In 1985, when our children were 2 and 4 years old, we received a call to serve a congregation in Boise, Idaho. The process of receiving that call had been interesting. Children entering our family had shifted several dynamics. Whereas we previously had job-shared a single full-time position which gave us time to pursue other part-time work, having children at home meant that we needed the other half of our time to care for the young ones. Our growing family was also consuming more. We had grown more quickly than the capacity of the congregations we were serving to increase our pay. We began to consider a move to a new call. One thing that we wanted to find was a single congregation. Although we had really loved serving our small parish with two congregations, the dynamics of keeping two separate congregations served had been a bit of a challenge. We decided to limit the geography of our search to the Pacific Northwest, allowing our profiles to circulate in only three United Church of Christ Conferences: the Montana-Northern Wyoming Conference, the Pacific Northwest Conference, and the Central Pacific Conference. That meant that congregations in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and a bit of northern Wyoming were able to consider us as possible candidates to become their pastor.

We had conversations with a few congregations, but the only one where the conversations proceeded to the point of interview was with the congregation that called us in Boise, Idaho. On our interview trip and again when we were presented as candidates for the position, we drove from our North Dakota home to Rapid City, South Dakota where we took a flight to Salt Lake City and from there to Boise. Both trips were in the spring when the weather in North and South Dakota was cold with snow and the weather in Boise was delightful. Boise sits at the base of the mountains, so we could see the ski hill from the city and we could sense the difference in the climate. The lilacs were blooming in Boise when it would still be months before they appeared in North Dakota. Meanwhile people were still skiing on the mountain. Folks told us they mowed their lawn and went skiing on the same day. It seemed magical to us.

After we accepted the call to serve the congregation, our first road trip to Boise was when we drove a U-haul, filled with our household goods, followed by our car on a tow dolly behind. The trip was an eye-opener for me. My previous experience with Idaho had been confined to driving across the northern part of the state, between Missoula, Montana and Spokane, Washington. The state is narrow up north and the drive across that part of the state is scenic and relatively short. It can be traversed in a few hours. On our trip to Boise, we got up after sleeping in a motel in Idaho Falls and it took us most of the day to drive from there to Boise. Our summer trip in a truck without air conditioning took us across the dry desert climate of southern Idaho. The trip seemed dry and hot and the land seemed flat and empty. For years afterward, I half-joked that I felt like I had been tricked. I thought Idaho was beautiful mountains and found myself moving to the desert.

Although Boise isn’t technically a desert, it is the driest place we have lived in our lives. Average rainfall is around 11 inches per year. It is the northern edge of what is known as the Great Basin, a unique geographical feature that includes all but the southern tip of Nevada, about half of Utah, a tiny bit of eastern California, and stretches north into souther Idaho and southeast Oregon. The great basin is a unique climatic zone where water enters by rainfall. The few creeks and rivers that run into the basin from the high country that surrounds it do not escape. Because Boise is just north of the Snake River, which flows west and then north and drains into the Columbia, it technically is not in the Great Basin. There are no rivers that naturally flow out of the Great Basin. It is a place where water enters but cannot escape. Mountains and other features mean that the way water leaves the Great Basin is evaporation. Once the area was part of a great inland sea and what is left are lakes that rise and fall with changing weather patterns. Salt Lake in Utah is the most prominent example. Water flows in and leaves the lake by surface evaporation leaving minerals behind.

Now, decades later, we have moved to a place that is climactically nearly the opposite. We now live in Cascadia. Where as the Great Basin is low ground surrounded by mountains, the center of Cascadia is high ground. The Cascade Mountains are the high point of our climactic region. Mount Baker, which we can see when we drive to our son’s farm, rises to nearly 11,000 feet. We live at about 80 feet above sea level. That means that water enters our climactic zone from the sky as rain or snow and exists by rivers and creeks and streams that flow to the ocean. Where we now live there is flowing water everywhere. Our neighborhood has a settling pond in its center filled by the rain that falls onto our streets. From that pond there is a stream, constantly flowing into Terrell Creek that empties into the Ocean. Unlike the sandy, porous soil of the high desert in the Great Basin, our soils are rich and loamy over beds of clay which hold lots of moisture. When I dig fence post holes at the farm, they have water in the bottom. The water table is only a couple of feet below the ground in the winter. Unlike the beautiful features of the Great Basin shaped by wind, ours is a land shaped by water. There are plenty of places that get more rainfall than we do. At 39 inches a year we are close to average for the US, but it is a lot more than other places where we have lived.

Like the move to Boise, our move to Cascadia is a move to a new place with a new kind of weather. It will take us even more years to adjust to the wonders of this new place. We continue to learn.