Changing Horizons, Considering New Hometowns: La Conner Edition, Moving Forward with Flare, Corona, and More Birds and Blooms from Woodinville

Apple tree with tulips, La Conner

Changing Your Horizon – Considering New Hometowns, La Conner Edition

How often do you consider changing your horizon? Since travel has been off the table for many of us during the pandemic, the way to change one’s horizons is considering a new hometown. For us, we’ve been thinking about moving to a smaller town – La Conner, Washington is this week’s pick.

We scheduled a time to look at a house whose best feature was its outdoor space – lots of landscaping flowers, lots of birds, and a backyard that looked onto protected land. Sitting out in those gardens – with a view of the water – was heaven. Talk about the temptation to impulse buy! But this is a house, and a big time town change, so we can’t just sign on the dotted line because the flowers and birds were showing off. There was also a guitar festival going on – and there is a local poetry festival that happens every two years – I mean, artistic and culture scores are pretty off-the-charts for a small town. Plenty of art galleries, a Northwest Art Museum, and cute shops and restaurants along the water, the Swinomish Channel. Woodinville, known for its wineries and restaurants, is no slouch in the food and wine departments, but lacks that grass-roots deep community caring about music, visual art, and literature.

Glenn and I with orange and red tulips, La Conner

We actually made a stop at the Roozengaarde Gardens, where, surprising us, some late tulips were still blooming – we even brought some bouquets home with us. We also made the effort to find and shop at the local bookstore – Seaport Books – which had a great poetry section – I bought Canadian painter Emily Carr’s collected poems, for instance – what a cool find! We looked around neighborhoods. We checked crime rates and charted paths to the local grocery and hospitals. La Conner is for sure beautiful, the people are small-town friendly, and you’re only an hour and change back to Seattle (no ferry ride, just bridges). Fidaglo, Fir, and Camano Islands are also great small-town communities near La Conner.  So it’s a tempting thought to relocate. Woodinville is closer and more convenient to the cities of Bellevue and Seattle, and we love a lot of things about our house and our neighborhood. But a lot of my local doctors are quitting, and many of my friends who lived here have moved away, and some of the rural attractions (a horse farm on the neighborhood, a lavender farm, and now, the dreaded move of old Molbak’s to new corporate housing) have been lost, so a lot of the attachment factors that brought us here have changed. Moving can inspire change in ourselves, our outlooks, and definitely our community.

Solar flare, corona

Moving Forward with Flare, Corona

So I received my editorial feedback from Peter Conners at BOA Editions, and am getting to work on – scary – final edits so it can be sent to typesetting. This means fixing up the acknowledgements (and trying to nudge journals that have had poems from the book for a year or so), looking and asking for blurbs, and thinking about cover art (shutterstock photo at left is a literal photo of a flare and a corona).

After the final manuscript is sent in, in truth, the real work of promoting the book sets in. Scheduling my first readings, a book launch party, and starting to try to get in the reviewer queues in next.

Speaking of solar and lunar events, tonight is the Super Flower Blood Moon. Remember the solar eclipse on my birthday? This is the matching lunar event.

Me with lilacs

More Birds and Blooms from Woodinville

Now, to this house and Woodinville’s credit, one of the things that has kept me sane during the pandemic are the beautiful surroundings. The birds that came to my feeders, trees, and planters. The landscaping around the Sammamish River and the beautiful wineries. There’s a view of the mountains from my street, and I look out from my bedroom on treetops. Cannot take any of that for granted. There’s enough space for all my books (the house we looked at didn’t have quite as much space for bookshelves. Downsize my books???)

We’ve been here for five years – when I signed the lease, I had just been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, we didn’t have Sylvia yet, there was a horse farm on the street instead of condo construction. We had different neighbors (one of whom passed away in interim years). Changes happen whether you want them to or now. People change jobs, or the jobs themselves change, friendships wax and wane, professionals we count on quit or move as well. Businesses change hands – here, Woodinville staples Chateau Ste Michelle and Molbak’s both sold to larger corporate interests. Which never, sadly, makes for positive changes.

Crabapple Blossoms with mountains

So it’s a good time to reassess – our values, our desires for the next five years, and even, for me, a physical reality – I have MS, and my current home is two stories, which isn’t ideal for down the road.  I want to think about being part of a community – if not here, or in Seattle, then where? I spent years living around Seattle’s smaller neighborhoods – as far out as Port Townsend and Bainbridge, in larger family-friendly communities (now overpacked) like Issaquah, in Redmond and Bellevue (which are now priced outrageously high).

A move might not be ideal today or tomorrow…but it might be in the cards in the next year or so.