The area I grew up in…it’s so small. It wasn’t when I was a kid. It felt vast back then. But now that I’m older, I really know: it was tiny. Remote, even. Not as remote as some places, of course—though you could be incredibly remote in the area I grew up in. Some people really lived out in the woods all by themselves, so there are areas of my roots that push the edge of “remote.” But, we didn’t. We never lived in town, but we weren’t remote.
Eureka was the city, and guys: Eureka was a town of less than 30,000 people. We could not fill up a professional sports stadium. The entire town. Less than 100,000 people lived in the entire county, so Eureka was, by far, the biggest town around. As a kid, 30,000 people was huge. It was more than enough. More kids and adults than I could ever meet. Now…man…once you find your groups, that is a wildly small town. You’re literally going to see the same people over and over again for the rest of your damn life. If someone new shows up, it’s a big deal.
I do love LA for that. There are always new people to meet down here. Always something going on. Everything comes through here because it’s such a large metropolis. The downside, certainly, is that you can get lost in all that size and hustle and bustle. The city never really knows you’re here. But I love the energy to it. I always have. I always loved taking trips down to the Bay Area as a kid. I’ve always loved the city. It’s not perfect, but I am very, very glad I moved away from my hometown. That isn’t to say I don’t miss it, because I do in many ways.
I miss those days when the world was so big. I miss the green, definitely. The trees. I miss my family from back then, when we were all together. And I miss the times with my mom, before the rest of them all came along. We had such a good time together. I miss the old mall. I miss discovering Star Trek in such a small town, in an age when there was no internet, and how every little bit of it I came across was like diamonds. So precious. I miss the space heater in my bedroom, the way it used to rattle and glow and how I’d huddle in front of it to get warm before bed. I miss our cats, and the smell of my blankets. I found them once, when I was a teenager I think and somehow, miraculously, they still smelled the same, and I remember instantly feeling cozy and wanting to fall asleep. I miss camping. Roasting hot dogs and marshmallows. Aunt Susan, Uncle Tony, Jeremy and Becca coming to visit. Making hay forts with my brothers. Making forts in the woods before we moved. Oh, how I miss those woods. I felt so safe in those woods, and so inspired to imagine. I wonder how many of those trees still stand, and how many of the giant stumps are left, big enough to walk inside and stand up in, the footprints of massive trees that were logged a century before I was born.
But looking back now…it’s wild that the whole area really is so small.