My Town: So Close
JENNA RYAN – M.A., BCBA Co-owner, Best Behavior…
I moved to Redding from the Bay Area the summer before seventh grade and quickly fell in love with the North State. After graduating from high school, I knew I didn’t want to go too far from home and was so excited to attend Chico State. During my five years of college, I bounced back and forth between Redding, Anderson and Chico. I loved how at home I felt in Redding where my mom lives. And I could sit with my dad on the back porch of his place in Anderson and watch the river go by all day. But Chico always called me back. I used to jokingly refer to Chico as “Neverland,” where I could perpetuate my college student way of life without a care in the world.
After graduating and getting my degree, I found myself living a double life – spending time in Redding and Anderson, where I was a daughter, sister and business owner, and in Chico, where I was newly engaged, planning out my future with my now-husband, Patrick.
Since my business is in Redding and he works in Chico, we had long discussions about where we would eventually call home. Neither one of us wanted a commute and neither one was having any success persuading the other on where to land. I had driven through Corning hundreds of times, often choosing the route on my commute between my two homes because I loved the scenery and how the sunlight would dance off the leaves in the orchards.
The first home we viewed, we fell head over heels! We’ve lived on our 10-acre slice of Corning for three years now and the sunsets still make me stop in my tracks as I walk with my daughters to check the mail at the end of our gravel road. As the rocks crunch under my daughter’s feet running beside me as I push her sister in the stroller, I see visions of them running off to catch the school bus at the end of this gravel road, and raising all kinds of animals for 4-H in our yard. I love how away from it all we feel while still being so close to family and friends.
Corning is a warm, small-town way of life that offers the wide-open spaces I love about Anderson and the familiar feel I love about Redding. It’s also in close proximity to my Neverland, Chico.
