Recently my daughter and I were discussing the possibilities of where her family might finally settle when their commitment to the Air Force is complete in a few years. Laughingly she told me that the one place they would positively not be settling down is in the empty lot next to ours. “There is absolutely nothing there, except you and Dad, of course, that appeals to me about living in Spring City!” she said.
Small towns hold no appeal for her at all. City life and the advantages of a good education for their children, easy shopping for anything one might desire, and opportunities for cultural enrichment weight much heavier on the scale of desirability for her when compared to country life.
Yet, many, many years ago, one of my younger sisters stayed with my husband and me for a couple of months during the summer after she had graduated from high school. She was exploring the possibilities for her own future and had come the “the City” to see how it “fit” for her. Very quickly she discovered that city life was not a good fit at all. She decided very quickly to return to rural Utah to pursue her future. By way of explanation to me she said, “It makes me feel nervous to go into a store and see no one I know–not the clerks, not the customers, nobody! The city is far too impersonal for me.”
I have lived in both, I grew up in a small town and could not wait to move to the city. It was a good choice at the time and we were there for over twenty-five years. And yet, whenever we would leave the place where we lived and visit another city, or another part of the country, in the back of our minds we were always searching and questioning if this new place we were visiting might be a better place to live. Looking back, it seems that I have always felt unsettled and that I was forever looking around for a place that might suit us better.
In 2005 we found this piece of land where we now live and it is finally the right place. Whenever I travel away to teach, as I did this past weekend, I no longer wonder what it would be like to live in the place I am visiting. Instead, I find myself counting down how much longer it will be until I get to go home.
In this place where we live there are few people. They all wave when you pass them on the street, even if they don’t know you. The postmaster, the clerks at the bank and in the grocery store are all friends. It is rare to stop at any store in this valley without meeting someone I know.
We have a small and informal quilting group that has been formed since I moved here. We hold our weekly meeting at the local elementary school library because two or three in our group work there. We all work on a project of our own choosing and give advice and encouragement to each other as we pursue our different quilting interests. Someday I will show and tell you all about us and what we do together and separately.
It is delightful to be a part (even though I will never in my lifetime be a local) of a place where I feel accepted and included.
The second reason that I would never want to leave is the beauty and openness of this place. Ours’ is a small valley (meaning the space between the mountain ranges on the east and west of it is only 20-30 miles wide) and it is a sanctuary and wintering place for much wildlife.
A herd of elk spend their winter in this valley and it is common to see them bedded down during the daytime in one particular alfalfa field a few miles from here. The field is quite near the highway and yet the elk are respected and undisturbed by those who pass by.
A group of 50 to 100 (depending on the year) bald eagles migrate from Alaska to winter in this valley. They all congregate at dusk in one particular grove of trees near the center of the valley. The locals all know where it is and they respect the birds by keeping their resting place quiet and by keeping their distance.
I love it here. It fits who I am and the lifestyle I appreciate and have always longed for.
And so, I say to my daughter, “Find the place that feels right to your heart,” and then you will have found home.