565 getting to know ourselves


Your average story of city people moving to the country is filled with lessons learned from rugged individuals, peppered with moments of natural splendor.



Edward Abbey nailed the genre with Desert Solitude. This area has it's own version, a loose collection of colorful essays called Purple Flat Top, written on the cusp of transformation from a resource extraction economy to a rural lifestyle economy, or whatever this is now.


That's not my story. Yes, I've met a few colorful local characters, and a number of nice people. But that story has already been written, and while I'm sure I could come up with a twenty first century equivalent, replacing the resilient farmer giving birth to a calf on a winter morning at dawn with the caring divorcee breeding labradoodles in her McMansion, yeah, no.


This isn't that story. What story is this?


So far, I don't know. It's the story of wandering into a town where everyone says hello to everyone else, but not you. Why? Because they know everyone else, and not you. Why? Because they grew up with everyone else, and not you.


We've been here three weeks, with a big moving truck the first weekend, and yet, nobody has said hello. But there are some curious people around. This is the story of a few brave individuals who have reached out to sniff around and see what we're up to. 


This is the beginning of a story. Somehow, I think this story will involve getting to know ourselves as much as getting to know the neighbors.

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