Tempted to Leave, Digging In
In eras like this one, I’ve often considered moving to another country — not once but numerous times in the course of a long life of alternating revulsion from and reunion with America’s decidedly mixed blessings. During the Vietnam war I spent a year and a half in Canada and even applied for landed immigrant status before my father, himself an immigrant to the United States from pre-war Eastern Europe, warned me that I’d never feel at home elsewhere. Then again during the Reagan and Bush eras, I was so distressed by the country’s heartless rightward march that my wife and I went looking for a new homeland in both New Zealand and Costa Rica.
And while we found much to commend each of these countries — in so many ways they’re saner, kinder and better governed than our own — we always ended up returning home to dig deeper into the soil and soul of the best of our native land. Granted, early on we chose to secede from most of what constitutes modern America — its malls and mauled landscapes, the ravages wrought by its crass commercialism, its crude vulgarity — and chose instead to make our home in remote regions whose culture and nature still thrive on life-affirming values. I also found much to love in the dissident cultures of America — the free thinkers and high-spirited independent spirits who exist nowhere else in quite the same way and represent an inextinguishable element of this society’s enduring genius.
Even today, as I return to the very regions in Canada where as a young man I searched for a home in the wilderness (and nearly lost my life in the process), I find myself wondering what it would have been like if I’d settled there then instead of returning stateside to make a life on my native soil. Canada has erected its own substantial wall of legal barriers to permanent residence by foreigners (unless you happen to be a millionaire), so moving there is no longer a practical option. As it happens, I’ve woven myself into such a complex and cherished set of relationships here that moving elsewhere would feel like uprooting a life it’s taken a lifetime to cultivate.
Then too, I’ve come to love my home state of California (more a state of mind than of fixed boundaries) with a passion and pride I’ve never felt for this country as a whole. Call it “statriotism” in lieu of that kind of patriotism that false patriots have so often abused for destructive ends. This state, viewed with decidedly mixed emotions by much of the rest of the country, has chosen to diverge from the national norm in many ways in recent years, from its embrace of its immigrant majority to its accelerated embrace of the renewable energy revolution. What Donald Trump, fuming at his inability to curb California’s exuberant independence, calls “out of control,” Californians relish as a healthy response to the madness in the Oval Office.
All things considered, I’m glad I returned from Canada to California half a century ago and planted myself in native soil. We humans may have invented means to carry us far and wide but we thrive best when we plant ourselves firmly in fertile soil and let our roots reach out to entwine with one another. The best antidote to tyranny and chaos is being here for each other, in good times and bad. I’m awfully glad Canada is right next door for the occasional escape from our domestic insanity, but for the deeper rewards of a fulfilling life I thank my restless, questing, youthful soul for wisely choosing to dig down in place and learn to “love anyway.” For all of our country’s heartbreaking betrayals of its first promises, I cherish my chosen home with the same boundless, unconditional embrace that I love my daughter, my partner, and myself. Not even Donald the Deranged can break that bond.
