How to say goodbye

All packed, a day early. Time for some reflection.

After 3 years in Cambridge/Boston, I still have a relatively narrow view of the place. During school terms Matthew and I rarely had time to get out of Cambridge--me with my legal aid work, Matthew with his job and internships, and both of us with our classes, always seemed to be keeping just half a step ahead of utter DOOM. When we did manage to get beyond Harvard Square we usually went far in (straight to downtown Boston) or far out (to the Berkshires, or of course Arizona, Illinois, Washington, Louisiana...). Partly this was because we were too busy to take long trips except during vacations where we were expected to visit loved ones; mostly it was because we didn't have a car. The only times I ventured out of the urban core of the city into the suburbs where normal life happens (and the population demographics aren't skewed towards the 18-to-25 age range) were visits to the homes of my clients. The result is that until yesterday I didn't know that the towns of Belmont and Arlington are immediately adjacent to Cambridge--to the northwest, in the opposite direction from downtown. And Matthew discovered 2 weeks ago that there is a large mall with a Costco just a couple miles fromm our house Why would I need to know such things? The suburban "fringe" (i.e. any town more than 2 miles from my house, to say nothing of the rest of New England) was invisible to me.

Here in our final days we've been doing a little something to remedy that. Today we're renting bikes and going for a trip on the Minuteman Trail, which will take us 11 miles through Arlington, Lexington and Bedford. (We're also going on one final shopping trip at H&M, the European answer to Gap, since they haven't made it to the West coast yet.)

And last week we took a trip with our friends Kyre and Fred (who we hope might soon become Seattle transplants as well!) up to a small reservoir in Vermont for a canoe-camping trip. As an overnight trip, it was the longest that we had ever spent in a New England state other than Massachusetts itself. There were loons on the lake and moose droppings in our camp. We were there just after the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, so despite the scattered clouds we had a profound experience with the night sky: taking a canoe out into the lake in total darkness, with only the flicker of our campfire through the trees to steer us ashore, we watched the Milky Way spill out then be mopped dry by an otherwise invisible cloud, and we gasped as every few minutes a bright contrail would draw a swift line across the sky. Sitting there in the darkness surrounded by water and stars brought to the surface the deep feelings of powerlessness and awe that led humans to create gods. It was one of the best camping experiences of my life.

Now that I'm more relaxed and have more time for recreation, I'm finding that the Boston area does have some great things going for it. So I'm kinda sad to see New England go. That said, it took nearly 4 hours on the road to get to this lake in Vermont--from Seattle, you can find experiences much closer that are even more wild. And our trip in the upcoming week will take us through 15 states, including "Big Sky Country" Montana. I'm mostly thankful to have had a real chance to say goodbye to the region and be leaving with a warm feeling about it.

Oh, and the fact that the weather is unseasonably pleasant right now helps quite a bit as well. :-)