It is wonderful to have enjoyed a life where I had some choices to make that actually made a huge difference in our lives. Many less fortunate than me have few choices open to them.
One of the most significant early choices that I made was to move to Canada after college. I did not make the choice because I disliked the United States. I made the choice because what was important to me at the time was to own some land where I could feel a connection to the natural world around me. While this was a long time ago in 1971, it was not far enough back for there to be cheap land in North Carolina or Virginia that could match the 140 acres, house and barn that I bought on the Nova Scotia shore for $6,000.
Three years later, having gained some experience farming and a wonderful wife as partner, we made the choice to move to New Brunswick. There we had found a wonderful, accepting community where we could farm with much better odds of success than on the foggy Nova Scotia shores.
Ten years of farming in New Brunswick brought us to the decision that our family would be better off if I could find a city job. That city job eventually led to a career of nearly twenty years with Apple and a return to the United States. We could have stayed in Canada but a move to Toronto had little appeal. We also missed our families and believed that our children would have better opportunities in the states.
Years later after my departure from Apple, I have few regrets about finding a life after Apple. That I ended up on the North Carolina coast near where I first learned to surf fish with my uncle in 1969 is something that I contemplate often. The place where I did that surf fishing is also the location of the picture in the post. It was taken on November 7, 2020, over fifty years after that summer surf fishing trip which involved a twelve mile drive down the beach because there were no roads on Bogue Banks and the town of Emerald Isle did not even exist.
It is probably not surprising that after fourteen years here on the coast that we have chosen to move back to North Carolina’s Piedmont. It is there that my mother’s family first showed up on the 1790 census. Some members of my wife’s family are still on a farm that I suspect has been in their family for even longer. Like many people our age, we are moving to be closer to our grandchildren and other family members.
Some of those family members are still living in the same homes that they occupied when I went off to a military school experience for my high school years. That was not one of my choices but I did choose to get in the car after graduation and go off to college up north at Harvard. It might well be that the packed humanity of Cambridge made the choice to go to Canada a little easier. One of things about most cities where I have lived, Columbia, Maryland, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and even Chattanooga, Tennessee, is that the lights of the city distort the natural light of the night sky. I think that dark night sky remains important to our lives. I hope at least places where you can enjoy it never disappear.
One of the great pleasures of living in New Brunswick was being able to see Northern Lights once in a while. Here on North Carolina’s Crystal Coast the night sky is dark with a deep undistorted black beauty. When we lived on a mountain in Roanoke, Virginia, when we got just over the peak of our hill before turning into our driveway it always looked like we were landing an airplane with the twinkling lights of the city spread out below us. The night sky of the coast surrounded by the darkness of the White Oak River and the Croatan National Forest is a special treat for light-weary eyes.
Our choice to leave the beautiful night skies of the coast is not one we make easily but I have been sustained by empty spaces for so much of my life that I am looking forward to finding the magical things around our next home even if I have to adjust to urban lights. I will also have a chance to hear some stories from the elders of our families before they are gone and to watch our grandchildren grow up. I think the trade is well worth it.
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