  I am blessed with the company of wise people. I am always sure to ask their opinion...whether I follow it is another matter.
Some things I have heard lately from several of them has made me think. I love places. I love when one spot feels different than another, when people name things and the name stick, when it's hard to get around unless you've been there before, when there are local swimming holes in the creeks, when each and every hill is different from the one before it, when the sunrise and sunsets set the sky and countryside alight. Naturally, I gravitate towards steep country, towards old neighborhoods, towards towns and cities with nature nearby. I guess a lot of that has to do with me growing up in Austin and the nearby Hill Country, and a lot to do with me loving old Austin neighborhoods and the small, if cold, towns of New England. Cities with nature nearby, in the U.S. at least, seem to be over-run with ugly suburbs. Everyone wants to own a piece of it. Not me; I want to live in town. I wish everyone else wanted to too. If I live near a town with nature, that nature better be well protected already. I don't want to see it gobbled up by suburbs again. So. That's it. That's all I want, a city or large town near a protected natural area (or areas) that has beautiful neighborhoods and a little river flowing through it or near it.
Preferably a town that's in the northern south or southern north. It may be hard to find, but I am willing to compromise a bit anyway, so what does it matter? It matters because my good friends are wondering if I will ever be satisfied with where I live. I left Austin once (it was being over-developed, and was too hot), I didn’t like New Hampshire (too cold), I didn’t like St. Croix (tropical paradise, but far from family), and I don’t like Austin again now. I LOVE the Austin of my memories, and I even like modern Austin as a place to have fun, but I don’t want to live here.
Or New Hampshire, or St. Croix. In answer to my friends’ worries, I can only say: it’s a triangle, Austin-New Hampshire-St. Croix, and I have only lived at the extremes. I’ve traveled through the middle (North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, etc. ) and I liked it. I liked it a lot. I may fall in love with a place or many places there, and if I do, I am not going to leave them. I am going to fight for where I live—-to stop ugly, improper developments, to protect water supplies, to keep the hills above towns beautiful and the natural areas protected.
I may live in a big city and have a house in the country. I don’t know. Whatever I do, I won’t run from a place I’ve lived again. I just ask for a chance to fight for my place, to fight knowing the battle isn’t already lost. I do know one thing about my satisfaction with living in one spot: it’s possible. In fact, it’s already happened. I have been completely satisfied with a place I stayed in for a while.
If I could move my family to Costa Rica, my whole family and my good friends, I would never come back to the States. It’s that wonderful. There is a road in the highlands of North Carolina that was the prettiest road in the world on the morning which I drove down it. I think, I really do, that I will find it again. Somewhere. 
