Memories of Country Living

Two weekends ago my husband and I drove 4.5 hours into the mountains of northern California, to make a pilgrimage to a place I remember spending the longest stretch of time being just plain happy. I wanted my husband to see the place I refer to so nostalgically, a place called Plumas County, where I lived for 2 years, from 1971 to 1973.

I wanted him to see the little cabin where my first husband and oldest daughter, then a baby, spent a dream-idyll of forest-quiet: ruby-crowned kinglets and Lewis’s woodpeckers, red snowplants pushing up through the snow in early spring, an injured sharp-shinned juvenal hawk needing help, unending abundance of red raspberries in the summer, just for the picking, the mountain pools where we skinny-dipped with friends, the river where I floated almost every day during my second pregnancy. And there was that unforgettable Christmas morning when we woke to a strange silence. Looking out the window was a three-foot blanket of whiteness, the first snowfall of the year; it had come on Christmas Eve, while we slept. For as far as we could see, we would be the first people to make tracks on that soft blankness. We dressed as fast as we could, to get out there and experience that stillness and wonder.

Trees heavily laden with snow towered above us as we pushed into the forest. The silence was eerie. Even the birds didn’t stir until the sun was higher. After alternately playing and praying, we returned to our cabin, full of the gift that had come to us.

I was able to re-connect with friends from those days. This time we stayed with them in their lakeside summer home, re-hashing old times and sharing family photos. We had a chance to visit all the little towns there, savoring their cleanness and simplicity. When folks would wave to us as they passed in their cars, going the other way, Bruce wondered: Why are they waving to me? I explained that this was how people in the country treated each other. After a while Bruce started waving, himself. There were so few people out here, passing another on the road was a minor but pleasant event. The fall colors were luring us upward, and I decided to look for a cabin high up, one I used to own, in a valley inhabited during the summer by only three families. Miraculously, we found the valley, which was now deserted. The cabins were boarded up, and the grove of quaking aspens stood silent, in all their gold and orange glory, against a blue sky and a gentle breeze. I felt as if I’d found heaven.

When we returned to San Rafael, I loaded the photos onto my computer and sent them to my daughters, who almost cried when they saw them. They most remembered being up in the valley, where they would run to the neighbor’s cabin and always find a silver ladle hanging from the tree above their portion of the creek. Taking a long drink of that mountain water was the first thing they would do when we arrived at the cabin. Today my children are in San Diego, living in a suburban sprawl, carrying on with families and careers that had almost erased those early memories of being so close to nature.

I once thought that I would always have to live near densely populated areas in order to remain an acupuncturist. That was the common wisdom taught in school: locate where lots of people can find you. Now I realize that there are other acupunks like me who love our work, but need the quietude and earthiness of country living to feed our souls. With the community model, we have a chance to set up a sustainable practice out in the country. It hasn’t yet been done, but we suspect that it can be done, and I’d like to see it proved.