How To Go Home Again Boomer Style

image via cooswaterkeeper.org

NW Boomer, the baby boomer guide, disagrees with Thomas Wolfe.

He said, “You can’t go home again,” then wrote a huge book about it.

Maybe that works if you come from the east, but not in Oregon.

You can’t go home if home means the same thing you left for.

Dark bars and empty streets are nothing new.

Going home means changing your perspective.

Here’s how:

First, find nature. Most of us live somewhere that becomes too familiar. Take a better look.

My town, North Bend Oregon, is familiar, but not for the nature. From houses to schools, to Pony Village, it’s all familiar.

What is the natural part? The water.

Call me blind, (I’m not) but this place feels as waterlogged as New Orleans and Gulf Coast Alabama. Instead of bays and bayous, we have sloughs and estuaries, bogs and marshes. And bays.

The South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve rings the home bell loudest. Any place near a road called Seven Devils can’t be all bad.

Getting there shows what the land used to look like, as if you’re on a short history trip.

Baby boomers can go home if they want to. It might be a steep road, but get over it.

Where’s your home? Do you go back?