Private Lives: Personal essays on the news of the world and the news of our lives.
A few weeks ago, after a Pilates class in a studio above my former office, I rolled up a mat while the teacher spoke to another student, someone who seemed new in town — a potential friend. Lingering near the exercise bikes, I pretended to stretch, and then edged in to the conversation.
“So,” I said, “what brings you to Hudson?”
What brings you to Hudson? It is the question that I have asked myself ever since I moved from San Francisco to upstate New York at the end of 2012. Even longtime residents ask it over and over. Hudson, N.Y., like many “cool” towns, has been changing in recent years, buoyed by an influx of city folk priced out or just tired of urban life. But living in a small town, even one with fancy coffee shops, competing yoga studios and the patina of all things Brooklyn, is complicated.
For me, the easiest answer was work. My boyfriend, Patrick, and I moved to Hudson — population 6,600, two hours by train from New York City — so that I could work at a media start-up called Modern Farmer.
But the decision cut much deeper than that. For 10 years, Patrick and I had bopped around the Bay Area, individually and then together, changing jobs and apartments. We kept up with our expenses, but barely. Finally, we came to the realization that our apartment in San Francisco, underpriced at $2,400 a month — plus $100 for parking — would be our last. We couldn’t buy, we couldn’t move, we were stuck. And we were getting older. There was nowhere to grow.
So when I was offered the Modern Farmer job in September 2012, I jumped at it. My friend’s Hudson house had been a refuge during previous trips to the East Coast. I had wandered around the town’s wide main drag, Warren Street, which had a CVS, two coffee shops, an apothecary, an animal shelter with kittens in the window, a farm-to-table diner (Grazin’) and an inordinate number of antique shops. Sure, stuffy weekenders clogged the sidewalks, but so did loud teenagers, groups of women in head scarves and young parents.
And weirdos. So many weirdos, beardos, a guy on a unicycle. A woman in a motorized wheelchair clutching a small dog wearing sunglasses.
“This,” I told Patrick, “is possible.”
In November 2012, I flew out to start work. Patrick, an investigator for the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, followed a few months later. We bought a house for maybe one-fifth of what we would have paid in San Francisco, less than what my parents paid for my childhood home in rural Pennsylvania.
We were betting on the fact that we wouldn’t be alone in fleeing the big city for a small town. Urban living has become unthinkably expensive for many middle-class creative types. A 2010 study from the Journal of Economic Geography found a trifecta of reasons some rural areas have grown instead of shrunk: the creative class, entrepreneurial activity and outdoor amenities. In 2012, a University of Minnesota research fellow called the influx of 30-to-40-somethings into rural Minnesota towns a “brain gain” — flipping the conventional wisdom on the exodus from the boonies to the big city.
We didn’t imagine that we were pioneering some crazy new way of life. Upstate New York has been attracting formerly urban folk for decades. We just wanted to be a little ahead of the curve, give ourselves some financial space to reimagine our lives.
Patrick, in particular, had a dream. Hunched over a notebook in his off-hours in San Francisco, he had written the draft of a novel and wanted to work on it full time. Shockingly, our plan worked, at least on the surface, for the first six months. Last August, Patrick sold his novel (with the help of an agent whom we met in Hudson, no less). Modern Farmer also fared better than I could have dreamed: The online buzz was strong and the print magazine was on its way to winning a National Magazine Award. I worked in a beautiful office, lived in an adorable house, commuted three blocks to work.
In the rush to start the website and magazine, I had almost forgotten that I now lived in a tiny town. But I had neglected some factors in my confident math. Like, what life would actually be like. Also, the winter.
In a start-up, it’s easy for work to dominate one’s personal life. In my case, managing a small team in a small town erased the distinctions altogether. After work, the staff in Hudson’s only amusement seemed to be bouncing around the town’s handful of bars. Besides my colleagues, I had few actual friends.
For the first time since college, I became depressed. Listless, I spent long hours lying in bed. Taking showers for warmth seemed like a legitimate hobby. Walking in the snow to and from the office was the only time I was outdoors and also the only time that I was alone. And when I walked, I walked in the middle of the street. There were rarely any cars with which to share the road. It felt like living in a snow globe.
Patrick and I became lonely together. He was experiencing creative growth, but it came at the expense of social contact. Even the house became fraught, as our home was now Patrick’s office.
Maybe things would have been different if we had done a better job of integrating into the community. But while meeting people happened easily enough, making friends — laying down roots — proved difficult. I had taken for granted the networks running beneath my life in San Francisco and New York, the former co-workers and college friends and ex-paramours, and now, in Hudson, my connection to the community seemed only geographical. Often, it just wasn’t enough to cement relationships. Patrick and I must have made plans at least half a dozen times to go bowling with one couple before giving up; it wasn’t their fault, they ran a busy bakery and we could never seem to commit to a plan.
By early this year, I had had enough. It was time to move to the city. Patrick felt torn about leaving such a cheap setup for writing, but as the snows continued into March, he saw the wisdom of a more connected life. In August, I began a job in Manhattan and we set about dismantling the home we had made. We can’t let go completely — I love Hudson, I have started whining to friends — so we’ll become those annoying weekenders, the kind who keep the stores buzzing in the summer but shuttered in the winter.
Immediately, of course, nostalgia kicked in: It was so easy to want to live in Hudson, so hard to actually live in Hudson.
Reflexively, I continued to try to meet people. My new Pilates friend, Jill, and I chatted as we left the building together. It turned out that she was just summering in Hudson, eager to see if small-town living would deliver on its promise of outdoor amenities and a better quality of life. We both agreed that there was so much interesting stuff happening, so many cool new art galleries, so many good restaurants and friendly people. “I really like Hudson,” she said, looking guilty, “but I’m moving to L.A. next week.”
Reyhan Harmanci is a senior editor at Fastcompany.com.