to visualize a life here, wandering these quiet streets and enjoying the simple pleasures of civilization. Good food. Friendly faces. Indoor plumbing. I’m back home, more or less, within a couple hours of all my family and most of my friends. It’ll take time to find my roots and graft myself back onto them, but it’s a warm, soft feeling to be part of humanity again. Or at least the outer edge of it.