I am, and have always been, a sentimental sap. As such, I cry whenever I see pictures of my siblings as babies, hear a song that unburied me from an avalanche at a rough time in my life, or drive past the Provo Temple any time ever, because let's face it, that place was my second home during one of the harder years of McKenzie Grows Up.
The other day I was looking at housing in Oregon and Washington, just because (no mom it's not what you think) (maybe it is) (but not now!).
I already know what it's like to live in the Pacific Northwest, but if you don't, well here's a rundown:
- Clouds. You better get used to seeing the veins under your skin for the rest of your life because the sun will only grace yo' face for two months of the year (three if you're lucky).
- People let their grass die in the summer (those two months I mentioned). Everything is brown and shrubby and then suddenly it's green again, almost like Dorothy stepping from a black and white world to one that's Technicolor.
- People care a lot about marijuana.
- Your food will mold instead of grow stale.
- You're not allowed to say "Merry Christmas" at school.
- It's frickin' expEN$IVE (compared to where I live now)
- Most importantly, you can live by these landmarks:
I have a special kind of nostalgia reserved for Oregon. Everyone has that nostalgia for the place they grew up. And it's just the pits. It's horrible, because a lot of us don't live where we grew up, and we can't scratch that sentimental itch just by taking a short jaunt in the Hyundai.
A short jaunt to my old house is a day's drive.
Anyway, when I was looking at housing, I wandered over to Google Maps, which has a satellite image feature. And maybe I used (abused?) it, but it was all in the name of sentimentality. When I'm dead I'll go back to these places just by teleportation, and then I can peek in the windows whenever I want and rattle the pipes and fold their laundry for them. Yeah, that'll scare 'em.
It's probably not the smartest idea to look back at a favorite place through a lens--it romanticizes it too much, makes all the bad stuff that happened kinda vaporize. But you know what, maybe I don't care. Maybe I don't even remember the bad stuff anymore. And maybe it wasn't bad at all.
the house I grew up in (and my dad, too)
the last house we lived in before we moved (those trees used to be shorter than me)
Camp Alpine: a formative place if there ever was one
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