Are you going to be okay out there?
On moving to new places and learning to love mushrooms
“A mycelial network is a map of a fungus’s recent history and is a helpful reminder that all life-forms are in fact processes not things. The ‘you’ of five years ago was made from different stuff than the ‘you’ of today. Nature is an event that never stops.”
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake
This morning, I woke up to a pile of mushrooms on the dining room table. My partner went out to walk the dog and came back with quite the haul. It rained recently, which means there are tiny mushroom villages scattered around our property. Bright marigold chanterelle poufs, crinkly black trumpet curls, and neon orange witches’ hats, if you know where to look.
We live in Gualala, California, a small, coastal town about 3 hours north of San Francisco. Population ~2,000.
“We” is me, my partner, and our friend from college.
Our property has 10 acres of redwoods and a two-bedroom house, with beams milled on site back in the 80s.
I don’t really like mushrooms. Or, I should say, I am learning to like mushrooms. The same way I am learning to like living in a remote, rural place. Dish by dish, day by day.
I am not from here, not even close. I grew up 3,000 miles away, on the East Coast. All of my family and many of my friends are there, living in cities like New York and Boston and the surrounding suburbs.
And I am here, huddled over my dining room table, attempting to identify mushrooms we foraged in our backyard.
A year or so ago, when my mom found out we were moving here, she took a break from supportive mom-talk for a serious question—are you going to be okay out there?
I think so, I said. I hope so.
I was born in New York City’s Chinatown, a cacophony of languages, smells, and colors. I fell asleep to streetlife and firetrucks, the sounds of the city wafting up to a small apartment eleven stories up. We did laundry all the way in the basement and trick or treated by elevator, which I found both convenient and fun.
When I was six, my family moved to the ‘burbs. I spent the rest of my childhood on the Jersey Shore, five blocks from the beach. It was exactly a seven minute drive to my high school—big, public, over a thousand students, football state champs a few years running.
Despite living in a very dense part of a very dense state, when high school graduation came around, seventeen-year-old me was ready to “get out” of my “small town.” I was privileged to have options and took full advantage.
After college, I spent most of my adult years in the biggest, most expensive cities in the country: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco. You could say I lived in cities for work. You could also say I worked so I could live in cities.
East Village. West Hollywood. Lower Haight. I loved living above dive bars and walking to coffeeshops around the corner. I loved never having to go more than a few blocks away for dumplings or toothpaste or a conversation with a stranger.
If you had told me back then that I’d one day be living in a remote, rural area, I, too would have asked, am I going to be okay out there?
It’s been almost a year since we moved to Gualala. I’m a little surprised at how okay I am.
I don’t have my choice of Burmese restaurants anymore, but there’s “one of everything” within a fifteen minute drive. A café, a post office, a vet, a bookstore, a market, a gas station, a cobbler. A decent Thai place, solid burritos, and of course, The Sea Ranch.
We have helicopter insurance because the nearest hospital is nearly two hours away, but there are no lines at the local urgent care clinic and our next-door neighbor is on call as a first responder.
There really is nowhere to get food after 8pm, but we’ve become pretty good cooks. My Chinese food rivals our favorite takeout places and I’ve mastered the art of sourdough.
We don’t live near our friends in San Francisco anymore, but we crash at their places in the city, unlocking a new level of quality time. We watch Jeopardy together before bed and have morning snuggles with their kids.
We return the favor by hosting. We show our friends where you can drop-in kayaks to the river. We tell them that if you listen to the radio on Sunday afternoons, the owner of the bookstore shares a “word of the week” that gets you 10% off. We get to be a retreat for our people.
And we make new friends.
We got married here back in June, at the Gualala Arts Center. We worked with mostly local vendors. Few of them had websites. They were all great.
Since then, we’ve run into our caterer at yoga class, our florist in the grocery store, and gone out for drinks with our husband-and-wife bartenders. Turns out throwing a wedding in a small town is a great way to get to know the community.
So, I’m more than okay. I might even be falling in love.
Throughout my lifetime, I’ve fallen in love with more places than people. Each time, the same rush—daydreaming about who I could be, who I could be here. Yet, I still carry nostalgia for the things and people I've left behind. I still ruminate over what I’ve lost by leaving.
When I was twelve, I chose the AIM screenname NYCbeachgal86. We were already living in New Jersey by then, but I wasn’t ready to give up my allegiance to the big city. I also really liked the beach.
And here I am again, two decades later, resisting an identity shift that could mean leaving some part of myself behind—the part of me that loves going to live music shows on weekdays and people watching on public transportation.
I wonder if that part can live alongside the part of me that truly breathes easier here, under the redwoods. The part that enjoys the ritual of waiting in line at the post office and living in a smaller unit of community.
The part that had 3 meals with mushrooms in the past 24 hours, and loved every bite.
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From Gualala with love,
Becky
Thank you for sharing Becky. You live in such a beautiful place! The North Coast has such a compelling edge-of-the-world feel to it, more so than here in the City. I enjoy reading about all the places you've called home. I admit I feel a bit like a barnacle, still residing in the same neighborhood where I grew up. I'm not complaining though. I am a bit envious though about your bounty of mushrooms. It's been decades since I had the opportunity to go foraging. We don't have access to private lands so our gathering was limited mostly to Salt Point SP. I hear from several sources that this is a particularly good year for chanterelles. Some day I'll hope to have an opportunity to gather again. The coastal pine and oak forests make magic on all the senses. 💚
Becky this made me cry. Thanks for sharing your soul - you already know how much parts of this resonate with me. I can’t wait to read everything you write 💜