Finding a home base part 1: Arcata, Portland, Sequim and Marrowstone Island
I am looking for a home base. I’m tired of constant nomadic life - specifically tired of not having a home, which means some months we are scrambling for a decent space to live, living out of a suitcase for almost seven years. There was a time I had a big ego about being nomadic. If someone suggested I might want to settle down one day I balked at them. I am still not sure if having a home means living year round in one place. I don’t think it’s likely given who I am. But I do know I need a base I can nest in. Nomadic life has opened me and it’s become painful. Culture emerges when society stops moving and settles down. And it’s time for me to develop my culture, the little culture of my family and my vocation.
We started this journey of home base finding in Arcata, and then went North. As the time has gone I have learned more and more about what we need, what I need, in a home. It keeps coming down to a few things: nature as pristine as we can get it, good and easily accessible fishing for my man, hybrid home school or progressive school options for my children, privacy (we can walk naked in the garden), no road noise, access to a good airport within two hours, excellent produce, meat and fish. When we started our trip I was very polarized. I just wanted to stop, now. In that space I ruled out homeschooling. I felt exhausted in mothering non stop, giving, nurturing and caring for a family under constantly changing circumstances. We looked at property more than the territory, we felt a rush as our backs.
As time has gone, two months or so now, I realised that like with anything of matter, it takes time. I am an intuitive, feeling type of person. Sensation - excelling in all things related to matter like growing food, making actual things, being in your body, building with stuff, watching fruit ripen, is not my forte. That kind of skill takes pace, an understanding of time and respect for it. I get timing more intuitively, as in fate deals her cards and emotional phases open and close. But in other ways I can be overly hurried and reckless.
So finding a home base has firstly taught me to slow down. I began to see my daily routine wasn’t working and the need for restructuring. I am now carving out an hour during the day for me, to work, write, read, do admin. No housekeeping or children caring. It tops me up to give my all during the day and then when little eyes close I have some more time, but I don’t feel so pressured because it’s never enough to do the basics. I met an amazing woman who reminded me that these early years are precious, there is no need to rush into school. I explored some schools and most of the kindergarten classrooms I liked reminded us very much of home - the same kind of stuff I surround my children with as we go. Homeschooling is already what we do and as long as I am nurtured it’s the right option for us now. We work on projects daily, often in the morning straight after waking. Every moment becomes a space for learning, for us all.
Slowing down emerged through a state of depression, my soul just said stop and go internal. Finding the right spot is not just an outside event. Practically, I have to reflect hard, sometimes painfully so, about what I actually want and need, about who I really am. And harder, what my psyche wants me to become. Home is an actual thing, a sign of where you are, but it’s also alive, it’s symbolic. That is why you can never make your home perfect, it will always change in meaning. It’s not just the home you are evolving, it’s you.
It is rare to be in a situation where you can choose your place, with minimal external constraints. Most people stay where they were born or move for a job. The choice comes up more when people retire and see more option in where they want to live. Then issues like weather and lifestyle quality become more apparent. We have some constraints with work, but minimal. We have more constraints due to having seen so many territories, some incredibly beautiful. Looking at land changed since I saw more of it.
When we started the list looked something like: ocean and forest, preferably with not that many people around; a non public/charter, progressive school; a dance class, fishing and water play for my man; a major hub airport within an hours reach. My daughters list included a bunk bed and trampoline. We aimed to find the spot where we would be mostly year round, if not all the time.
We landed in Arcata in July, well not exactly, we actually stayed in Eureka where we could afford a long term Airbnb. Eureka is a lot more old school than Arcata, speaks to the original community that fished and lumbered. It lacks the funky vibe of Arcata, but they share the always foggy, think chilly and mostly cloudy in high summer, wet weather. Arcata is best described by the farmers market it hosts on Saturday mornings. Children run barefoot and hippy vibe pervades. There is a bounty of produce that comes in from where the sunbelt starts about an hour East. The weed economy that now forms the foundation of livelihood - as I was told you don’t have to spit far to find someone who is involved in it - generates a close to the earth and laid back quality. So you get the beauty of farm life and community. And you get the lost, dropped out and mentally unstable atmosphere which happens when chaos overtakes order. You can feel the lost coast in the people. Those that are above water have formed a rich community and I liked the kind of schools I saw. A bounty of charter schools and progressive elements, small community activities and willingness to bring you into it. Above Arcata is an easily accessed redwood community forest where you may walk past someone blowing a flute or playing a guitar. The ocean is pristine and wild, and if you are willing to drive you can buy within the sunbelt twenty minutes outside of Arcata or further.
The place that I chose to go to when we had some time was not in Arcata. It was almost an hour north of Eureka in the land of the Bigfoot. Orick doesn’t have much else except nature and the legend of the bigfoot. The ocean is wild and beautiful, the forest gets better and better the further north you go and the sun peeks out of the fog more often. We kept going back to a stretch of beach with a lagoon behind it, an expanse of mostly just us coast line. My man caught a fish once and the children spent hours making pictures in the sand with me, from driftwood and shell. The next best place for me was towards Willow Creek where the sun hits down full and wide, the river winds through land with fish and swimming spots, and the produce grows. In both these places there is nothing but home schooling options for us and a very rural community. Airport access is in Arcata and its subject to fog, expensive and minimal. By the end of the stay we had mostly decided no to Arcata. It’s expensive for the property you get, but more it didn’t speak to our soul. Something didn’t fit, the community didn’t quite work for us. That soul speak is the hardest part of place finding and it’s partially hidden. Like anything soulful, we kind of think we know what we want, we have the developing list, but then there is fate and unexplained instinct.
Next we headed to Portland, to buy a car which we did, and to visit a friend of mine in Stevenson. Before I fell pregnant we stayed in a cabin in Stevenson forest and it laid an imprint. Our four days in Portland did that too. It is not the hub that we need for work but it is the city we like the best in the US. Portland is so very beautifully strange, down to earth, progressive and cool. The community is inspiring and it’s way ahead of most cities. Our one night out offered the most delicious ramen, ice cream, street fair, people watching, music on the street and happy family walk about. Stevenson and the areas near it lie on the gorge, an hour from Portland and its airport. There is water and a pristine forest. We drove across the gorge and could not but breathe in its beauty. The town’s are tiny, knitted across the gorge putting you in one state or another.
But Portland is not the hub we need for work. When it comes to tech Seattle is the upcoming area. San Francisco is in exodus, there is a shortage of moving trucks. Tech and other innovative movements are moving North, towards Seattle and Vancouver. Climate is also moving north, meaning with the inevitable change going North where it is wetter, is a better idea.
Still it is wet, and will be for a long time to come. So we started our Washington State exploration in the rain shadow. This is a very small area that offers a small respite to the heavy rain, but the gifts of the wetness. The stats suggest this phenomenon but locals often balk at me and laugh. If you are this North don’t except anything but long and rainy winters. Still a few weeks extra of sun make a difference, or so our assumption goes.
Sequim is mostly unknown, it’s where people come to retire and die - if you are going to die soon you probably want to see more sunlight. The closest cultural hub is Port Townsend which has an artsy vibe and is the tourist port town. Sequim is not especially beautiful but it is where farming thrives. Land is flat and drier. So the produce is amazing. That seems to be the case for most of the areas in Washington that we are exploring, food is abundant, and it rests on the fish and seafood. We spent two weeks in a quirky cabin in Sequim, where woodpeckers ate from our feeder, less than three feet away from our outside couch. We saw many properties, getting the clarity that we really need privacy and no highway noise. The highway 101 runs right through Sequim so that’s hard to find. Sequim backs on the vast Olympia Forest. We hiked without seeing a single soul, in deep lush green. There was a little hut near our cabin where a man sold fresh oysters and shrimp, and if you got lucky and he was open, for almost nothing you get a feast for supper. There is a fantastic private Kindergarten through eighth grade school called Five Acres we visited. It sits close to the well known Dungeness Park.
Finding rentals hasn’t been easy so we headed out of the rain shadow West to Port Angeles. Fate had dealt the card of needing to scramble in high season to find a bridge of ten days before our next longer rental. I found a cabin, with one room, on the edge of the forest and highway in Port Angeles. So that is where we went. Port Angeles is a small but very vibrant town, known mostly for it being the port of entry to the Olympia National Forest. As soon we you drive thirty minutes from it into the forest it’s riveting. Lake Crescent is unbelievably beautiful. The nature is pristine and awe inspiring. We relished the nature but its far from Seattle and perhaps too remote.
The next patched in stay was Poulsbo. That took us down towards Bainbridge Island, to a place settled by Norwegians. It looks like a little Norway, the Puget Sound are just like the fjords, the mountain towers behind it and there is forest close by. The town makes its dime on the legend, so there is a touristy element, but it’s also built with a Scandinavian sense of style. We loved the feeling of the town. It showed us the kind of aesthetic and community vibe we like best. The toxic clams and fairly dirty fjord put me off. But the property around the area remains interesting to us.
Now we find ourselves in a cottage on Marrowstone Island. It’s mostly an island for a military base, so much of the land is inaccessible and protected. The island is small and remote as islands are, but with a bridge and in ten minutes you are in Chimacum, with grocery stores, farmers market and post offices. You can catch Salmon from the coastline, my man is learning the secrets. There are many beaches, each different from sandy to pebbly. We shall be here a month, to hunker down, light fires to keep warm, enjoy the sheep and goats in the garden. I unpacked the suitcases and boxes we are carrying, cleaned, nested. It is here we will get our bearings and feel into the next step. My son will turn three here, my father will visit us and perhaps we will get married. We just started thinking about getting eloped. It may be that the right piece of land emerges here, or we may continue to search. There is no perfect, that is an ideal. But there is right for us and that is findable.
