Rural Farmgirl in the City: Final Thoughts

Hello everyone! It seems like it’s been ages since I last wrote!  Usually time seems to move so quickly, it’s kind of a nice change to feel that time was moving a little slowly.  I’m not sure how that happened, especially since it seems like my daily mental task list keeps getting longer and longer with the length of our days.

We are smack dab in the middle of moving right now! We just finished packing up our moving truck, and it is ready to be driven back to the more rural town of Palmer.  Good-bye city life!  It’s been real.

We have amassed enough stuff to fill a 20 foot U-Haul…how times have changed!

I’ve decided that the thing I will miss most about this apartment is the stairs.  Silly, I know…but they have been a great source of fun, child development breakthroughs, and memories.  They are this great set of stairs that take up way too much space in terms of usable space in an urban apartment–shallow steps, a landing made up of three big steps that make it a split-level kind of staircase.  They are carpeted with plush, it’s-okay-to-fall-on-me pile and a babies-dogs-farmers-and-all-are-welcome-to-trash-me brownish beige color.  They are very aesthetically unpleasing, but their family friendliness is unbeatable!

Terrible photo, but you get to see the lovable stairs. Everyone is blurry from moving so quickly :).

Okay, enough with the stairs.  Some final thoughts on our time in the (non-)City of Anchorage…

My cute partner working hard while we move in his “feminist” shirt. Love him!

There is so much to be said about living in the middle of the hubbub of city life–the sheer amount of people is both exciting and overwhelming.  I can see numerous families pass by every day pushing strollers, learning to ride bikes, walking puppies.  I see teenagers on skateboards and people out for evening runs; but we also see the hunger, pain and violence that is more visible in urban areas.  Of course all of these things are part of rural life, as well, but the pace is slower, the visibility lower and the starkness elevated.

One of my favorite things is ready to see her new home!

Living in a city is fun, of course!  We had easy access to bakeries, the zoo, museums, restaurants, numerous playgrounds and plenty of events.  This is great and it is almost a necessity when you don’t have the same options for land access as more rural areas provide.  In order for kids to get out of the house there has to be somewhere for them to go!  I think it is harder to keep kids active in “Concrete jungles” (but obviously possible!), and I’m excited to get back to a place where we can easily play in our yard.

My other favorite thing is making the trip, too.

I will miss the busier sense of community I was beginning to become more involved in–with closer neighbors and denser populations, there is more to be involved with in very close proximity.  Voting? Community clean up? A lei sale down the street? Farmer’s market around the corner? Church fundraiser? baseball game down the hill? These are all activities that have happened within three blocks of us over the last few weeks.  These activities will still be happening in Palmer, but it will be a drive or longer bikeride away instead of a stroll down the alley way.

Keeping kids entertained with movies, baby bottles of water and a floor nest. Living the dream.

So, Anchorage, thanks for the good time over the last 19 months.  Your mountains are beautiful, your people are amazingly diverse and mostly good, your food is better than decent and your recreational opportunities are top notch.  I’ll be back often, but in my role as a visitor instead of a resident.

As for you, Palmer, we’re back!  I can’t wait to show Opal even more of what “country” life has to offer.  Maybe she’ll always be a city girl at heart, who knows?

Until next time Farmgirl friends,

Sending peace and love from somewhere in Alaska,

Alex, the (no more in the city) Rural Farmgirl

p.s. A photo of when we moved to AK in a rental car! Not a twenty foot moving truck…

I happen to be wearing those same pants…my moving pants?