It’s happened again.
The quizzical stare – the wide smile – the head cocked to one side, all ending with the tentative, half-apologetic question.
And even though the asking of it vaguely irritates me, I cannot fault my latest inquisitor. After all, she has driven more than an hour over the river and through the woods to attend a friend’s autumn gathering in their new second home in the country. For the roads to be so rough, the neighbors must be rougher; and my husband and I are neither rough nor retirees – we are not what she expected.
Standing in Virginia. On my right, across the river is Maryland. In the distance (6 miles), West Virginia, and the scene of John Brown’s rebellion in Harper’s Ferry. A very rural tri-state area, and one that I couldn’t picture as a young adult dealing with the vast distances that separate my native California from Nevada, Oregon and Arizona.
We are introduced as next-door neighbors – Is that what to call us? I think midway through the shaking of hands. Acres separate our homes, but when it comes to it, I think of theirs as the first place to run to if there is a fire or other catastrophe – as long as it happens on a weekend.
Yes, next-door neighbors will do. It is a phrase we all understand, whether city mouse or country mouse; and these particular neighbors are lovely people with delightful children that are actually interested in things like frogs and streams and cellos and drawing. And they do not have their heads in smartphones. Weekend home or no, we are thankful they have moved in.
I see the friend’s eyes glance at my worn jeans and linger for a perplexed second on dusty but expensive boots. She is too polite to linger for long on the wild hair and ruddy complexion that completes the look and reflects our journey here in an old and battered golf cart.
From the moment we shake hands, I know she will ask. It is only a matter of when. Curiosity will get the better of her. A few more pleasantries…the wine is passed. The question is finally, cautiously, offered:
“Do you live here [slight pause] full time?”
She points her finger to the ground just in case we are momentarily confused by which town we’re drinking in, and draws out the last two syllables slightly beyond their breaking point.
“Yes.” I answer, meeting her wide smile with my own. “Yes – we do. Welcome to the Suburban Outback.”
For eighteen years we have lived in this beautiful area. So close, yet so far away from the Beltway that surrounds our Nation’s Capital. Eight of those years have been right here, nestled on ten acres in a stream valley with roads and internet connections that can be washed out by strong rains. We live in one of many communities that find themselves tucked into an amusing and ever-expanding oxymoron: Rural Metro DC.
Each weekend, city dwellers visit our wineries and breweries and rivers and destination restaurants and pick up treasures in local junk shops. They shop for second homes in the ‘bargain’ of ‘the country’ and drive home prices ever higher. 14% just last year, with expected double-digit increases in the year ahead. I grew up in a small town in California. I know how this story ends.
Yet we, and so many others, know this place as home. Just the one, mind you. On a sultry Saturday night in July, you can find farmers and homesteaders mixing gently with HOA families and retirees as they all pack the town green with lawn chairs and yell “Inconceivable!” in unison to a showing of The Princess Bride.
Are we part of the problem? It is after all an urban connection that allows us to live…to pay a mortgage. Though we do not seek change, after only two decades here we have no right to comment on who comes and who goes. We have no right to draw arbitrary lines twixt resident and newcomer.
Yet the presence of another weekender makes me instantly protective of the quiet pace of life and the unique characteristics of small town living. With time and urban cash injections, such things are either erased completely or curated into something unrecognizable, yet perfectly, idyllically, rustic.
There are further questions from my inquisitor – about schools, about internet connections, about the closest Whole Foods. Yes we have them. Well, the schools in any case. I answer all her queries – from the important to the impertinent – and wonder what is going through her mind as she pieces the reality of our daily lives together.
It is impossible to explain why we would choose a pitted gravel road over a paved one, or why my husband would pay the price of a long commute to have the ability to stack wood at the end of a long workday. One either understands, or one doesn’t.
“And you? Do you [another long pause] do anything out here?” She glances again at my boots. “Do you ride? Or do things outside?”
I confess my profession. She is confused for a moment, but intrigued by the term. Garden writer. What does that mean exactly? Gardening has become a new love in her life — though she wonders how I can possibly have a garden in such a wild place. Our definitions of ‘garden’ are no doubt different – but that is a conversation for another day. We discuss instead the pros and cons of landscape fabric and she tells me of an excellent book she’s reading in the evenings by Andrea Wulf.
As the night wanes, city mouse and country mouse part on friendly terms. She – back to the bustle of Bethesda, and I, further along a graveled road. Do we understand each other any better? Pointed and perhaps unkind observations will be made and discussed in both Audi and golf cart on the way home.
But they are not solely ours. Here in this place. In this moment. They are timeless conversations had in countries all over the world where city and country boundaries blur. The city eventually emerges from that struggle, or at least the preamble of city — the suburbs. I think of a paramedic who shared a story with me on a too-long ambulance ride many years ago about having to leave his childhood home on rural Long Island. “I didn’t want to go,” he said. “I couldn’t afford to stay.”
“Well, New York City is expensive,” I replied, so knowingly. So stupidly. Bless his heart, he didn’t turn off the morphine in response to my ignorance.
Decatur/Atlanta. Evanston/Chicago. Richmond/London. Sloten/Amsterdam. Kintambu/Kinshasa – friends are quick with their examples when we discuss the swallowing of one area — rural town or modest city — by a greater force. Even Hollywood was once connected to Los Angeles through 10 miles of barley and citrus. An old, old story.
In the end, if I haven’t made my case for plunging head first into country life — or what still passes for it so close to urban sprawl — I no doubt have amused and shocked her by joking about the peace of mind an accidental dismemberment policy gives a girl with a chainsaw-wielding husband.
In hindsight, it too might have been a conversation for another time. After all, I’d only just shaken her up with the idea of his and her shotguns.
Do I live here full-time? Very much so. Joyfully and willingly full-time. – MW
There are many people in the UK who would understand all this – in Cornwall, the Cotswolds. Locally we have gentrified over the years and see visions of neat and tidy Cotswold type country emerging, but so far all our neighbours are full time and full life. And we are very grateful for that and them.
It’s the beauty. Can we keep it?
I get the terrible feeling that ‘rural’ is only worth keeping if it fits a certain, magazine worthy mold. True rural is often messy, utilitarian, and makes do. It’s also just as worthy of saving as the picture perfect cottages. – MW
That’s us.
Giggling throughout the entire story. Thank you!
When I had the privilege of being stationed on the Big Island of Hawaii it was called “The last Haole” syndrome. Trying to pull up the gates from the next set of newcomers.
The flip side of that coin was us being very entertaining to the locals as we learned to fit in.
Some very wonderful memories!
Thank you for the smile.
Yes. We find our little bit of paradise and then are fiercely protective of it. Guilty. In my defense however I will say that it is the new houses being built when old ones are overlooked that upsets me the most. That land will never go back to the way it was. The entire landscape changes. Many years ago a neighbor was looking for houses (all of them new). I suggested one not too far away and she said “Ummmm We really don’t want a used house.” I had never ever heard that term before. Still makes me wince. – MW
Love the idea of a ‘Used house’! As someone who suffers from history envy when people’s houses are more than our two hundred years old, I can’t imagine anyone feeling that way. But a wonderful expression.
I used to say we lived in the toolies but unfortunately, the City has come out to meet us. We are still very rural, are able to grow most of out own food and are so thankful for the peace and quiet of our semi-rural life. I am reminded of a talk by Des Kennedy I attended years ago describing what is considered ‘chic’ in garden attire. For those of us in our ripped jeans and tshirts and grotty sneakers we saw ourselves and laughed uproariously.
Chic doesn’t have a look in around here — sadly for those who live with me. I do invest in good boots though – can’t beat the strength of them. – MW
As a weekend gardener who for almost 30 years has divided my time between an apartment in New York’s Greenwich Village and a house on a dirt road in rural Columbia County, about a hundred miles north of Manhattan, your rant made me laugh.
When I am spreading manure or wearing particularly nasty garden clothes, I sometimes see myself, as if from afar, and wonder what my Manhattan friends would say if they saw me. Then I read of Bunny Mellon, who had her garden ensembles especially made for her by Balenciaga, and think that I really must make more of an effort.
Still, the culture shock of full time rural folk does me make laugh, considering that us city-dwellers must, and are indeed expected to, welcome thousands of out-of-town visitors on any given day. When I am at my best in my urban home, I’m thrilled that so many people want to experience another way of life, even if it sometimes means not getting a table at a local restaurant.
Funnily enough, my day-to-day life in Greenwich Village is closer to life in a 19th c. village than most aspects of my automobile dependent life in the country. In the Village, the car sits in a garage 5 days a week. I walk to local stores and carry my bags home. I know the shopkeepers in my neighborhood and the cop on the corner. I take public transportation to and from work everyday and the car sits in a garage 5 days a week.
As I approach retirement, I am still not certain which I prefer.
Yours is a wonderful point John. Thank you for taking the time to present the other side of this story. There are degrees to this of course, and it is easy to group weekenders into Bunny Mellons with matching outfits when indeed they are working and loving the land just as much (if not more) than those who grew up there. I too lived in the heart of several cities and adored my life there, but always yearned for country space that I could not have at the time. This woman’s comment, and the condescending tone with which it was delivered, inspired the devil in me. And devils are almost always generalists. Thanks for providing perspective. – MW
You are sweet to reply and naturally I too have been caught out complaining about “the newcomers.” We/they are such easy targets, and didn’t Jane Austen say someplace that we all exist “to provide sport for our neighbors?”
Not sure the scenario you so dryly describe has ever been played out in starker terms than the day my “in laws” from the Bronx showed up at our newly finished tulip tree log cabin, at the end (actually a bit beyond the navigable part) of a half mile of sidehill ruts, up a holler in West Viirginia, dressed completely in white, down to their belts and shoes. They chose not to stay the night.
This makes me smile as I have had friends bring their dogs out to run here, only to cut the visit short upon realizing that they would get dirty in the process. – MW
A very enjoyable read! People who live in the city and have a home in the country enjoy knowing both worlds.
As an owner of one home, with one garden, I can’t imagine trying to deal with the work that two homes brings. It sounds anything but restful.
A “used” house is a weird concept (I’m 35, my house is 78), but to me, a part-time house is also kind of strange. Maybe that’s partly due to the housing crisis in New Zealand, as having even one house becomes increasingly unaffordable for a large proportion of the population.
Thank you, Marianne. I know how you feel. Newcomers are often looked upon with suspicion. “They’re not from around here,” is heard periodically in rural Salvisa, KY. “Not from around here” can mean one county over. Bridge building takes a while, but it’s no different in the city. I have divided 70 years between city and country—full and part-time. We have good and bad neighbors in Salvisa and Louisville. Dual existence is a privilege. I feel. before too long. I will need to retreat to the city full time, as I grow older and am unable to keep up with the farm. In the meantime, We’ve planted more than a thousand small trees and earned a little respect, and put a conservation easement on the 47 acres. I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of all the bush honeysuckle, but my goal is to leave the farm in better shape than we found it.
I can’t remember where I read it, but I once heard it said that you are no longer a newcomer in New England when the last person who knew you moved there dies.
I could hear “Dueling Banjos” in the background throughout this piece. 🙂