I've been thinking a lot lately about place.
Backing up: I was going to make a post about things that have been happening in the interim between the last blog and this one, and all of them have, to me, been fairly important.
Then I got a text message from my friends over at AppyLove, and I was reminded of what "life-changing" really means. Don't get me wrong, it's nothing bad. In fact, I couldn't be prouder; my dear friend Dr. Allen Rigell just matched in Wisconsin. For those who don't know, "matching" is the term for when a newly graduated doctor chooses a residency program, and the residency program chooses him or her back.
As Joe Biden would say, it's a big fuckin' deal.
The corollary to that, though, is (sometimes) you're completely uprooted from the things you've known and done for (sometimes) your entire life.
When I moved to Vermont, I knew things would change. I knew I wouldn't know soul one up here. I knew I was embarking on something. And I did my fair share of assuming. I assumed my roots in Tennessee would stay firm and healthy. I assumed I'd never hurt anyone deeply enough to have to let them go. I assumed that no matter what happened, I could manage on my own, and I assumed that even if I couldn't, I'd have my love to help me.
I found out, out here in my Bear Country, what happens when we assume.
But that's the great thing about the great white wilderness. It doesn't give you one thing that you want, but you learn (very quickly you learn) what it is exactly that you need. And when you zero in on that, Bear Country blows wide open. In that way, it becomes your own.
I love you, Allen and Amanda, and I'm proud of you every single day. I'm proud to have known you and proud to have shared some of my most wonderful memories of Tennessee with you guys. And I am sad that you have to go through the hard journey, leaving what you know, and going out, out, out into what looks and feels like the jaws of the beast sometimes. I am sad that I feel now more than I have in months that my time in Johnson City is truly over, that the love I had there once is gone away in one way or another. You guys afforded me so many opportunities that I would have never had any other way. You guys kept me engaged with what was going on when all I wanted to do was dry up and blow away. You taught me how to love that place again, when all I wanted to do was to nuke it from space sometimes.
I know you guys. You're smart. You're talented. You're ridiculously magnetic. You're bold when you should be. You've got just enough Southern distrust to keep the Midwesterners guessing, and hearts big enough to accept the difficulties ahead and to go ahead and look for (and find) the good stuff anyway. Or the bad stuff. Bear Country is nothing if not a surprise a minute.
I know I'll talk to them again. Pretty soon, probably, and fairly regularly after that. We may even sing together again, or figure out how to do some long-distance recording. I just want them and the rest of world to know that I think they are two of the bravest, loveliest people I know, and I wish them nothing but the best when they get to their new place.
This I say to everyone: go forth, out into your own Bear Country, whether it's Wisconsin, Vermont, your new girlfriend, your new singleness, your new job, your new joblessness, or your 52nd year on Earth. Embrace the unchartedness, then get to work drawing that chart. Include some room to be lucky and astonished at what you find out there. Be brave. Be true.
"You can bring a storm with you;
I know you always will.
When the wind blows hard to ride,
I’ll be there by your side." - Count this Penny.
