- In 2008, my husband and I decided to move from Iowa to Oregon.
- We picked Oregon because reports said it was a state resilient to the climate crisis.
- It was a hard move, but we don’t regret it.
In 2008, my husband, Adam, and I decided to move to Oregon after cataclysmic flooding devastated eastern Iowa. Many suffered, but for us, it was more like a moment to rethink what we wanted from a place.
I’m highly suggestible, so when all those articles about Portland, Oregon, started coming out in the late aughts about being the most sustainable, we started imagining ourselves there — me, with an absurd list of desirables (mushrooming culture, bookstores, coffee shops), and my husband, Adam, with his: resilience to the climate crisis.
Adam’s nickname is “Long Game.” He had been comparing online simulations showing how the US climate shifted over time. These days, every listed home on Zillow gets graded for the climate crisis risk, but the maps looked different when we looked at them then. I remember parts of the country turning increasingly burgundy (hot, hurricane-y) when we adjusted by decade, while Oregon’s Willamette Valley remained a light green throughout.
We were sold.
We called ourselves climate change movers
Initially, our shorthand was “pioneer spirit,” thinking it suggested that we were resilient dreamers. But eventually, as more and more Americans woke up to the perils of the weather, we called ourselves “climate change movers.”
Oregon isn’t that great a place for people with climate anxiety, by the way. Just a few years later, the New Yorker published a story quoting the Pacific Northwest FEMA director as saying that with a coming earthquake expected to be 7.8 or higher on the Richter scale, everything west of I-5 “will be toast.”
That’s a crippling idea to live with, but as a newcomer, it didn’t take me long to see the entire state as one big man vs. wild story. The same cold, dramatic ocean coastlines, massive forests, and snow-capped peaks that call to the people here bring almost daily stories of them getting swept away by the waves or lured by a stunning vista to their doom off some pretty mountain path. Climate and geography are bedfellows.
And those decade-and-a-half-old climate maps? They didn’t indicate what we have now — extended droughts and wildfires so close you can smell them in your bedroom.
We fell in love with the idea of it anyway.
Moving is a great moment to redefine your next era, so in the wake of Obama’s first election, as the housing crisis gathered steam and financial institutions collapsed, we moved to a 1910 farmhouse in Salem, where I decided I would become a sassy blogger who ragged on our new hometown. Soon, I had a newspaper column called “Desperately Seeking Salem,” where I spouted all the ways this place was failing me while calling out a few things I loved.
This got me clout but only a trickle of friends. With no job and too much time on my hands, we decided to have a baby, and I was soon alone at home with my child and a keyboard.
We moved again within Oregon
During the first years, Oregon confirmed many of my ideas: the stealth wealth of millionaires in vests, plaid, and beanies and the Tolkien-esque landscapes. I also discovered new markers of place to care about, like nice drivers, so much undiscovered, and midcentury modern architecture.
But I sucked at being new in town. It was the worst I ever was as a human. I’ve never been lonelier. At home with a baby, with no jobs available in my field, and still seeing the place in terms of what it offered me, I fell deep into despair.
My husband had a non-compete with his employer and was ready to start his own business, so I vowed to do it differently when we moved again three years later to McMinnville, a wine country town about an hour outside Portland.
The things that call you to move to a place aren’t necessarily what keeps you there. I had already visited McMinnville during its quirky UFO Parade and thought living in wine country sounded sexy. We bought a business in McMinnville, got a house loan, and had one day to buy a house.
The climate crisis got worse
Over time, I learned what really keeps me planted, like the inspired state legislation known as the Urban Growth Boundary, a land use law requiring Oregon cities to reach a specific population density before expanding into neighboring farmlands and forests.
Meanwhile, the climate crisis got worse.
By September 2020, our first wildfire year, the air was so thick with smoke I brought our chickens inside, I had gotten much better at gauging risk. We had more information (though information isn’t always a balm). We had Go Bags and a stock of water.
By September 2021, another year of grape harvests ruined by smoke and people displaced from wildfires south and east of us, my urge to flee settled.
Our climate predictions are always changing. When Zillow announced it would include climate risk information on listed homes, I was curious instead of paranoid.
In the summer, our kids run in a pack of 10 and stage plays on the front porch. When our first son became a teenager, he roamed the entire town without a cell phone. We have never surveilled them because an entire community is doing so. My husband has a four-minute commute. I’ve worked from home for 15 years now. I don’t even drink wine.
I don’t think we’re special — climate moving is a tale as old as time. But I did learn that once I chose to invest in a place, I stopped seeing it in terms of its amenities. Once I insisted on creating roots, I looked for room to create what was missing. Once I knew how to make relationships outside easy things like school and workplaces, I knew I could do it anywhere.
Once more people woke up to the climate crisis, we felt like we were in it together. That’s where we are. The danger is always in the air, but it is not the air I am breathing — for now.
Emily Grosvenor is the author of the book Find Yourself At Home. She writes the design Substack ★ I would do it differently. ★
