Remembering Moving Day.

Now that Orange County has begun to feel like home. Understanding the lay of the land from Seal Beach to South County. Having driven from San Diego and San Clemente up the coast through Ventura and on to Santa Barbara. Having seen the hot bodies at Malibu and the surfers at Huntington Beach. Drinking Fat Tire on the Newport pier as we watch the seals and dolphins in the waves offshore. Now that the West Coast has replaced the midwest as my home I can think back on moving day...

Goodness, now that I've left.

It was hard to leave my parents- standing in that gravel driveway that gave me so many skinned knees growing up.

And now I've grown. Driving along the clear, cold, rushing streams of the Rockies as we head up to the pass and then down the Western side. Farther and further away now. Farther as in physical distance away from. Further as in advancement, to a greater degree.

I've driven these mountain passes before, seen the San Juans in morning and twilight. Seen the Rockies ragged edges level off into the Colorado Plateau, invert into Utah's Canyonlands.

I've driven these distances but never before as a resident of nowhere but here. All my belongings behind me, packed in the back of this rented moving truck.

I have fulfilled this odd dream of moving out of Minnesota. I've left. You won't find me on afternoon runs along the Mississippi or at any of my old haunts. I won't be walking the Washington Avenue bridge between classes or cruising the 16 to my Midway apartment. Leaving friends behind with a lump in my throat knowing that we'll grow apart. I am on my way to palm tree dotted Southern California. Dive bars yet to be discovered, runs on the beach yet to be mapped out, friendships yet to be realized.

So for now I am a resident of this UHaul 14' Thrifty Mover. A resident of four states in three days. I've seen the beautiful July rain and traffic snarls of summer road work in my Midwestern home state. I've heard the thunder rumble across the magnificently clouded sky above the Iowa plains. Trees dipping their roots into rivers like children touching their toes to cold creek beds. I've seen lightning bugs swirl and sparkle along the highway at dusk, misty morning lifting over barns and cornfields. The beauty of a summer sunrise in the middle west.

We've hurried through Nebraska and Eastern Colorado where the only radio stations are Christian country and herds of cows huddle in the shade of one lone tree. Where the interstate cuts through towns of $39 dollar a night motels and bars with only budweiser on tap. And now we are next to these streams after taking a wrong turn outside of Boulder. We will drive through Moab and Monument Valley, see Vegas rise from the desert in a flurry of sand and neon and billboards for adult superstores and Cirque du Soleil.

South through San Bernardino and into the mingle of smog and ocean air that forms the atmosphere over LA and Orange counties.