Opinion

Last Wednesday, I took part in a panel discussion in front of a room full of people at Pie, Place and Possibility: Rural Assembly Everywhere Gathering and Watch Party that began at The YES! House in Granite Falls, and ended at Bluenose Gopher Public House to do something I’ve dreaded for weeks - talking in front of people. In actuality, there’s been, recently, more times than I can count on one hand that I’ve been engaged in public speaking.

There’s this new thing. It’s the biggest thing. Every country loves it and claims it as their own. The future will look at this moment and divide history into two sections: Before and After.

I usually don’t title my columns each week, but if I were to, this one would be titled “Small town spirit: from column to real life”. A couple of weeks ago, I sat down at my kitchen table which often serves as my desk because I have first of all, a nice view, and second of all, plenty of natural light there, and wrote one of those “isn’t small town life the best” kinds of columns. I noted at that time that one of the best things about small towns is how people step up for their community members when its needed. Well, the universe must have decided I needed a little live action view of exactly what I wrote about because last week, my house became Exhibit A.

Every so often, my phone buzzes—and it’s not a pal, not a loved one, not Ted from accounting asking if he can expense a banana. It’s a stranger. A phisherman, casting a line. It’s not my neighbor Phil who fishes for fish with esoteric lures, bless him.

There are certain phone calls that send a shockwave through your chest before the first sentence is even over. This weekend I got not one, but two of them, each from a different loved one. Both began with the exact same opening line “I crashed”.

There’s a certain kind of magic to living in a small town that means that you just know that you’re going to run into three people you know during every trip to the grocery store before you even make it out of the produce aisle. The lettuce might wilt before you get home, but at least you’ll know who’s remodeling their kitchen, whose cousin’s dog is missing and what’s going into the old empty building on Prentice Street.

This morning, before my first cup of coffee, I took twelve lives. By happy hour, another twenty-four. I counted.

It’s true that here at Beyond Reason, we occasionally make fun of things. Bunting. Cornhole. My seven-year-old daughter. But perhaps the leitmotif — the running joke readers have come to expect — is on pickleball.

I’ve been busily working on my outside gardening skills this summer, attempting to coax life out of the dirt. For all the effort, it has resulted in one very large cherry tomato plant that seems determined to overtake the entire back yard, approximately seven carrots, a mass of lettuce, one monster basil plant and a few struggling pepper plants. There was also a frequent ritual of watering, weeding and checking for signs of life on days I didn’t have the luxury of rain taking care of those duties.