We Almost Moved Away for a Year

Living on Orcas Island has been magical, but something I’ve begun to sorely miss every winter is light. Sunshine isn’t a big deal until you go about 9 or 10 half-years without it. This winter has been amazing overall because the annual multi-month permablanket hasn’t set in yet. That’s quite a feat, considering it’s January 13th.

Last year around this time I was itching to reclaim light in my life, and my husband’s late-January bicycling accident and resulting neural recovery took us on a journey we would never have expected.

Just before summer, when several months had elapsed after the accident and my husband was able to think in bigger terms, we started to consider a “try” at returning to our roots along the Central Coast of California. A lot of factors went into it – year-round sun means daily as well as all-day outside activity, living on the mainland means close proximity to amenities and medical attention, living in California means visiting relatives often and even flying much more quickly to the ones afar, going to a mainland school means seeing how other junior high schools do education, and being in mainland America means going new places every day, every weekend, and every break.

I decided I needed to go there and feel it out. I needed to walk around several towns. I needed to look in person at areas we had been perusing online. Mike felt strong enough to come along, and I scheduled tours with principals at four different schools.

Many options felt very promising, but my gut wasn’t revealing a definitive yes or no and neither was Mike’s. We went around and around. Should we try a year in California or choose to travel more in the winter months? I thought the latter was a better, gentler, more predictable choice given his accident and recovery. But my husband, perhaps in his expanded state of neural plasticity, made the ultimate decision. Unbeknownst to me, he secured a place in San Luis Obispo while I was in a women’s bible study. I found out about it afterward when he called me while I was walking to the car. I think he did it in kindness for me.

San Luis is a lovely big town/small city close to the coast with year-round sunshine, beautiful nature, wonderful schools, and all the amenities you could need. We prepared for a year away from our home on Orcas. I enrolled our son in San Luis Obispo’s Laguna Middle School – 400 kids per class instead of the 15 he would have here at OCS, and we would arrive mere days before it began in the fall.

As we made all the necessary arrangements leading up to our final day here, my husband continued to improve to the point that the Orcas Island Cross Country season loomed, beckoning his return. He loves being a coach, and we weren’t sure how long it would take before he could coach again after his accident. When it seemed like he might be able to, we altered our plans. He would stay here and coach while our older son continued working at the market, and our younger son and I would drive to California to start school on time. My husband would accompany our son to start his freshman year in college and later meet us in SLO once the Cross Country season came to a close in early November.

We began the move together. I packed the car and drove down with our older son. Mike and our younger son flew there to meet us. We spent a week together introducing our kids to beautiful beaches, a day of boogie boarding small waves near the Cayucos pier, and a day of rollercoastering at Six Flags Magic Mountain (sans Mike, of course!). Then Mike and our older son flew home so Mike could start coaching and our son could finish out his summer job.

That left the two of us in San Luis (and the dog). I love travel, change, and adventure. While I spent my days acquiring things like chairs, dishes, and sheets, our younger son started school in a place he never wanted to be. He loves Orcas, his friends, his class, his town, the island, and this nature. He is a sentimental person who loves meaning, memories, tradition, and home. Picking up and leaving all of it for a “try” at California life did not appeal to him one iota. I knew it would be difficult to start all over at a school of 800, but I figured when he got home each afternoon, we would take off to explore the sights of the Central Coast – Morro Rock and Morro Strand Beach, the dunes, tidepooling and searching for moonstones in Cambria, perhaps more boogie boarding in Cayucos, and farther jaunts on weekends to places like Yosemite, Venice Beach, and Big Sur.

That’s not how it played out. Every day after he walked home from school, he went in his new room, closed the door, and processed everything that was happening, from being a small fish in a giant bowl at school to not knowing if we would ultimately choose to stay in California after the experimental year. I anxiously awaited his return every day, only to become part of a very understandable working-through-sadness-and-angst session until dinnertime.

Two weeks into our grand experiment, so many things had already made themselves clear. If we were going to be anywhere in California, San Luis wasn’t the right place. Not because of it but because of us. We loved the tiny little town of Cambria that’s 30 miles north of San Luis and a world away in terms of peacefulness and nature. It is the mainland equivalent of Orcas Island, and the town I grew up in. When we were considering moving from Santa Barbara 11 years ago, we were deciding between Cambria and Orcas. Think of it this way if you’ve never been in that neck of the woods: if Cambria is the Orcas equivalent in size and feel (beauty-wise), San Luis Obispo is the Mt Vernon equivalent in size and feel (town life). We chose San Luis as a middle-ground between nature and schools. While San Luis has great schools on US News and World Report and the teachers we met in real life were wonderful and caring, it was overwhelmingly apparent to me that if we were going to change our lives for a year or possibly more, it’s important to love where you step out of your house. We are active people who love to step out of our house and be immediately immersed in a natural environment, not have to drive to get there. While San Luis is beautiful for a small city of 50,000, and it was great to have a Costco, Trader Joe’s, and Home Depot right down the street after 11 years of all-day ferrying to such places, we have been spoiled by places like Cambria and Orcas. I quickly began asking myself the purpose of becoming connected to a school and community that we may not choose to remain in. But had we chosen Cambria for our experimental year, we may have been tempted in the process to sell our house here, and we didn’t want to go down that road just yet.

Another biggie hung over my head regarding connection. After the first week or so of newness, sun, proximity to frozen yogurt, and fun places to explore settled in, the impact of being in a larger place took hold inside me. How long would it be before we felt part of the San Luis community? Before I had friends, walking buddies, and a handful of moms to call up and connect with? Orcas Island is easy community – go to any school, store, movie, dance, or Village Green event and if you want to make a friend, you will. If you want to get together with people, you will. If you want to explore your hobbies and passions with others, you will. If you want to have meaningful interactions, you will. If you spend all day alone in your house and want to run into people you know at the store, you will. If you want to learn more about sewing or welding or writing books or curating films or gathering statistics or walking on the moon, and meeting the people who’ve done it, you will. Orcas Island gives the feeling that you can do anything, meet anyone, and have whatever life you want to without further ado. Not so on the mainland, at least not to such a degree. Knowing and becoming known takes time in the city.

Also, we might be a tiny place out in the Salish Sea with only a handful of streets comprising our only town, but somehow we seem to have access to myriad resources and businesses and opportunities on this island in ways that dwarf the masses, the expanses, and the intimidation factor of mainland cities, perhaps because everything feels accessible. I often think people can accomplish more here and think big here because there isn’t a feeling of overwhelm or competition or smallness. On Orcas, I believe that I can achieve anything I set my mind to, no matter how local or global it may be.

I was quickly beginning to feel even more alone in the already-difficult journey of watching my husband recover from traumatic brain injuries. With him set to arrive in November, I would be the only adult in his life and he would be the only one in mine. Considering that his short-term memory, multitasking, organization, attention, problem solving, and processing speed were still recovering, this thought loomed large in my mind. Of any time in my life, I needed community the very most during this long journey of his. I’m barely okay with being the only adult in someone’s life, and I’m not at all okay with him being the only adult in mine, especially during this time. Orcas has shown me the importance of community, and I love it for that. The accident has been very hard on my husband and very hard on us as a family. This was the wrong time to add more difficulty. Moving can be exciting, but this was quickly going from exciting to way too lonely.

Not two weeks into being in SLO, I walked the 5 minutes it took to get to our son’s middle school to meet him at 3:15 and on our walk back home, I asked him what he thought about the idea of calling it off. I knew he would feel elated, and I had a feeling I would too. We cried tears of joy right then and there together and he hugged me the longest hug right there on the sidewalk beside the busy road. We glided back to our place, high on relief. Never had I been so happy about leaving California.

We called Mike when we got home and, bawling, I asked, “Would you be okay with it if we packed up the car right now, drove home tomorrow morning, and called this whole thing off?” Poor guy, he never even got to come and live there, even for a short time. To his enormous credit, he responded empathetically to our heavy emotions, “Come home! You don’t have to stay there. It’s okay.” I lost it even more in relief of hearing his supportive words.

The next day we packed every square inch of the car with enough time left to drive to Cambria for a much-needed walk along the beautiful Moonstone Beach boardwalk before sunset. In all of the angst and sorrow of being there and processing it all every day after school, we had never gotten out. He had never had a chance to experience Cambria. As we walked in the perfect air toward a perfect sunset in all of the beauty, waves crashing beside us and gulls flying above us, he said, “Why didn’t we move here??” Oh, the irony.

We drove two days back, our sweet little quiet dog enduring the whole road trip all over again, and arrived at the ferry full of gratefulness for our cherished island life.

Our son started 7th grade – again – this time at OCS, and only missed the first few days of the year since it started later than California.

I have been grateful ever since – grateful for this amazing community, grateful for weather (finally!), and grateful that we took the opportunity to try a new life, regardless of how short the experiment was. I needed it. I needed to stop pondering life in California, needed to stop wondering what it held for us. I especially needed to fully appreciate Orcas Island again. I can say wholeheartedly now that I do.

Cambria will always be there. And we can always visit during the rainy times here. But Orcas community, you are a rare gift I’m not sure we could ever find elsewhere. Thank you for all of your love.

We traveled back to California during the Christmas break to say goodbye to San Luis and do the little jaunts we didn’t get to enjoy in the fall. Cambria, our home away from home, will always have a place in our hearts, and we can always return when we need a little boost of light.

Well, thanks for reading, y’all, and I’m so glad to be here on Orcas.