I've been in Boise for three days, looking for a place to live. I didn't really take to the city right away. It reminds me of a smaller Salt Lake City, but aside from the downtown area, there's not much going on. Plus, it just seems gritty, scrubby. My initial reaction was resistance - "I don't want to live here. What did I get myself into?" But a meeting with my new coworkers reminded me of what I'm getting myself into. Instead of struggling through economic theory and picking through farm-level data, I'll be nerding out on riparian habitat and stocking levels with a bunch of easygoing sciencey folks who joke around all the time. This sounds wonderful. So, determined to get to know (and eventually like) Boise, I went for a morning jog along the Boise River greenbelt. It was bugging me that I couldn't really pinpoint why I was resisting this place. It's not lush or diverse or exciting like DC, but it's also not noisy and crowded and expensive and dangerous like DC. Boise is different from the Midwest and East Coast - lots of people have tattoos, piercings, and funky hair. Bikes are ridden for transportation. Clothes are used as personal expression, not as a tool for fitting in or showing off. The fancy beers here have DC happy hour prices; the other beers are way cheaper. These are all good things. It's scary moving to a new place, but Boise seems nice, comfortable enough. So what was my problem?
Then it hit me while I was jogging. Everything in the Midwest and East Coast is lush and green. We're talking deep green, like you can smell and taste the chlorophyll while walking down the street. And the sun is yellow, like an egg yolk. It's so bright in the summer that you almost want to hide from it. As someone who is happiest wandering around a forest all day, this seems safe and normal. Plus, it's all I've known. But Boise is not lush. There are tons of trees (the city name is derived from "les bois", which means "the woods" in French) and the grass is green (although it's so dry in the summer that without watering, it turns into a brown mass), but the green isn't as deep and the sun is paler, though still warm. It's dustier here. But there's beauty in that. It's less intense. Even though it's been in the 90s since I got here, the warmth is comfortable. Nature doesn't knock you down in Boise, it just hangs out, like the foothills lurking on the northeast side of the city. I didn't take to Boise immediately because it wasn't begging me to like it. It didn't get in my face or show off for the masses. This city will let me figure it out on my own time, no rush. It's a relief after three years of bracing against the barrage of sights and sounds in the big city. So, okay. I'm moving to Boise.
