Although I have read the entire Horatio Hornblower series by C. S. Forester and most of Patrick O’Brian’s wonderful stories of Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, I am no sailor.  

The closest I have come to the bounding main is a 22 foot ski boat that we owned some years ago.  We did alright when we were “out to sea”—that is, on the local lake.  Some of our kids were quite good wake boarders and slalom skiers.  Even I could cross a wake with some aplomb.  But when we headed for shore, people on the dock would flee for their lives.  Having watched us through these maneuvers before, they knew that some principle of hydrology or of physics or of seamanship would elude us, and we would careen into the dock.  I suppose we were much like seals:  sleek and skillful in the water (perhaps that is slightly over stated), painfully awkward as we moved onto land.  

For the last 13 years we have been anchored in beautiful Kingston, Washington.  In just two days, we will be moving to Spokane—“east of the mountains,” as we say here.  The last several weeks have felt as though we are weighing anchor.  

This place has been in so many ways more than we ever expected we would experience in life.  We can look out our windows and observe the moods of Puget Sound and gaze at the eroding cliffs of Whidbey Island across Admiralty Inlet.  We can stroll to the beach.  We watch eagles soar overhead or fish in the cove near our home.  We observe the seasonal rhythms of the Alaskan cruise traffic—these silent, alluring vessels glittering with festive lights as they glide past our home in the early morning hours on their return to their Seattle berths.  

This is a green place.  Not “green” in the politically correct sense, although that may also apply, but emerald green.  This past week, on a gloriously sunny, warm day, I was in the car.  Cedar and fir trees line the narrow, winding roads.  Impenetrable forests on either side limit the view of the blue sky to directly overhead.  There are, however, occasional stretches where the maple and alder trees assert a hard-won dominance, arching over the road, creating a tunnel for short distances.  With the bright sunlight filtering through the canopy, it is like diving into an emerald pool.  

I’m trying to catalogue these sights that have exceeded my expectations in so many ways, in the hope that I include them with our hearts’ baggage as we move to another place that is also beautiful, but in different ways.

For now, I have a sense of being rudderless.  We are weighing the anchor of our lives.  For days, few things were in their accustomed place.  Boxes lay about—some taped up and ready, others half-filled, their open flaps askew in anticipation of the last few relevant objects.  We tried doggedly to maintain a semblance of order. The refrigerator was nearly empty—nothing inviting, just scant supplies.  Slowly, our home reverted to just being a house.

Then the movers descended.  They swept everything before them and stowed the accumulation of our lives in the maw of a semi-trailer that was too big to back into our lane.  Consequently, they were forced to park the semi about a mile from our home.  They brought a smaller truck and backed it up to our front porch.  Then they stoically and systematically loaded everything from the house into the “staging truck”, drove it to the waiting semi, then off-loaded everything from the smaller to the larger truck.  They repeated this process over three days.  Because of the added step and time, the process required 3 days instead of the planned two.  They remained cordial throughout.  But I was glad not to be them.

Other things are gone—given away or sold. 

People depend on us less and are making accommodations for our absence.  Our gaze and our thoughts increasingly drift to our new life—the one just over the horizon.  Some friends invited us over for dinner earlier this week.  After a very pleasant evening with people that we admire and enjoy, we drove home.  I noticed that Becky was crying silently in the seat beside me.  We are not second guessing our decision to move.  It’s the right thing for us and for our family.  But it is hard to leave people who have become such a cherished part of the fabric of our lives.

The house is empty now.  The floors have been swept; counters and cupboards, dusted and cleaned; base boards and window sills vacuumed.  It echoes like an empty warehouse.  We walked out the front door and locked it behind us one last time together this evening.

Day after tomorrow we drive away and move on.