Off the Edge of the Earth

I recently stopped working to spend time with my little boys. Drunk with my newfound freedom from 2-week-a-year-vacation time (and possibly/probably just plain drunk as well), I booked a one-month trip to my home town of Forks, Washington. My husband and stepchildren came for the first week, and we packed in a ton of activities, culminating in the all day unmatched community frenzy that is the Forks Old-Fashioned Fourth of July. Then they left, and now I'm here with two small boys in a teeny logging town that could be the poster child for the middle of nowhere. Did I mention that the town is in a rain forest? Yeah, rains pretty much every day. My children are 4 and almost 2 and require huge amounts of physical activity to remain somewhat civilized. After a week of being housebound without their father or siblings, it's a tossup which of the three of us is going to make it out of this vacation alive. So far, I'd put my money on the baby - he seems to be standing back and letting my older son and me fight it out while he conserves his resources. Also, he's cagey in general - doesn't talk yet but you can actually see him plotting. If you've seen The Incredibles, and you've watched "Jack-Jack Attack" in the bonus materials, you've met my younger son.

This entry was meant to be about Forks, though, not my wretched children (I love them, but they are seriously inhuman this week). My husband grew up in southern Delaware, about 15 minutes from a big resort town. When we met and I told him that I grew up rural, he said he could relate because he was from a small town too. I laughed at him then (and still do at the memory, although right now the laugh has a slightly bitter, manic tinge to it) and said that living 15 minutes from a resort town has nothing on my hometown. I could tell he didn't really understand the difference until the first time he visited my mother with me. We landed in Seattle and rented a car, then started to drive. We drove about 45 minutes and hopped on a ferry - so far, so good. Took the ferry across the sound, another 30 minutes. Left the ferry, drove a few miles, and fell off the map. After Kingston, there's so much nothing it hurts your eyes to look at it. I saw something like fear in my husband's eyes as the miles and hours passed with no discernible landmarks or human habitation. In all, it takes about 4 hours to get from Seattle to Forks, on the most deserted 2 lane highway you can imagine with nothing but forest on both sides most of the way. The nearest town (also the nearest movie theater, orthodontist, fast food, etc) is 60 miles away and even it only has 17,000 residents. By the time we left, I think Keith felt like he'd grown up in a metropolis.

Forks has 2500 residents and one stoplight. I went to high school here and it still shocks my system when I visit, to realize how small town life can be so isolated and feel so crowded at the same time. There's nowhere to go and nothing much to do, especially in bad weather (most of the time, in other words), but I can't walk down the street without running into 5 people I knew in what feels like a past life. Really nice people, I'm not complaining, it's just surreal after living in one city after another for the past 13 years (I moved straight from Forks to Los Angeles, then Seattle, and now live in Baltimore - I think I decided small town life wasn't for me sometime within the first week after moving here in 8th grade).

Living in a small town is a little like being a movie star - you have to assume you will be recognized the minute you leave the house. This results in a couple identifiable types of townspeople. One group, largely made up of girls and women in their teens and 20s, prepare meticulously for every public outing, even if the outing itself is no more exciting than going to the store for milk. These women don't leave the house without full makeup (foundation, lots of mascara, dark lipstick) and hair punished strand by strand into their individual visions of perfection. You have to admire the effort, but it looks tiring to me. Another group, and I'm afraid my family falls more into this category, avoids going out unnecessarily at all to avoid excessive familiarity. The third group either never cared or has since given up their concern and just heads out on the town however they rolled out of bed (or out of work, which is largely outdoors here and fairly messy). This results in an interesting aesthetic at the grocery store, if you're into people-watching.

I don't mean to sound mocking or derisive - well, at least not entirely. There are good things about small towns, and this one in particular. Good things that motivated me to bring my boys here for the summer to see a different, slower, safer way of life. I can let them play in the yard without worrying they'll be taken. I can walk them to town for ice cream and not cringe when someone honks as they drive by. My heart doesn't stop in my chest if a stranger approaches my child on the playground. And the scenery alone is worth seeing if you haven't. Forks is within sight of the Olympic mountains and only 5 miles from some really gorgeous wild beaches that make the warmer eastern beaches seem dull and tame by comparison. The highway that seems to stretch on interminably if you're just trying to get from A to B is lined with trees so high they make you feel small and insignificant, trees that make you think about what the world was like before we started messing with it. Even the logged areas that look like little boys' crewcuts just reveal more of the mystery of the forest beyond. The trees at the edges of clearcuts have jutting-out branches like giants' ladders up the sides, from not having had sun reach that far beneath the canopy for years. Deer and elk and even black bears are common sights. Someone as citified and squeamish as I am can catch fish without having the first idea what they're doing, as I proved yesterday.

Well, this is only my second blog entry and I guess I've proven that whatever else I am, I am not succinct. Nor am I good at the logical windup and ending. I'll head to bed to stop myself writing more now, but I have a feeling I'll have a lot more time for writing during the final 12 days of my trip.