Learning to adjust and carry on with life

We camped last week in Sequoia National Park; it’s typically hot there this time of year, and by the time the sun was up for an hour we were looking for respite from the heat. We traversed the section of Kaweah River that runs through the campground, but backto-back seasons without melting snowpacks have left the creeks depressingly low. Our quest repeatedly offered up only skeletal remains of swimming holes. Eventually we did find a sweet spot still deep enough to dunk, and we spent much of our time there. As it was the only decent place to cool off, all the other campers were there too, and my daughter befriended a girl from a neighboring site. In the way that children’s friendships do, they brought our families together, and in our communal space we traded food and swapped stories. Our neighbors were Tibetan and the grandmother, Tenzin, shared how she fled to Nepal — escaping cultural and economic repression — when the Chinese occupied Tibet in 1950. She immigrated to the US with her adult children in the 90s.

I’m writing curriculum for a digitized tour of Angel Island, a place often referred to as the Ellis Island of the West. Immigrants sailing across the Pacific were detained there between 1910-1940, and I’ve read dozens of their testimonies. For context I’ve also read more current stories from Central and South America and the Middle East. Common threads of these personal histories illustrate the deep impacts of immigration- in particular the difficulty surrounding the choice to move, in desperation or hope, leaving behind everything one has ever known.

As a child I loved the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder-the pioneer girl who fictionalized the experiences of her family leaving Wisconsin to head West in the 1870s. My father read the books to me, and of course I related most to Laura and her thrill of exploration as the family migrated across the states and territories looking for a place to land. In reading the books aloud to my own daughter, my sensibilities re-aligned with Ma, uprooting herself and her children time and again in pursuit of a better life. I cannot imagine the strength that must have taken.

My own people came here from various parts of Europe, mostly in the late 1800s and largely for economic opportunity. I appreciate those journeys that granted me birth in the US- in many ways a ticket to personal freedom and plentiful resources- and while I love to travel, I’ve always been glad to come home to Butte County. Immigration- even migrationisn’t part of a reality I’ve seriously considered. Now however, sometimes, I wonder. Our waterways are parched, the ridge is burning again, and social tensions feel as heated and toxic as the air outside. I worry for the future here- in Chico and in the US. It doesn’t look or feel like the same place I grew up; it’s not where I’d expected to raise my child.

I suppose, though, that it’s often the case that circumstances don’t meet expectations, and somehow we adjust and carry on. Tenzin deeply misses a home she’ll never return to, and yet she speaks of it with a warm and easy smile. Ma and Pa Ingalls

built and moved, and built and moved, enough to write nine books about it- and Ma’s familiar refrain was, “All’s well that ends well.” My great-great Uncle Gus, a Swedish immigrant who single-handedly cleared a stoney forty acres on Neal Road in the 1920s, had to sell off most of that land when the irrigation district levied a per-acre water tax in the 30s. Despite all the work in vain, my uncle was never bitter. I’m reminded to take heed of the grace of perspective, and count my blessings. Nowhere on earth is free from social or environmental concerns, and I’m lucky to live in a time and place where it’s possible to hug both a giant sequoia and a Tibetan grandmother on the same day. Gifts to be grateful for indeed.