{"id":11734,"date":"2014-08-18T16:25:39","date_gmt":"2014-08-18T20:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=11734"},"modified":"2014-08-18T16:25:39","modified_gmt":"2014-08-18T20:25:39","slug":"return-of-a-non-native-notes-on-a-north-country-homecoming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2014\/08\/18\/return-of-a-non-native-notes-on-a-north-country-homecoming\/","title":{"rendered":"Return of a non-native (notes on a North Country homecoming)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

A good landing place: misty morning in the Thousand Islands. Photo: Duncan Rawlinson<\/a>, Creative Commons, some rights reserved<\/p><\/div>\n

Andy Bates and his wife have just returned to the North Country after a few years away. They have settled in to Cape Vincent for what they hope will be a permanent stay. Andy will be writing for NCPR on a regular basis, taking a look at life in the region with refreshed vision.–Dale Hobson, NCPR<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Back in May, as my wife and I headed north on I-81, with Syracuse falling farther from our rearview and Oneida Lake sprawled to our right, I turned to find my wife crying. We were on our way to Canton, to our 10-year time-warp reunion at St. Lawrence University, and I knew this time we\u2019d never leave.<\/p>\n

Sure, by the end of the weekend, we\u2019d be traveling this same stretch of interstate, winding our way through New York and Pennsylvania, through slices of Maryland and West Virginia, and eventually back to Richmond, but the line had been cast, we\u2019d taken a fresh bite, and now it seemed that even though we\u2019d given the North Country a good chase since we last left, now it had us completely.<\/p>\n

I left the North Country five years ago, and until then, it was the only place I\u2019d lived that didn\u2019t come with a curfew. Through four years in Canton as a student and another five in Saranac Lake as a reporter and editor for the Adirondack Daily Enterprise and Lake Placid News, it somehow became the place by which I\u2019ve measured all the others I\u2019ve been, fairly or not.<\/p>\n

Western Montana was wild and expansive and breathtaking, Iowa City was unfathomably friendly and comforting, and Richmond provided both the pleasures and pains of urban living\u2014but none of them were home in a way the North Country had been.<\/p>\n

I realize now that the five years I\u2019ve been away have really been five years spent trying to get back, and for a long time I considered the pull I felt to be more a case of simple nostalgia than genuine longing. Or maybe it was a little of both. After all, when we find a home, we tend to look for it everywhere else we go.<\/p>\n

\"Sunrise<\/a>

Sunrise at the Intervale Lowlands Preserve. Archive Photo of the Day: Larry Master, Lake Placid, NY<\/p><\/div>\n

Though the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana were striking in their steep peaks covered in snow till July, whenever I gazed at them, my mind would turn to the Adirondacks\u2014to the way the clouds cast velvety shadows on the High Peaks in summer or reflected back lavender sunsets at dusk in the winter. Every downtown street I walked reminded me of North Country main streets, not because they were similar necessarily, but because I wanted them to be. And every river I\u2019ve crossed has paled in comparison to the scope and beauty of the St. Lawrence and its thousand islands, which is where I now find myself settled.<\/p>\n

But in spite of all this romanticism, I\u2019m not necessarily interested in going back five years (even though, as I drive along Route 12 or wind my way through Canton and Potsdam and down through St. Regis Falls into the Adirondacks, it feels as if I\u2019ve done exactly that). No, what I\u2019m interested in is staking a full claim, in carving out my future, and the future of my family, in a place I\u2019ve never quite been able to shake.<\/p>\n

\"North<\/a>

North Country downtown: Saranac Lake on Christmas Day, but it could just as easily be after a “May surprise.” Archive Photo of the Day: Tom Dudones<\/p><\/div>\n

Maybe I\u2019ve forgotten, slightly but not completely, how unforgiving its winters can be and how ferocious its black flies can swarm, and perhaps I\u2019m being naive and shortsighted to strike out amid such an economic climate, to start over with so little to my name and bank account. Indeed, it\u2019s possible that come next May, when the snow still has the tendency to swirl, and the wind whipping off the river can be as cold as the steel that colors its waves, all the nostalgia of the past five years may very well have been beaten out of me, but that\u2019s alright.<\/p>\n

Despite what living here can exact from you, I came back because I can\u2019t think of any other place I\u2019d want to be. Quite simply, I came back because I missed it, and while I know I said I wasn\u2019t interested in going back in time earlier, I suppose I missed the person I was when I was here, too, and maybe a part of me just wants to find him again, to pick up where he left off\u2014only a little wiser perhaps, and ready for it this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andy Bates and his wife have just returned to the North Country after a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11734"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11734"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11755,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11734\/revisions\/11755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}