Heaven or the Hill Country

the complicated business of going "home"

Jun 25, 2025

∙ Paid

Last week, I got to go to one of my favorite places on planet earth for a long weekend. We were celebrating my boyfriend’s mom’s retirement in Gruene, TX. A tiny town in the Texas Hill Country, nestled between Austin and San Antonio, right on the Guadalupe River. I absolutely love it there. Few natural areas touch my soul as deeply as the landscape of Central Texas. The rivers, the trees, the gentle hills. The green. Tex Mex, BBQ, and margaritas. And more than that, it’s the music, the people, the old bars and dancehalls. It’s a feeling that I get nowhere else.

I grew up in North Texas, near Dallas, but I left when I was 17 to move to San Marcos, about 25 minutes from Gruene, for my first year of college. I had never seen anything like that place, and I fell in love. After a year, I moved to Austin to go to UT, and I lived in Austin for a decade before moving to LA. I spent all of my 20s running around central Texas. Nowhere on earth has ever felt more like home to me.

When I moved away, I always thought I’d move back. I figured I’d spend two years or so in LA, get some things moving with my music career, move back to Austin, and then one day live out in the Hill Country.

Back in December, my boyfriend and I visited Austin for three weeks to see if we wanted to move there. He is Marfa based and I’m in LA, and after a few years of back and forth we decided we wanted to live in one place together. Austin seemed like a good fit. I always thought I’d move back, maybe this was the time?

But let me tell you…. and this surprised us both - we hated it. I mean we felt awful there. That might be a post for another time, but it was very clear that Austin wasn’t the answer, at least not right now. The last day of our trip Sam told me he’d move to LA, and that was that. We still have our place in Marfa, but for now, we are LA based.

June 11th was my 8 year anniversary of moving to LA. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with this city the whole time. I’ve longed for Texas the WHOLE time. And yet, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, I’m still here. This city really has a hold on me.

Two of the nights we were there we went to country music concerts. I was raised on country music and didn’t care for it growing up. It took me years to come around to the music of my childhood, and now I love it deeply.

I noticed all the very young people at these concerts. I’m talking teenagers fully embracing their parents’ music. Boots on, cowboy hats, with groups of their friends, singing along. It was so cool for me to see this - I was such a hater at their age!

I was raised on Willie, Dolly, and all of the greats. But it was in Austin in my early college days that I discovered the music of Townes Van Zandt, and he was my gateway drug. Townes showed me a darker side of country music that resonated with me, and eventually I was hooked.

If you’re new to Townes and want a good place to start, listen to this record:

When I go back to Texas, especially a place like Gruene, it’s overwhelmingly comforting, inspiring, and feels deeply good. On a soul level. And maybe that’s partially because I don’t live there? I can just drop in and embrace the good parts without having to deal with the reality of day to day life in a small Texas town.

Rebecca Solnit talks about the blue of distance. How there is a blue that you can only see when you’re far away from a horizon, and once you’re up close the blue fades, the colors change. I feel that way about this part of the world. Because I have distance from it, I don’t live there, I can appreciate it from afar. And when I’m there, there’s this feeling I have of not really being able to touch it. I’m a tourist, just passing through. I’m not sure what to make of it all, but I’m grateful to have had a few days in that beautiful part of the world that feeds my soul and feels so, so good to me. Will I live my Hill Country dream someday? Maybe. Or maybe LA has ruined me for living anywhere else. That happens, too.

Here’s some photos.