Thoughts on Two Neighborhoods
I was running a number of errands today, one day before a large, round birthday, and I got to thinking. I was prompted by the train I encountered (as seen above) in comparison with our old home in California (the sunset view above was taken from our old home).
Quite a comparison.
As many of you know, about seven years ago we moved from a lovely place in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, and after a few years of renting we wound up in suburban Vancouver, specifically in the District of North Vancouver. There were many things that caused the move, but my thoughts are on what we lost and gained as a result of the change. Big, round birthdays can cause such speculation.
For me, the most obvious loss is the web of friends and contacts we had. Even after four years in our new home, our local network is a fraction of the size it was. But that’s what happens when you move later in life, and we expected it. Twenty five years is a long time at one address, and twenty years from now it will be interesting to see how we’re doing on this front. Of course, we might not live in this house for twenty more years. We are aging, after all.
Oh, we’re still in touch with a fair number of people from California, but proximity matters and most people will naturally grow more distant after a move. But an oddity is that some contacts may grow stronger despite the new distance. I can’t explain why that happens, but it does. Treasure those when they occur.
The move also resulted in a number of other changes.
Our old home was essentially rural. Despite being just fifteen minutes from Silicon Valley, we lived in the woods. There were just two houses visible from our place, I think, and neither was particularly close. There was no natural gas service — the house was all electric — and for most of our time there we depended on ISDN or a very sketchy over-the-air internet service. It was only in the last few years that cable internet arrived, and then only because some very local legal weirdness forced a cable company to make it happen. There was no bus service anywhere near the house. There was a bus that (I think) stopped at the local school once or twice in the mornings and again in the afternoons, but that was it, and that “bus stop” was over two miles away, and all uphill. It wasn’t something you wanted to walk to, or count on. As a result you drove everywhere. There was no choice.
But we had views (as seen above) and trees and wildlife. Coyotes were common visitors, as were deer. We saw an occasional bobcat as well, and mountain lions (called cougars here in BC) were present, though we never saw one. Wild turkeys — dinosaurs, if you think about it — were around all the time, and feral pigs. Oh, and the night sky was amazing. Despite being so close to San Jose, the milky way was regularly visible by just stepping outside after dark. It was so bright you could see it almost immediately, without letting your eyes adjust. It was even possible to see the Andromeda galaxy with the naked eye if you knew where to look on a particularly good night.
Now we live in suburbia. There’s a bus that comes by about every thirty minutes and stops just down the street. I can — and regularly do — run my errands without ever getting into a car. It takes a bit longer, but I am retired and happy to take that time. In fact we just got rid of one of our cars because all we were doing with it was driving it once a week to keep the battery charged. It was an expense we simply did not need.
Our local street is much busier than what we lived on in California. Back there we’d joke that if we saw four cars on our road in one day it was time to move. Here there are still plenty of cars on the road after midnight, and while the frequency decreases they keep coming all night long.
We still have wildlife, but there are some changes. We have local black bears that raid the garbage cans if they can, and the occasional coyote that absolutely terrifies everyone. I’ve had people stop their cars to warn me about a coyote they saw just up the street. I can’t take the time to explain that I used to see them in packs and really don’t see them as a threat. There are occasional cougar sightings in our area as well, which I am sure make people worry all the more. There are no turkeys or pigs as far as I know.
The night sky is a complete bust. Partly that is the fault of our home, which has more trees on a single lot than many lots around us combined. But there is also light pollution at a level that is hard to imagine. We can see a few bright stars and the planets when they are in view, but sky watching in Vancouver is a pointless exercise. It rains so often that dedicated astronomers would fall into clinical depression.
What’s the same?
For starters, the fire danger. It’s not as bad here yet, though climate change is working on that. We spent all our time in the Santa Cruz Mountains worried about our home burning down. I even joined the volunteer fire department for a while to help avoid that fate. Up here, we’re close to the woods, and our neighbourhood is nearly surrounded by them. If a big fire comes through we are definitely at risk, and there are more people around to cause such a fire. But overall the weather is cooler and more rainy, and there are extensive firefighting resources available locally. I’d rather have no risk of wildfire, but that isn’t in the cards yet.
Another similarity is the people. In my experience so far, Vancouverites and Bay Area residents are about equally friendly overall, and the two cultures are so alike that at first glance you might not even realize you were in a different country. There are differences — mostly linguistic so far — but I tend to trip over them accidentally outside of obvious areas like politics.
So what have I learned?
The big thing is that we’re not yet ready for true urban living. We have dear friends who live in downtown Vancouver, on the umpteenth floor of a tower with lovely views, but every time we visit them we realize we’re just not willing to live like that. We still need our space. Anne needs her garden and I need my tools. Apartment or condo (or “strata” as they are called here) life isn’t for us yet. Maybe in ten or twenty years we’ll be ready for something like that here on the North Shore where the pace of life is slower than downtown, but I doubt we will ever move into Vancouver itself. I used to think that kind of thing was inevitable, but now I am pretty convinced it’s not.
The politics is a bit more sane here still, and that was part of the reason for the original move. People seem a bit less divided, but American political extremism is seeping over the border and I can see the impacts in some ways. I don’t know how things will look in ten years, but of course no one does.
Was the move worth it? Yes. For me it was. Such a big change late in life is always a lot of work, even without crossing an international border. But we did it deliberately, and I am confident we did the right thing. Every change comes with losses and second guessing, but we tend to look forward and so far this is a good place to be.
Sorry. These are the things that go through my mind as I look at the calendar and ponder the big six-oh.
Cheers!