Leaving Home, Returning to Motion

For thirty years, I called San Francisco home. Then I discovered San Miguel de Allende.

For a while, I tried to keep both. Three months in Mexico, nine in California. Then six and six. Eventually, San Miguel won. That was twelve years ago.

In recent years, I’ve heard a lot about San Francisco’s so-called “decline,” so I returned this time with a trace of trepidation — on vacation, no less.

San Francisco is utterly fabulous.

Yes, it’s punishingly expensive. But it’s alive. Glorious. Purposeful. The food is sumptuous. The streets hum with people going somewhere. Kids. Dogs. Strollers. Intent.

And it reminded me of something I’d forgotten.

In San Francisco, I walk for miles every day. Along the waterfront, where the light keeps changing and the bay is captivating no matter the weather. Through Golden Gate Park, where green feels divinely aggressive after San Miguel’s earth tones. Out on the coast, ostensibly to buy crab, but really to stand still and watch the ocean sparkle — that particular, unapologetic Pacific shimmer that resets your nervous system.

San Miguel is steeped in history. You’re reminded of it daily. In the churches. The cobblestones. The customs — and yes, the costumes — that appear on any given afternoon. History there isn’t subtle. It’s declarative. It rewards stillness. Many a day, I’ve sat at a quiet café when out of the blue, here comes another gloriously loud parade.

San Francisco is equally steeped in historic splendor — and disaster — but it doesn’t hit you in the face. It’s quieter. A plaque you notice only because you stopped to tie your shoe. An old rail embedded in the street. A building that’s survived earthquakes, reinvention, and tech cycles. The past is present, but it doesn’t dominate the conversation.

What dominates instead is possibility.

Every day here begins with the simple question: what are you in the mood for?

Water or woods? Sand or grass? Industrial or Victorian? And then there’s the food. Sushi or dumplings? French pastries so precise they feel architectural? Something Greek and homely and lemony? San Francisco doesn’t funnel you toward a signature dish or a single identity. It hands you options and expects you to choose — and then choose again tomorrow.

That variety does something subtle to the mind. It keeps you outward-facing. Curious. Slightly restless, in a good way.

Walking here isn’t meditative in the way it is in San Miguel. It’s catalytic. You walk because the city invites it. Because one neighborhood bleeds into another. Because there’s always something a few blocks away that might surprise you. Movement feels natural, not virtuous.

I don’t think one city is better than the other. I think they train different instincts.

San Miguel taught me how to slow down. How to listen. How to sit with a thought until it clarifies itself. San Francisco reminds me to stay in motion — to remain porous to influence, appetite, and change. One city deepens. The other propels.

What I’m grateful for, right now, is the reminder that a creative life doesn’t have to choose between the two. And — boy, oh boy — I am deeply happy to call myself a writer.

Sometimes, you need history pressing close.

Sometimes, you need the ocean sparkling in your peripheral vision, urging you forward.

For the moment, I’m walking. And letting the city do what it’s always done best.

P.S. If you’re curious what San Francisco looks like through my lens — and occasionally through my pup Bowie’s — I’ve been sharing bits of it over on Instagram: @lorrainesf

La Rose des Vents, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco ©Lorraine Flett

La Rose des Vents is a kinetic sculpture made from gold and aluminum that pays homage to the Compass Rose, an ancient device used to gauge wind direction. Installed in front of the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, where it can shimmer in the sun and shift with the breeze, LaRose appears as a golden flower among flowers, animating the earth with moving shadows or reflecting the sky in its golden mirror beads.