Going Rural Changed My World
Waiting in the lunch line at the sushi bar with my colleagues we overheard someone say a chef was flown in this week from Japan to curate the menu. Collecting our exotic rolls we walk across the granite corridors to bespoke wooden tables. Instead of enjoying this sunny day in California, we talk fast and eat quickly.
“How are you?”
“Busy”
Somehow in this land of opulence there was never enough. We all ran ourselves ragged with work. Though we made more money than we could have imagined as children, we couldn’t afford homes. And it would seem while everyone was educated, few could spend any time continuing to learn.
The Pandemic was a storm that severed our roots from our careers and California. Now we were unable to afford to even rent a life in our home state. With dwindling options we retreated to the interior of the United States and began a new life.
Healthy
After several months on the road, my wife and I settled into our new life in the mountains and forests between Washington and Montana. While the pandemic raged on we were now the social distancing champions of the world. Long hikes among the tree line without another soul in sight became the norm. Even the grocery store had so few people there was no need for lines and stickers on the floor.
Despite a difficult winter setting in, we were warmed by our new life. Time to slow down had brought healing to the physical and mental traumas experienced in the fast paced life we once led. We ate fresh huckleberries foraged for in the fall, and discovered fresh venison and elk. For the first time in our lives, we brought home a real Christmas tree. The scent of pine filling our home reminded us both that we were closer to nature, and nature knew peace.
Wealthy
Though we no longer had silicon valley incomes and were piecing together freelance and consulting work from month to month, we found an extravagance unlike any other. Every week friends from church would gather for hearty dinners with food overflowing from the table. Bonfires were generously fed from the felled branches of the previous season. The question “What do you do?” has still yet to be raised. Conversations about family and dreams fill our space.
I had grown up reading in the Bible that God is abundant. Somehow it was imparted to me that meant making a lot of money and there would always be more things I could spend that money on. Like many lessons this one missed the mark. Now living in the wild, I could see how everything we needed was within reach. A day's labor could harvest or hunt the food needed for weeks. Water was plentiful. Energy could be found everywhere. Megawatts worth of trees, streams, rivers, sun and wind.
Wise
The mountains were schooling us, and the trees began to tutor me. There was a lie in every city that somehow the convenience of companies and culture was the pinnacle of achievement. Yet somehow it seemed the city’s only abundance was scarcity. Not enough time, not enough money, few people who cared about anyone beyond their status symbols.
The cadence of the wild is considerably slower than the city. I could spend hours journaling, days reading, and encounter people who could come together without a calendar invite. Where before I mostly only knew other software engineers and people in tech, here I was befriended by welders, lumberjacks, boat builders, and officers. People from both sides of the political divide could have drinks and dinner with each other conversing openly with respect.
The concerns of the capitol were worth consideration but unable to override the bond made between brethren of the frontier. I was getting an education unlike any other. Every citizen, a student and a teacher.
Perhaps I was made for rural places. I enjoy shoveling snow, building a fire by hand and there’s nothing like felling a tree with a chainsaw and your friends. Uneducated, with no letters to my name, maybe I was meant to be a world away from the sushi stations of Silicon Valley company cafes. There’s something nagging at me now that says maybe we were not all made for corporate jobs and hellish commutes. In every person I believe there could be someone who will find joy in the whittling of wood before a roaring fire in the winter. Even if that is only turning the page of a good book.
How would you be healing if you had time to retreat? What wealth would you find if your resources were nearby? Who would you be, if you let the wilderness share its wisdom?
This essay is the third entry in a series of works for Write of Passage. I already could not say enough good things about this cohort based course. For your insightful feedback on this essay, thank you Leslie Kim, Charlie Bleecker, Oscar Obregon, Drake Greene, Chris Wong, Grant Shillings, Elizabeth Edwards, Nic Rosslee, Vicky Zhao, and Abhishek Bindal