A Happier Place

Several times a week the thought occurs to me that moving to a rural area in North Georgia Mountains after I retired is one of the best things I’ve ever done. There are many, many reasons I believe that. Some of them are big, complicated reasons, and some are small, simple reasons. Many times the thought is triggered by some event that has no great significance in and of itself other than to remind me that I no longer live in Pinellas County, Florida.

For instance, a few evenings ago I drove through a violent mountain thunderstorm. I experienced some hellacious thunderstorms when I lived in Florida, but a thunderstorm in the North Georgia Mountains is a different animal.

I had been to a meeting of the Fannin County Master Gardeners. Evening thunderstorms had been predicted on the morning news. One of the Master Gardeners received a text from her husband near the end of the meeting and announced, “It just crossed the border.” That’s all it took for the meeting to adjourn instantly and everyone to scurry to their cars. We moved quicker than Congress during an anthrax scare.

I was halfway home on a narrow, winding back road when the storm struck. Lightening arced across the sky, and loud peals of thunder rolled and echoed through the mountains. Strong gusts of wind presaged the storm. The tall grass in the fields besides the road lay over in moving waves, and the limbs of the trees began to whip violently to and fro. Leaves and twigs flew through the air across the road in front of me. I was half expecting to see an airborne squirrel. It grew dark, and then the rain hit—torrential sheets of rain that obscured my view of the road ahead despite the best efforts of my wipers. The rain fell so hard that the roadside ditches were quickly filled with swift running water.

I had to swerve several times to avoid large tree limbs that had fallen on the road, and I began to worry that I might get hit by a large branch or even an entire tree. That’s not an irrational fear. There are so many trees here in the mountains, and you often see blown over trees. In Pinellas County, which is largely paved over, the chance of getting hit by a fallen tree in a storm is minimal. You have a better chance of getting hit by a windblown homeless person. In fact, the next day I drove the same route to town and saw that a large tree had fallen across the road less than a mile from my cabin. It had taken out the power line. The trunk of the tree was at least 20 inches in diameter. I realized that the tree had fallen the night before in the ten minute interval between the time I passed it and the time I got home to find the power out. That’s getting too close for comfort.

To me a thunderstorm in the mountains is a closer, more personal and immediate experience than one in Florida. I think that’s because the struggle between the power of storm and the resilience of nature is more visible. Whatever the reason, the storm was another reminder that I now live in a different place.

Here’s another example of the type of small event that can remind me that things are different in a small rural community. I was sitting in my truck behind a car stopped at a light at an intersection with the main highway through Fannin County. The sun was beating down, and it was a really hot day. There was a smiling young man with a backpack at the corner of the intersection. He had a large, worn Bible in his hand, and he was witnessing to his faith in a quiet and restrained way. He wasn’t bothering anyone. He didn’t have a sign saying that I was going to hell if I don’t repent or that the end was near.

The man in the car ahead of me rolled down his window and called to the young man. There was a brief conversation, and then the man in the car extended his arm out the window with a baseball hat in his hand. The young man walked over, took the hat, thanked the man, put it on his head and walked back to where he was standing. The light changed, and we all proceeded on our way.

I’m not sure why, but there was something about the incident that made me think that life is different in a rural area away from the city or crowded suburbia. It also made me thankful that I chose to move to the country. And, yes, I can be accused of overly romanticizing this place, and I know that random acts of kindness happen everywhere, even in the populous places, but happiness is as much a state of mind as it is a state of being, and I find that I am happier here.

Finally, I was sitting on the downstairs porch putting on my boots early one morning when I noticed a strange turd on the edge of the deck. One notices these things, and I know it had not been there the day before. I wondered what animal had left it there. Was it a harmless forest critter or one that could do mischief to the cabin or my garden like a groundhog or a raccoon? Was it a weasel, a possum, a fox or any one of the many small critters that live in this place?

I found myself smiling at the thought that I was devoting so much mental energy to analyzing a turd. That, too, was a reminder that I no longer live in a suburban environment teeming with people but short on wildlife. The way I figure it, any time you live in a place where a strange turd can bring a smile to your face and make you appreciate where you are, you’re probably living where you should be.