In 2016, my wife and I did something a lot of people talk about doing but never actually do. We packed up our lives and left the Portland area for North Idaho.

At the time, I joked that we were escaping the People’s Republic of Portland for the safer pastures of conservative Idaho. There was humor behind the comment, but there was also quite a bit of truth.

We weren’t running away from everything about Oregon. There are things I still like about the place. It’s a beautiful part of the country, we had memories there, and we knew some wonderful people. But somewhere along the way, Portland stopped feeling like the place where I wanted to spend the next chapter of my life.

Part of it was political. I won’t pretend otherwise. I watched the direction Portland and Oregon were heading and increasingly felt like I was living in a place whose values didn’t match mine. I didn’t expect everyone around me to agree with me, but I started wondering why I was choosing to live someplace where I felt increasingly out of step with the culture around me.

Safety was part of it too. So was quality of life. As my wife and I started thinking seriously about where we wanted to live, the question became less about what we wanted to leave and more about what we wanted to find.

Then We Found North Idaho

Coeur d’Alene and North Idaho offered something that was becoming harder for us to find in Portland.

It felt comfortable.

Some of that was obviously the scenery. You don’t have to work very hard to fall in love with North Idaho. There is the lake, the mountains, the trees and four very distinct seasons. Even after living here for ten years, I still occasionally find myself driving somewhere, looking around and thinking, I actually get to live here.

But I’ve traveled enough to know that beautiful scenery doesn’t necessarily make someplace home. I’ve visited some spectacular places where I had absolutely no desire to unpack a moving truck.

North Idaho was different.

I liked the pace. I liked the people. I liked walking into a restaurant or local business and having an actual conversation with someone. I liked the fact that relationships seemed to matter. Over time, I started running into people I knew around town, and those casual conversations led to friendships, business relationships, community involvement and eventually things I never could have predicted when we first arrived.

That’s probably the part of moving here I underestimated the most.

I’ve spent much of my adult life building businesses, working with organizations, meeting people and starting things. I enjoy connecting people. North Idaho turned out to be fertile ground for that because there is still a strong sense that community isn’t just a word somebody puts on a brochure.

And yes, conservative Idaho was part of the attraction.

We deliberately chose a state whose general political culture was closer to our own. That doesn’t mean I need my neighbors to vote the way I do or agree with me about everything. Some of the most interesting conversations I’ve had are with people who don’t agree with me. But there is a difference between demanding agreement and simply wanting to live somewhere that feels compatible with the way you see the world.

Idaho felt compatible.

It still does.

Somewhere Along the Way, It Became Home

The funny thing about moving is that you don’t really know whether you’ve made the right decision when the moving truck arrives.

You can research taxes, crime rates, housing prices, weather and politics. You can visit several times. You can drive around neighborhoods and imagine yourself living there. But visiting a place and actually building a life there are two completely different things.

You have to give it time.

You have to experience your first winter. You have to figure out where you like to eat breakfast. You have to find the back roads you prefer to the main roads. You have to meet people, get involved and slowly stop thinking of yourself as someone who moved here.

At some point, you simply become someone who lives here.

That’s what happened to me.

We came to North Idaho partly because of what we wanted to leave behind. We wanted a safer environment, a different political climate, a slower pace and a place that seemed better suited to the life we wanted to build.

But that’s not why I’ve stayed.

I’ve stayed because of the people I’ve met, the friendships I’ve developed, the organizations I’ve become involved with, the scenery I still haven’t grown tired of and the sense of belonging that developed somewhere along the way.

Ten years ago, North Idaho was where we decided to move.

Today, it’s simply home.

And I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be.