All Requests: Moving to New England

By email, a reader requests a post about how to convince someone "grown soft from the California sunshine to move to cold, snowy New England?" 

Hmmm.  That's a tough question.  Why are you trying to convince somebody else to move, is what I want to know?

I've actually never understood people who can be easily convinced to move.  I have a sense of home and roots that is deep and feels instinctive.  This is home.  There are a few other places that tempt me from time to time.  But this landscape, the people, the shape and size of the town, the waterways and the islands, the layers of memory I have here as my daily companions, all make this the only place I can really imagine living.   

Upon searching, I find that I've already answered this request, in a way.  So instead I'll write about the pitfalls of living here, so you can give your California friend fair warning.

1) Winter is long.  You need to get away.  A four-day weekend trip to Florida will be fine.  It should be sometime in January or February, if you can swing it, because you'll start to be a little bit bonkers by March.   Certainly before April, or you may grow frantic and depressed. 

2) This part of winter, the November-December period, is DARK.  It's so damn dark.  You need to find ways to go outside or you may never see the sun.  I recommend sailing, myself, but others enjoy skiing or walks at the beach.  In any case, the darkness can get to you.  November is a very tough month at first.

3) There are no good burritos here, although decent ones can be found in Boston.

4) It is intensely seasonal -- the pace of your life, the people you spend time with, the things you find yourself doing, all of these things shift with the seasons.  Summer is a sprint of visitors and trips and barbecues and adventures.  Winter is for cooking, and hunkering down with a glass of wine and a movie.  Spring and fall have their own rhythms, too. 

Comments

[James]

You make this former New Englander miss those long dark winters. It's 83 degrees here in central Texas today. Too much light. No seasons. No mystery. I miss the shifting rhythms.

[wab]

I was asking about convincing myself on an emotive level. I have strong family reasons to move, and having grown up in New England, I know intellectuallly about the cold and the dark. It is the set of emotional hesitations linked to environment, I am trying to wisk away, replacing them with the nostalgia that James refers to.

[mj]

I just got back from visiting my two sisters who have moved to the Raleigh, NC area and are doing the hard sell to get me to move there, too. Perfectly nice place, but I just don't understand moving somewhere that isn't home.

Have you tried Matteo's Hacienda in Bath for burritos? Or El Camino in Brunswick for Mexican food in general? Both are better than anything I've found in the Portland area.