Every time I hear about another terrorist attack, I think, “Gosh, I’m so happy we live in a small town.” It’s not usually my first thought, but eventually it will occur to me. Since I’ve had about 48,000 conversations recently with other rural and small-town residents who feel the same way, I don’t think it’s an unusual response. Intellectually, we all know that terrorist attacks occur off-the-beaten path, too, but for some reason, the crazier the world becomes, the more comforting living in a small town has grown for me and my loved ones. Turns out that small-town familiarity, so often disparaged by city dwellers, is pretty reassuring in an unpredictable world.
When we lived in a big East Coast city, we were surrounded by hordes of people. But we didn’t know much about them, if we knew them at all. We worked super-long hours and spent what little spare time we had with our daughter and aging parents. While we really liked the neighbors we knew, there were lots of people who lived on our block whom we’d never met, let alone lent tools to or hugged at the community market. We had thousands of places to go and people to meet, but neither the energy nor time for it. In our small town now, there are way fewer hotspots but we our connected to our community in ways we couldn’t even imagine back East.
I still hear from my city friends, “Aren’t you bored? Don’t you wish you had more people around you for stimulation?” Well, no. Not with Glacier National Park, Backslope Brewery, Desoto Grill, a truck, an airport, a mobile phone, and the most interesting people I could imagine right in my backyard. I read the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and, of course, the fabulous Flathead Beacon everyday. And our backyard is the screensaver on just about every laptop I see in big-city coffee shops and offices!
Fifteen years ago, I couldn’t have understood the comfort that comes from knowing lots of folks in the community, along with their stories and loved ones. Moreover, I couldn’t have begun to comprehend how important it is to have the freedom to occasionally get away from them. Having moved to Montana from Arlington County, Virginia – home to almost 8,000 people per square mile, with only 26 square miles – I’m a big believer that a little elbow room is priceless.
Terrorist attacks are as old as time. But the social media that delivers a steady stream of global disaster into our daily lives is barely a decade old. And personally, I haven’t yet figured out how to balance staying informed without getting overwhelmed by so much tragedy. One thing I’m becoming more certain of every day: when the tweets, posts, photos, and videos get to be too much, a small town is a great place to be.