![[IMAGE] Adam Engst](adamengst.jpg)
The author with the "Adam Engst action figure" he was presented at Macworld Expo last summer in New York City.
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They say you can never go home again. That's true, after
the fashion attributed to the paradoxical Greek philosopher
Heraclitus, who quoted by Plato as saying that you could not step
into the same river twice.
But even acknowledging that Tonya and I
are no longer the same people we were ten years ago and that
Ithaca is no longer exactly the same place we left in 1991, like
Homer's Odysseus, we are nonetheless headed back to Ithaca,
located at the base of Cayuga Lake in upstate New York. Hopefully,
our trip and arrival will be a bit easier than Odysseus's was.
Tonya and I moved to Seattle in 1991, just two years after
graduating from college and just a year after starting TidBITS.
In many ways, we grew up in Seattle, both personally and
professionally, and Seattle itself has aged over those ten years
as well, though in not entirely pleasant ways. The attractive
aspects of living here - our good friends and the great natural
beauty of the area foremost among them - have started to pale
against the disadvantages, most notably abysmal traffic and the
overall effort of living in a large metropolitan area. But dealing
with the downsides was a decision we could make for ourselves -
until Tristan came along. Suddenly we found ourselves literally
strapping a small person into the car against his will for 20 to
60 minutes of driving at a time. As we looked into the future, we
saw that this was neither how we wanted to live our lives, nor how
we wanted Tristan to live his.
We could live almost anywhere we could get an Internet connection,
a dizzying level of freedom that has always succumbed to the
generally enjoyable inertia of living near Seattle. As Tonya and I
discussed the possibility of moving while walking along the shores
of Lake Washington on a brilliantly sunny New Year's Day, we
realized that the practicalities of life pointed toward an answer.
As much as we enjoy exploring a new area, learning its geography
and history, meeting new people, and trying to understand what
makes the place unique, at this point in our lives, we're
uninterested in figuring out the details. We don't want to spend
time learning the fastest route to the airport, where to renew our
driver's licenses, or whether there's a geographically and
temperamentally suitable running club. Even more important, we've
learned the importance of a community support structure when
children are involved, and we couldn't see how some random town or
city could compete even with Seattle, where we already have lots
of friends, though no family.
The answer suddenly became clear, because there's only one place
in the world - Ithaca - where we not only already know how to
live, but where we also have a built-in family support structure.
We both grew up in Ithaca, attended Cornell University, and lived
in the area afterwards. There was little we didn't like about
living in Ithaca - it's a gorgeous physical setting, the populace
is educated and thoughtful, and the interpersonal networks run
deep. In fact, the main reason we left in 1991 was because Tonya
had a great job offer in Seattle. Plus, on a less practical level,
the heroes of fairy tales always leave home to seek their
fortunes, a meme that has wormed its way into the American pioneer
psyche.
Well, we found our fortune in Seattle - it turns out to have been
the growth of TidBITS, a best-selling series of books, a small
role in the rise of the Internet, our many close friends, the
chance to live high up on a mountain looking out on the Olympic
Mountains, and most recently, Tristan. But having found our
fortune, it's now time to return home. TidBITS and Tristan will
accompany us to Ithaca, of course (though our primary servers will
remain in the Seattle area at digital.forest). We'll miss our
friends, but the Internet will ensure they don't seem so far away
in between visits.
We continue to integrate the Internet into our lives where
appropriate, and I hope to write more soon about the different
ways we utilized the Internet and our Macs in the process of
moving. Plus, it's safe to say that some of the negatives of
living in a small town - the lack of a great bookstore, for
instance - will fall away in large part with a liberal dose of
Internet connectivity, which should in turn help us focus on those
aspects of life we feel are the most important.
Adam C. Engst is the publisher of TidBITS, one of the oldest and largest Internet-based newsletters, distributed every week to hundreds of thousands of readers. Adam has also written and co-authored a number of excellent books about the Internet and computing. This article originally appeared, in slightly different form, in TidBITS.