It wasn’t easy leaving Dunsmuir, but it was time. The crisis in my brother’s life had downgraded to a tropical storm and my own life was calling me back. Respectful of the distance yet mindful of the responsibilities I’d left behind, I said my goodbyes, packed the car and started home.
For days now, scraps of Dunsmuir’s
scenery have floated through my mind: the historic railroad yard perched on a
half-moon disk of floodplain along the upper Sacramento; the late sunrises and
early sunsets over steep mountains confining the canyon; the curving main street
and laterals contouring town. The sweet
stores and the people running them, working to make a living by creating a
community where people can enjoy each other.
I barely had time to tap that fountain.
One potential benefit of living in
Dunsmuir is that the landscape makes you humble. My sense of self-importance, often overblown,
was diminished by the scale of the landscape.
I came to understand the value of mountain-man culture there as a way to
keep at bay the constant reminder of human insignificance. Once you adjust to it, though, there’s a kind
of freedom in that, permission to operate in the present without trying to
exert too much control over the future.
Scraps of scenery from the trip home
have also run through my mind. The
descent through dense forest to Lake Shasta, nearly full again, ended quickly,
followed by a brief run through foothill oaks to Redding. From there to Red Bluff on I-5, the beautiful
views of the river valley were intermingled with hills of grass- and
oak-covered volcanic rock. I took Hwy
99, still two-lane, through Los Molinos, where small farms predominate and
Lassen’s plateaus extend in the distance, to Chico, where the dominance of historically large farms is interlaced with
newer sustainable efforts to produce food.
Tree fruit orchards took over around Yuba City, followed by miles of
rice fields waiting for harvest. From
Sacramento through Modesto, the urgency of traffic congestion clogged the view,
but from Turlock onward, the old familiarity of 99 was comforting.
Being in Dunsmuir made me homesick
for Lindsay and Exeter. My first few
days here, however, have been complicated by mental exhaustion and the clear
evidence of domestic neglect I left behind mentally as well as physically. Home is where you make it, and my home in
Lindsay is in serious need of reconstruction.
But I think I’ve come to recognize a
kind of homelessness in myself as well.
My family used to take Sunday drives to go “househunting,” an activity
that got serious when my mother got pregnant.
It seemed my father was always looking for a nice place to live, even
after he settled in Sebastopol, certainly as close to heaven as it gets on this
planet. My eyes were searching the
landscape for potential homesteads all the way up and all the way back, and
that made it harder when I pulled into my driveway.
Some of Dunsmuir’s beauty is that it
is a place to call home. Lindsay and
Exeter have that beauty, too, but it’s not until you apply that name to an
address that you can learn all the work – and sometimes the hardship - that
goes with it. May we, by enjoying each
other, remind ourselves of the beauty as well.
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Trudy
Wischemann is a semi-retired nomad who writes.
You can send her your longings for home c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA
93247 or leave a
comment below.
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