On the couch by my office window, reading Virginia Woolf, I imagine that I can conjure up the ethos of her era in the scene on the street outside: tires sluice along wet pavement, tree trunks gleam black, their bare limbs flashing in headlights, while from below the horizon, sunlight still stripes the sky with bands of yellow-gold, violet and smoke. From this I evoke a remote facsimile of turn-of-the-century England, with its middle-class heroes hurrying through a morass of London foot-and-horse traffic to late tea at home, where an orderly domestic mood conveys reverence for culture, morality, community. Of course, my version expunges the squalor of a rigid class society and Victorian narrow-mindedness.

These fantasies somehow enhance my awareness of what contributes to my own vantage of grace: I live in a country at peace, in a prosperous town, on a historic street with great neighbors, and a husband who supports my dreams. I am healthy, educated, and endowed with sufficient leisure to enjoy these elements of fortune. Thank God, I can recognize blessings when I see them.

Exercising the uniquely human power of mental time travel, I recall sitting in this very spot twelve months ago, watching similar winter sunsets, but in a sharply contrasting state of mind. Depression had me wallowing impotently in worries over my prolonged joblessness. I had exhausted all prospects for finding work—downscaled my expectations and still turned up nothing but retail slots at six-and-a-quarter an hour, with a commute to eat up even that pittance. Discouragement had translated itself into a bottle of wine every night.

What has changed over this year? Not so much: I’m still an unemployed academic, left behind when the bottom fell out of Russian studies, post-Gorbachev, but my spirits have lifted in the context of selling a few articles to the City Paper and seeing my satires performed by the local chapter of Billionaires for Bush. I almost believe again in the usefulness of my skills: writing, teaching, interacting with creative people. I need to look back at last year’s journal to appreciate the full spiral of these twelve months. I must remember that dreary moods are never far away. The past decade has dealt me some major stressors in the form of divorce and job loss; since I became an orphan in my early twenties, these "co-morbidity factors" make mental health a fragile, but essential state that I need to cultivate in every way I can.

Last night while I puttered in the kitchen, Jaak asked off-handedly, "If you could live in any state in the country, which one would you choose?" Considering how we both struggle with seasonal mood disorders, I suggested southern Arizona. When he added the qualification "outside the Southwest," I said, "Maybe the Northwest. Away from the coast and out of the rain—Montana or Idaho …"

Pouncing on this, he asked, "How about ten miles outside Moscow, Idaho?"

"I’ve heard Moscow is a nice town. But what’s ten miles outside it?"

The very pertinent answer: Pullman, Washington, where the School of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University (WSU) has invited Jaak to apply for a job. He obviously thinks it’s a nice place to be—Pullman and Moscow form a single, two-campus community, with a state line down the middle. Of course, it’s flattering to be invited, and he wants to throw his hat in the ring. But does he really want to move to the far side of the continent? Hard telling, when the opportunity remains a figment of pure theory.

This news leaves me as confused as if the sun had changed course mid-sky and headed back down in the east. Stopped in my tracks, I feel dismay mingled with an unsettling excitement. Didn’t I just rededicate myself to blooming where I’m planted (that is, where I’ve been stuck in Lodi, here in northern Ohio for fifteen professionally disappointing years)? All I need is an outsized distraction, now that I’ve promised to focus on the positive, the flourishing personal side of life and the fun, if non-remunerative, projects I’ve gotten underway.

But the allure of uncharted possibility 2500 miles away is pulling me off-center. The unknown has reared its enchanting head.

My old friend Sarah’s eldest kid attends the University of Idaho in Moscow, and she has raved about the landscape in those parts: the high, rolling Palouse, a remarkable terrain, where wheat and lentils grow on sloping ground that northern Ohio can scarcely imagine. A hypnotic geography, she says, unlike any other.

Jaak referred me to a website on the region. When I saw photographs of the Palouse, a long-unvisited childhood memory came back to me. We traveled to the Northwest several summers, when We Were The Millers and there were four of us—the idyllic Family of Origin that haunts my oldest recollections. But what I remember from our trips is not the spectacular landscapes of Yellowstone or the Teton Range. Instead, an obscure corner, whose name I cannot resurrect, comes into focus because of the feeling it aroused. It was an overnight stop on the way to some more important destination.

In the evening we took a walk on the undeveloped prairie out back of our motel. The land was arid but not parched, the grass about mid-shin on a girl of ten years. We climbed a gentle hill, one of many, and I clearly remember standing there while a powerful sense came over me of being at home in this place I’d never visited before. This was not because of the arresting countryside—it was a modest spot compared to the National Parks. What I felt seemed, rather, a premonition of destiny: as if I had found my own best place, where I belonged and was meant to spend my life.

We usually hiked two-by-two. My dad was a quick walker, while Mom preferred to stroll, so Malcolm and I took turns with each of our parents, getting one of them to ourselves for a stretch, then trading off. On that mysterious prairie, I circled my "power spot," then sat down until my mother caught up or my dad doubled back (can’t remember which), and I told them that I would "come back and live here someday." They seemed to take this decision with surprised approval.

Of all our family travels, I recollect no comparable experience. The notion reeks of romantic indulgence, but I can’t help wondering if the Palouse is anything like that unknown hillside where I belonged as a child.

The rolling hills of the Palouse region.

Also recurring in my thoughts these days is a dream recorded in my journal some fifteen years ago: from an impossibly high vantage, I watched Montana’s profile fill and overflow with water. The image felt so sublime and gripping that my dream mind repeated it in quick succession: "Did you like that? I’ll do it again." Explanations of the prehistoric "mega-flood" are all over PBS lately, a torrent that burst out of glacial lake Missoula to wash across Idaho and scour inland Washington, dropping boulders miles from their place of origin.

Maybe the inland Northwest was already calling me fifteen years ago … ?

Lo and behold, both universities in the Pullman-Moscow area offer graduate degrees in English, something I’ve toyed with pursuing since my Russian Lit career went belly-up. This morning, on Jaak’s encouragement, I looked into applying—just to scope out the options. As luck would have it, the deadline is a feasible two weeks off, and GRE exams (which I cannot face after all these years) are not required.

Alongside the above-mentioned wild ideas about the Palouse, these prospects bring on a great and beguiling temptation to imagine the hand of wisdom, finally reaching for me, moving me along some rightful path …

Recent dreams of travel to Russia:

For reasons not revealed, I adopt or otherwise "take on" two toddlers and a newborn infant! One or more of these children is handicapped, in some uncertain way. Also, I am preparing for a trip to the old Soviet Union, planning to take my new family along, in spite of all anticipated inconveniences—arduous shopping, no disposable diapers, shoulder-to-shoulder mass transit. I am remarkably undaunted by my burdens.

And the next night: I’m traveling to Russia with Ruth (my daughter from my first marriage, now twenty-three years old). Things are chaotic. We must obtain visas from surly officials, and I worry that Ruth won’t fill out her application properly, causing untold setbacks. I keep sorting through and throwing out junk from an overpacked suitcase, all the while fussing with a basket for Tiger to ride in. Yes, my pet cat is coming along—-clearly a hint of traveling to the American Moscow, whither she must accompany me, if I wind up going.

Both dreams take place in a series of tiny backwater airports.

In fact, I did take Ruth to Moscow, the Russian Moscow, back in the days of the Soviet Union, when her father landed a fellowship for dissertation research. Caring for a three-year-old, standing in those eternal lines, negotiating Kafkaesque bureaucracies—that was stressful, all right. Comparable to relocating cross-country in middle-age?

Nonetheless, my confused desires keep seeking entry visas to Moscow.

"Night…succeeds to night.
The winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally,
evenly, with indefatigable fingers…" —To the Lighthouse

Basically the same tired song around here: Alternately happy about staging my play with the Billionaires for Bush and wishing it would all dematerialize, with major roles still unfilled and people skipping rehearsal; excited about Jaak’s prospects at WSU and simultaneously anxious about the changes they would bring upon us.

On the up-side, Jaak and I have entered a phase of tender closeness, now that we’ve resolved misunderstandings that plagued us last fall. Often I become aware of a deep agape-type love for him that seems new, or newly conscious, after these twelve years we’ve been together. We both feel strongly intrigued by the Northwest option. But when I speak of misgivings—moving so far from my daughter, the unavoidable stress and strain, my traditional difficulty adjusting to new places—he shows an attentive understanding. This touches me. It is what counts.

And so—the remarkable confluence of fates shows signs of coming to pass: the director at University of Idaho called on the phone to say I’ve been accepted to the Master’s program. And the chairwoman of Jaak’s hiring committee confided that he is at the top of her short list, will certainly be interviewed, and just might get the offer.

Add to my catalogue of mystical attractions compiled back in February, a routine Sarah and I worked up in high school, one of those absurdist skits we’d perform for any and everyone: Crying passionately for Grushenka, we took turns proclaiming our intention to depart for "Moscow in ze morning!" Then, with a cavalier flourish, we would each toss the end of a neck scarf over one shoulder so it wound up covering our whole face. (Very much an in-joke, based on loose impressions of The Brothers Karamazov.)

Could my first career as an underemployed Russianist turn out to be ironic preparation for life in Moscow, Idaho? Amazing! Will it come to pass? The prospect has become so insidiously attractive in my mind that I must resist irrational exuberance and practice openness to the future, resisting the enticements of rose-colored glasses.

Before sleep these evenings, I often call out to God as a mother, like Malcolm and I used to call for our mother to return with an extra kiss and wish for sweet dreams, after she’d already tucked us into bed at night. I long to believe that some higher power has a use and even plans for me. I can relate to the fundamentalists’ conviction that "He" takes a personal interest, although this conception of the divine strikes me as improbable in our vast and complex universe. Still, calling for a mother God feels natural and not entirely unrealistic—if my brother and I really couldn’t get to sleep and kept calling long enough, she sometimes came.

Maybe my parents took me to that special hillside, where I felt so strangely at home, to help me, all these years later, find a way to accept the sweeping change of moving out west. Snap out of it—that’s magical thinking. But it feels like real magic, inklings of that different kind of knowledge that dreams seem to provide.

I’ve been reading a book by a woman who just might be my mentor if I wind up in the Master’s program in Moscow. Set in the rural Northwest, her story imparts a reality to my image of the region: a grander, more beautiful face of nature than I’ve grown used to here in Ohio, but also the raw edge where culture’s comforts drop away and the WILD owes nothing to human expectation. We Midwesterners exterminated our bears generations ago, but the danger of encountering a grizzly remains a stark fact out there. Then, too, there’s the cutting surface of culture itself—the heedless destruction of nature, where she still appears rich and limitless, and the arrogance of people determined to wrench a livelihood from her bounty, and damn the consequences, and damn the treehuggers, and damn the wolves and salmon. These conflicts are good to keep in mind as I imagine life in a picturesque town nestled in sight of forested mountains. Also a reality check: my recent foray onto Realtor.com, where the listings of housing in Moscow and environs consist mainly of sprawl-boxes with great hulking SUV ports smack in the front—exactly what I hate and would despise to live in.

… and to think I’ve written eleven pages today but haven’t yet mentioned that Jaak is now scheduled to interview for the vet school job at WSU—! He will travel to Pullman for the last four days of this month. Our grand adventure just might lie in store—

Remarkable how Jaak’s description of the little airports in Pullman and Lewiston resembles the dreams I had last winter of traveling to Russia—the living-room-sized waiting area, funky secondhand gift booth, personnel of three or four people who cover all jobs by turns. It sounds as though Jaak really liked the region; he keeps talking about rivers, buttes, trails through the Palouse, and—not least of all—a friendly atmosphere among interesting colleagues. Clearly, he wants the offer, even if the job itself might mean more work than he needs. Now we enter a new type of waiting.

Meanwhile I’m gardening as though we’ll never leave our little green yard in Wood County. I’ve put in lots of Oak Openings natives: scaly blazing star, Culver’s root, butterfly bush, and Joe Pye weed. The birds love it. Must bear in mind: there are no cardinals or blue jays west of the Continental Divide.

… I was counting on good news from Washington State to bolster my slumping summer mood. Instead we remain in limbo—no offer, and Jaak has begun to doubt that he was the top candidate, after all. Till we know for certain, it’s hard to make any sort of plans. Guess I had a few too many dreams riding on that long shot.

We got the call—Jaak has the job, and the Northwest can be our home if we want it!

But of course, we couldn’t rejoice at this long-awaited news. Right away Jaak said he’d begun to feel relieved thinking someone else had gotten the offer and let him off the hook. He even made noises to the effect that his applying was mainly my idea, or happened at my urging, so I could go for the English degree. Good thing he soon conceded this was ridiculous. I think he really is glad—just daunted by the effort entailed.

It’s like we’ve traded places since February: now I am the one who’s entirely thrilled, while he reminds me that we might yet decide not to accept the offerings of fate.

We sat out back in my garden and Ruth stopped by. While we shared the news, a pair of enormous dragonflies circled above us, flycatching. I rarely see them in our yard, so it seemed special that they joined us for this occasion. This morning, contrary to practice these hot days, Jaak opened the upstairs blinds and the first thing I saw was a yellow rhubarb leaf, shaped like a lacy heart, rising above the rest of the patch, smack in the corner of the back fence.

Another dream: I have arrived in some part of the Northwest. A woman whom I respect but do not entirely trust (a cross between my former Russian mentor and my hoped-for future one)—gives me an assignment: to hitchhike down a seemingly endless stretch of two-lane road through her remote home county. I am expected to eventually arrive at her old homestead, although I don’t know where it is! The land is stark but beautiful—vast, open, high—a place "beyond the dip of bell." I hesitate: the trip is too dangerous, the instructions vague and open-ended. Will the woman’s family be at the homeplace if I reach it? How will I know the spot when I find it? And what’s next, after this tricky initiation?

I am young, in my twenties, and eager to learn, but I linger at a funky old motel in the small town that is my jumping-off point. My mentor, this strange woman, is here, too. She advises me to pick out some light reading, a good mystery, for my journey. There are several small rooms of used books at the motel. Glancing out of windows, I see it’s pitch dark and feel afraid that my woman is sending me off after nightfall to hitchhike a lonesome road. But when I tell her it is much too late to start, she shows me—the sky outside is still light. This happens twice: I see a window, dark as if it’s painted black, but when my mentor points out the door, it is a bright summer evening.

Finally I set out in this evening light. On a curve of road, before I leave the town, an old station wagon stops to pick me up. Inside I see a classic American family—white, middle-class, Mom, Dad, brother, and sister. After climbing in, I see that it is my own parents in the front seat. Now that I have joined them, the kids in back become Malcolm and me. I realize the station wagon looks like the one we wrecked in Colorado, but for the moment we are a happy family, off on a fun vacation.

I do not go far with these people, however. After a few miles, they let me out and turn off down a gravel lane. Soon I catch a ride with an amiable trucker, and we drive the narrow road till the dream fades away.

Breakfast at Kermit’s this morning with Jaak. Amidst our conversation, I told him that my anxiety in the face of change is receding before a growing sense of lightness, gladness in the thought of going west. If nothing else, I foresee an escape from routines, from my own pitfalls, discouragement, spinning wheels. New beginnings offer the glittering prospect of entering a void of uncommitted time and shucking off clutter, at least for a sweet brief moment before new clutter rushes to fill the vacuum.

Jaak seems to know exactly what I’m getting at, even though the new job means plenty of imposed structure for him. He has fought off the reluctance he felt on first getting the offer, remembering how he decided back in February to go all out and land this job. We’ve done our best to balance allure against realism; when we visit Moscow and Pullman next week, we’ll get an idea how well the two outlooks can mesh. Too much stress, or too good to refuse? Must keep in mind that we are blessed to face this dilemma, blessed by the riches of unknown potential …

Editor’s note: Anesa and Jaak relocated to the Palouse in January 2006.

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