longer, broader, and a hell of a lot more relaxed

perhaps the greatest difference between rural and urban life is the notion of time and space. hours are still hours and miles are still miles, but their use and perception are decidedly different. at least that's what i've come to notice living in out here in god knows where, america.

i remember first noticing this in college. i grew up in what you could call a rural part of america. ok, well it wasn't that rural, but rural america was closer to me then than i am to a grocery store now, so go with me. i never noticed how different the pace of life could be in two places only 90 miles apart.

in winston-salem, meals were things eaten between meetings and classes. they generally lasted only twenty minuted because there was always something to get back to: a paper, a meeting, an important episode of joe millionaire or the real world/road rules challenge. (i hear your judging laughter. just remember who thought the hills was riveting television. not me.)

when i would go home for a weekend, time seemed to stand still. the nights were longer. the days were filled with conversations that meandered from topic to topic with few, if any, discernible shifts. meals were events. this was, in part, due to the fact that most of them involved witnessing and/or participating in the cooking and cleaning as opposed to grabbing a sandwich and fries, gulping them down, and sending the tray down a conveyor belt.

when we did eat out, it was leisurely and filled with conversation. friday nights out for hamburgers and sunday lunches at a local sub shop were never less than an hour, and nothing seemed wrong or wasteful about that use of time.

i'm thankful to know the same is true with my in-laws. i'll hazard a guess and say 40% of our time in their home is spent in the kitchen, 40% is spent on the sun porch talking, and 20% is spent doing whatever else there is to do. it's fantastic. i don't know exactly what it is about small town and rural life, but the sense of time runs counter to the time our urban friends feel.

time doesn't just slow down at meal time. you'd think rural americans were all buddhists with the way they live in the moment, and by living in the moment i mean having a conversation at the post office counter or on the sidewalk in the middle of an afternoon walk. i spent three hours with a woman talking about quilting and her family this morning. i can tell i'm adjusting back to life in rural america because i loved every minute of it.

but it's not just time. space is different as well. when you live in rural america, there's generally a lot of space between you and whatever it is you are headed towards or whatever it is you need. this is especially evident when driving. the roads are straight and the horizon is flat.

in atlanta, or any city for that matter, your sight distance in a car is often impeded by buildings, billboards, or buicks. you can generally only see as far as the next apartment complex or shopping area. the same idea applies in appalachia only its not buildings that block your view, but rather mountains, so while you might not be able to see very far, the only thing coming into your view is nature, not neon lights.

here where we are, you can see literally as far as is humanly possible. if a human eye can discern a shape or a color in the distance, that shape or color can be be seen.

this depth to the view has the ability to play tricks on you when you drive. a stop sign in the distance may appear to be a couple hundred yards away when in reality its a mile away. i can't tell you how many times i've started to slow down for a stop sign only to end up creeping in first gear for a couple of blocks.

even more than the illusion of distance, there is literally more space to be seen. there are more stars to be seen here than i've ever seen before. the other night, our neighbors built a little fire in the yard and we sat out there drinking, getting to know one another, and enjoying a cool evening that i hope means fall is near. late in the evening, robert, our next door neighbor, and i walked down toward the bayou and looked up to see what we could see. i was speechless.

there had been very few occasions in the last three years when i was graced with a night sky like this one. no clouds. no rain. no street lights dimming the view. no buildings or advertisements blocking the great unknown. we could see the milky way. i don't think i remembered until then that you can see the milky way.

it's a similar feeling to standing at the ocean and thinking about swimming to england or mexico or whatever landmass is closest to you beyond the horizon. you simultaneously realize how small you are in relation you are to everything outside you and how amazing it is that you even have the chance of comprehending all there is out there.

rural life offers a different way of thinking about and seeing time and space than urban life - longer, broader, and a hell of lot more relaxed. sure, there's a lot to be said about the productivity that a faster pace of life breeds, (i'm just as waspy and driven by the protestant work ethic as anybody) but there's also something to be said for being able to see as far as the eye can see and for being able to enjoy a meal and the company around you. i'll take that any day.

path photo by boone, town photo from here

which do you prefer?

you know when you're at some meeting for the first time, and the person in charge asks everyone to share their name, where they live, what they do, and their social security number (well maybe that's just me)? well, usually these "get-to-know-you" games often end with sharing an interesting fact about yourself. an example would be to share whether you like the mountains or the ocean better. if you're like me you choose mountains, but wish you could choose mountains at the ocean so you could go cliff diving, but that's neither here nor there.

what they will never ask is whether or not you like the mountains, the beach, or the landlocked plains of the rest of the country better. i mean who's really going to say, "ooh ooh, me, i'm for the plains. they're so lovely and flat."

well, having moved to the plains of the mississippi delta (which is in fact not near the gulf of mexico, but rather in the northwestern part of the state between the mississippi and yazoo rivers) i'm starting to rethink my answer. i might just be that guy who will jump up and down voting for the plains the next time i'm in a small group where the leader asks the mountains/beach question.

why, you ask? isn't this

much more appealing than this?

don't tempt me with your colorful autumn leaves and your lush and wooded trails. i said i was starting to rethink my answer.

one of the more revealing things about the mountains/beach/plains question is that it points out our connection to the land, whatever that land may be. humans have been tied to the land for...well forever. as soon as there were enough of us around to start getting territorial about things, we started claiming land, thinking the more land we had somehow made us better than those with less, and trying desperately hold on to what land we had in order to make a living.

our relationship to the land is easy to forget when we live in cities with enough pavement to cause a creek to flood a city (i'm looking at you atlanta), but when this is what you see out the front and back of your house, it's easy to remember.













i had the pleasure of spending an afternoon earlier this week with a lawyer from the small town where i live. he told me about what life was like in this place when he was growing up. he even recalled that he never saw his grandfather without three things, his pocketwatch, his wallet, and his pistol. his grandfather was a farmer at the peak of this place's existence. it's safe to say just about everyone who lived here depended on the land they worked for their well-being.

advancements in technology have taken that percentage down a bit, but still the overwhelming majority of the economy here in the mississippi delata is farming. corn, soybeans, rice, cotton. they're all kings here. and they will be as long as the soil stays fertile and people keep tilling it.

but more than the history of farming in this are, this lawyer told me to listen for something. he said to listen to how people describe where they live. "ask them where they live and they'll say, 'i have a place across 49 or over the bayou,'" he said.

there's a sense of belonging when you say you have a "place" somewhere. i know when i've lived in other places, i've always just said, "i live at/in/behind." there's no sense of belonging when all you can say is that you live somewhere. everybody lives somewhere. others might say "i stay at..." which is much more transient than having a place, but much more specific than living somewhere.

i'm not sure if this is a local thing relevant only to folks in the delta, but i'm inclined to think it's true for anyone who lives in a place so tied to the land. i mean, when you look around and see field upon field upon river upon field, it comes as no surprise that people want to know where there place in the world is. if all you see is the natural world, it's easy to wonder where you belong and to stake your claim.

i guess the same can be said while you're standing on a mountain top or wading in the ocean, but for most of us those moments are occasional and sometimes interrupted by a plane advertising free parasailing or a crotchety old man complaining about the wind after he drove up the other side of the mountain for a view from the visitors' center.

for now, we have a place here.

trail photo by timmy, all others by biz and boone