How long does it take someone to truly absorb their adopted home? A few months, several years, perhaps immediately? It’s easy to move to a place you like, to know you’ll eventually bond to it; so what is with that weird period of denial, of having to get used to? Maybe it’s missing the old place, and maybe that’s true for some, but in my case it was just good old healthy cynicism.
Seattle’s a great place to go if you want to access your inner hippie. If you think you know a lot of things but want to give it a test and need a proving ground, I recommend you try the fertile volcanic soil of the Great Northwest. That’s what I did. I’d worked at a little Natural Foods store in New York for four years and thought I was a hotshot, a real Granola. But I got schooled in Seatown, that’s for sure.