Fish Out of Water

I’m a Chinese-American woman who spent my first three decades trudging through the concrete jungle, wearing varying shades of black and avoiding eye contact with strangers. But one day I found myself packing up my apartment in the city and moving to a farming community where people name their dogs after firearms and hang dead coyotes over fence posts. Where the two households who believe in climate change and organic food and gay marriage are suspiciously known as “The Liberals” and “The Artists”. And where people drive trucks and tractors, or they don’t drive at all. I couldn’t have been more out of my element, yet I’ve never felt more at home.

I’m what’s known in legal circles as “risk averse”. I unplug appliances and shut valves before going on vacation. I never send my dog outside without his ID tags. I mail my tax return in March. I prefer activities that don’t involve deep water, soaring heights, or high speeds. (Who could possibly live with me? you may ask. We’ll get to that in a minute.) So I would have been perfectly content to spend the rest of my predictable little life within a 50-mile radius of my birthplace. But in my 38^th year I was yanked out of my comfort zone. It was somewhere between the call of the wild and a midlife crisis. Okay, maybe a man had something to do with it, too.

D and I had been friends for years. We worked for the same environmental company, doing our small part to save the world. Some would call us granola-eatin’ bleeding heart tree-huggers. I prefer the term “conservationist”. I was based in San Francisco and he was assigned to a small rural town in Northern California. If you think San Francisco is in Northern California, think again. There are miles and miles of farmland and old farmers between the Bay Area and the Oregon border. D’s first hint of trouble was the handwritten street sign reading, “This neighborhood is protected by Smith and Wesson”. The second hint was the neighbor who introduced himself and cheerfully announced that the creek behind D’s house was called “Nigger Sam Slough”. Oh, did I mention… ?

Yup, that’s D. Talk about your awkward moments.