The week before I moved to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, People Magazine ran an article on how neo-Nazis who lived in a compound a few miles from town had terrorized a local black family.
“Are you out of your mind?” the friend who showed me the article asked. “You cannot move there.” We were living in Berkeley at the time, barely hanging on. I hadn’t realized I’d need to be rich to live in such a groovy bastion of free thought.
Maybe I wouldn’t have moved to Idaho then except that, after only a month in Berkeley, I knew I didn’t really belong there. I had only part-time work cleaning houses of rich people and taking care of their children. It was hot and the air smelled bad from all the cars and trucks on the streets—it was not the paradise I had imagined it would be. I lived in an apartment over a garage. From my window, everything I saw was concrete.
Idaho, on the other hand, when I saw it at its peak in July, was clean and beautiful, and everything was cheap. I hadn’t seen Nazis but athletic people who swam in the crisp, clear water of Lake Coeur d’Alene and hiked the local hills and mountains. Everyday was around 70 degrees and the light lasted until 10 p.m. People occupied themselves with being outdoors, any way and anytime possible—everything else was secondary.
In Berkeley, the need to make money had become intensely clear since I couldn’t afford to eat out or go anywhere. I lived with the sickening realization that some unknown career was looming over my head, and decisions on graduate schools and graduate degrees would soon need to be made.
It’s no wonder, then, that I chose to go swim in Coeur d’Alene instead, to put off such finalities for at least another year or two as I biked its streets, going nowhere really.
-- Beth Blevins
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