What It's Like Growing Up In The Country

If any of you don't know. I originally grew up out in the sticks in Southern Vermont. I am a country boy at heart. Now that doesn’t mean I'm a pickup truck driving, boot wearing fried chicken eating lunatic who loves to have ridiculous ideals and shit. It means a lot more than that, and if anything the mainstream view of "country" just makes me sick. I hate it. It means so much more to those who really are from a place like that, because it becomes more than home.

Where I grew up, the closest neighbor was a mile and a half away. My home abutted Green Mountain National Forest, which is a massive wildlife reserve in the heart of Vermont. Meaning that on one side of my house (the populated side) there was a neighbor whose house you could kind of see in the winter if you looked really hard through the trees at night and the lights were on. On the other side of the house, there was one hundred thousand acres of forest which has never and will never be populated by human kind. That's country.



I spent my summers forging trails through the forests. Building forts from huge trees I would fell with an axe and a saw, and then "live" in them all summer and fall long. Starting fires in the campsites I would create there, and enjoying the forest itself. I would fish in the ponds and rivers. I would Mountain bike through the old logging trails that connected to the highway miles away, and then ride the highway back home. I would rest at home, where the quiet is so much more complete than anywhere else.



In the winter, I would wake up early on weekend mornings and strap on my boots and ski down the mountain we lived on right on the roads before they plowed or sanded, then walk the 2 miles back home. I would build massive snow forts with the 15 foot snow piles that would be pushed up around our house, creating passive tunnels and pathways and rooms. I would snowshoe through those same places that I ran and mountain biked in the summer, and I would cuddle up inside, in my own fortress of solitude where I seemed untouchable. Everyone else way just so far away it seemed that this was truly, really a place where I could be myself.



My home really was a place outside of the civilized world in many ways. In the time before GPS, we would have to drive about 2 miles away from our house to a well marked highway so we could "guide" People the 2 miles back to our house. There is still absolutely no cell service within a mile of the house. my mother (who still lives there) just got high speed internet about 6 months ago. That's right, up until last July, my mother was still hearing the soothing tones of dial up any time she wanted to check her email.



It's amazing how special this kind of stuff has become to me. I went up there yesterday to enjoy Valentines day with my mother, and after the friends had departed, and Sophia started to mellow out, we decided to stay for a little while. and I heard the silence again. the silence that only a place like that has. Now don't get me wrong, I live in a very nice neighborhood, on a very quiet street. I don't think I've ever heard a single sound around my house after 9pm. But the quiet on the mountain is different. When you hear that silence, even if there are birds chirping, or you can hear a rain filled stream in the distance, you know that there's nobody else listening to that silence either. There's not a neighbor reading a book next door, there’s no TV's on within a mile. There's nothing. There's just you, and your silence. Its such a complete, comforting silence. It envelops you, it creates this amazing sense of place and purpose that its hard to pin down. I Hadn’t realized just how much I missed it until I heard it again last night.



as I listened, I snapped out of it and said to the room, perhaps to my wife "we're moving to the country again...I don't know when we move next, but when we do we're moving to the country again"



And she knows I mean it. Its something that I miss dearly.



When I first moved into the "city" for college ( North Adams Massachusetts is not much of a city, ask anyone who knows the place) I couldn't sleep in town for months because of the noise. There was no noise, it was just knowing that there were other people there. Its kind of silly to write down, but it was true. I would go home almost every weekend to catch up on sleep. I wish it was because I had a crazy party lifestyle or something, but it really was because I just couldn't sleep without the quiet. That complete, aloneness quiet. I still wake up sometimes, just knowing that its not the same.



I hope that when I find a new place similar to that that it holds the same magic. I hope that my mother's house isn't the only place that will give me that completeness of silence. Is it really the "country" feel that makes it so nice? or is it something else? I have lived there long enough, and now been away long enough, that I am fairly sure that it really is just the seclusion. Its the feeling that when people come to visit, its a journey, and its an event. Its the feeling that when you're not around anyone like that, you're free. You can create, you can grow, you can fall apart, or you can just enjoy it. Anything goes, because no matter what you do nobody is around to judge you. Nobody is even around to care. In many ways, I think its the ultimate in American freedom: the freedom to be yourself, away from those who will judge or change you, and the freedom to choose how you do it and when.



I know that when we were shopping for houses before we found some "country" homes. But they were different. They had neighbors. they had highways and easily accessible grocery stores and other amenities. It was too civilized, if that makes sense. It just wasn't the same feeling, now that I think back to them. Although I loved each one for its attempt to recreate that feeling of aloneness, it wasn't the same and I'm glad we chose the home we did.



As we look for our next home when Sophia is grown, I hope that Stephanie will find the same romance in the aloneness of a place like my Mother's house. It's what allowed me to weather many storms in my youth. But alas, my time is up, and the storms of my youth will need to be a story for another post.