JULY NIBJ: Anemoia: Feeling nostalgic for a time you never knew

I’m not a good person to play Scrabble or BananaGrams with: I make up words all the time.

I’m not alone in this neologism practice; I recently encountered a cool expression: “anemoia.” Anemoia is the feeling of nostalgia for a time you have never personally experienced. It was made up by John Koenig in “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows” to describe a unique form of nostalgia for a past that one has not lived through. 

The word derives from the ancient Greek anemos (wind) and noos (mind) evoking the idea of a force that shapes emotional perception similar to how wind can bend trees. It is a wistful longing for eras, events, or experiences that only exist in the imagination or cultural memory. The common triggers of this romanticized wistfulness often are rooted in dissatisfaction with the present, loneliness, or anxiety about the future.

Lately, there’s plenty of dissatisfaction with the present and anxiety about the future: the Iran War and all of the disastrous consequences stemming from that. The rise of weird diseases like hantavirus, ebola, measles and polio. Climate change calamities. The clown show circus that is our national politics, with no motivational leadership and no clear policies or plans. The out-of-control AI wave that is apparently coming for us all. Billionaires. The US deficit of $40 trillion. Influencers. The entire social media-fabricated universe.

It’s no wonder then that we long for another place, another time, where everything did not seem so threatening and beyond anyone’s control. This partly explains the allure of North Idaho living. We are fortunate here to be blessed with mountains and rivers and lakes. Clean air and fresh water. Low population densities. We don’t spend a lot of time sitting around in traffic, and there’s a genuine friendliness in most of our day-to-day interactions within our communities.

This quality of life has not gone unnoticed. It resulted in a growth surge that began in the post-pandemic years and hasn’t really slowed down that much. The majority of the growth was not organic, i.e. from the locals having families and their families having families. It was in-migration, which caused some cultural disturbance and also fueled a dramatic increase in housing prices as big-time money chased a limited supply.

In some cases, geographic barriers helped preserve community character, like Sandpoint, where Lake Pend Oreille and the rugged terrain precluded suburban sprawl. In other communities, level land made sewer and water service easily extended and proximity to transportation infrastructure and employment centers created thousands of tract homes where there were recently hay fields (Post Falls, Rathdrum, Athol). In 1973, the British Columbia provincial government created the Agricultural Land Reserve, which restricted approximately eleven and a half million acres in the Lower Mainland (around Vancouver) from development, protecting an important agricultural resource. Fifty-three years later, that land is still in production, and the subdivision developers can’t touch it. I miss smelling the hay and mint fields when I drive along Highway 41 now. That’s my personal anemoia.

If tract housing is supposed to be starter home opportunity (it isn’t, not at current pricing) there’s a conflict with the affordability solution of building more houses. We’re getting sprawl without the lower pricing benefit. Resources flowing into the data center boom and serious disruptions in the supply chain for copper have spiked commodity costs. Lumber is up because of tariffs and sawmill closures. The Iran war has not only affected the price of oil, but resins and plastics too, as well as the delivery/shipping costs of practically everything that goes into new construction.

You would hope that some clever builder would figure out a way to deliver attractive single-family housing at scale, at a price working people can afford. We’re still waiting. …

I’ll close with a quote from Theodore Roosevelt: “Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches, or its romance.”

Raphael Barta is an associate broker with an active practice in residential, vacant land, and commercial/investment properties. [email protected].