Does anybody dream of moving to the country? Show of hands? I can’t see those hands, unfortunately. There are some, I would assume. The bucolic image of country living is alive and well in the technological age. Some would argue the therapeutic call of nature is more desired than ever. We feel an urge to escape the marginalized, homogenized, and technological fate that envelops us. The city is a tougher place than we bargained for. Rural life beckons, its sleepy mornings lowering our blood pressure as we watch the gauze curtains scrape the windowsill of a half-opened window from the comfy confines of a feather bed. How realistic such a vision actually is, there’s a call of the wild within most of us. The draw to the city was once a call to a certain kind of energy and even, in the bigger cities, a sense of danger. Now, for eighty percent of the country living in or near cities, that call feels routine, and perhaps too dangerous. A therapeutic rural alternative becomes a back-of-mind dream, if only in our fleeting moments. Not everyone can take advantage of it, alas. The money is in the city. It’s tough to extricate yourself from the urban corridors of concrete and steel, the suburbs’ unfolding grid, and the vast roadways with a nearly unbroken line of cars connecting them.
The idea of moving to rural America takes hold of some. What we find there depends on various factors outside of our control. What we believe we’ll find is one factor. We don’t know. We can visit a bed and breakfast in a small town, walk quiet, dusty streets, and browse quaint stores. You may take in the vibe of a sunny, summer town, with the feeling of stepping off the map striking you as exhilarating and forward-thinking. It doesn’t tell you much about living there. How will you feel on a Wednesday afternoon in mid-February when the sky is leaden, the streets are iced over, and your packages are delayed yet again, because you buy the bulk of your stuff online, and UPS becomes an essential service, the sight of your local driver nearly as reassuring as seeing your doctor in flu season. (You don’t even want to think about hunting for another doctor because yours left town.) Perhaps you take that giant leap off the map and into a rural community. You accept there will be an adjustment period, leveling off to a richer, more satisfying way of life in the intangibles. And yet, even as you make peace with a less-is-more lifestyle, the greater world doesn’t recognize your epiphany. The world spins on what happens in the metro areas. As you acclimate to rural rhythms, you also adjust to a blow back that comes with zigging while the world is zagging. You learn fast the city doesn’t cater to the twenty percent who choose the country. The world will make it tough for you to reject its dominant ways.
When are we talking about moving? Show of hands? Today, or in two years? Or maybe, like me, you moved ten years ago. I experienced the before and after of the “great dark period” that closed down the world. I know the ins-and-outs of moving for lifestyle reasons, and I can put on the escapist hat as well. Some of us leave the city at a hundred miles an hour, fleeing like Lot. What do they find?
There isn’t much available on what will be there. Blogs, polls, studies and opinion pieces try to tell us what people think of rural life, rural people, and the great divide between rural and urban living. You’ll run across grisly statistics such as what percentage of road accidents happen in rural areas (forty-one percent, or one-point-five times higher than urban areas). It doesn’t tell you what life is really like. We’re left gauging where we should live by hard metrics, such as the median income of a place, the crime statistics, home prices, and how many people leave vs. how many are landing there. We can’t help but look to others’ opinions for support, or comfort maybe, to reinforce our decisions either way, to stay or go. But we know our life isn’t improved by what others are doing. It takes Despite the drawbacks of convenience, opportunity, and an unfamiliar community, there are people who wish they could leave the city. There are many more, I’d guess, who are restless from city life but won’t leave it, who hang on despite the problems that seem to grow with each passing year. That mentality would describe me. I’m a city lifer, at least in my mind.
And yet, here I am, living in the country, the rural space between the spread out cities of the American west. What this book is about is simple, and I’m as curious to find out the answer as anyone (yes, likely more so). Did I, a city lifer, regret coming to a place that looks, on paper, like a major life mistake. Did abandoning the city for rural life break my spirit and have me wanting to hit the undo button?
Moving to a rural place has been a struggle. I can reveal that much. But the city drove me crazy, at times. Weighing both places, it’s the city that is most in flux, with the trajectory of quality of life in the city heading in the downward direction, whereas the country is the country. It hasn’t changed nearly as much. The declining city situation and the stability of the country presents a choice to a city person that wasn’t there before. It raises a question most would have never asked and can ‘t believe they’re asking now. Which place is better? Especially for an ambitious cultural animal that cities attract and produce, a person like myself, the answer is not easy. Rural life doesn’t pretend to be an alternative, just a place.
If you leave the city, where will you find yourself. Will you like it? Will you regret it, and will returning to the city seem insurmountable after you’ve left?
There’s the question you may forget to ask. What if the rural town you move to isn’t all that different? What if the problem you’re trying to leave is within you? Can you expect a geographic location to solve life’s mounting hassles?
You can’t step off the map. The mapping services have driven a camera van down any road you’re thinking of escaping to.
