UP-COUNTRY

I recently spent a few days in the Sierra Nevada of California.  The contrast to where I now live and have lived for almost all of my life brought me back to what conditions were like nearly a century ago in rural America—and still are when you get away from the cities and suburbs.

Here is what I observed . . .

People and the conditions in which they live in the unincorporated area I was in are markedly (and generally) ‘slower,’ less formal, poorer in terms of material possessions and appearances, and the focus of conversations more on the mundane. 

People I observed and overheard in the grocery store or plumbing store or at the gas station focused on simple things—their health, or the weather, or their family or things of nature.  For example, it was not uncommon to see little groups of three or four men (some of whom were clearly unemployed) standing around in their dirty blue jeans and boots wearing plaid or checkered shirts and a baseball cap staring under the hood of a truck, and talking about the displacement of the engine of their own dirty pickup trucks parked nearby, or looking at a stack of car tires, or talking of the weather and the depth of the snowpack or the upcoming fishing season.  Women, when you saw them, sadly and often looked more bedraggled or beaten down than women one might see in towns or in business establishments.  I guess the women were inside their homes, and I would guess watching television, for I saw few in yards or the small stores I visited.  And (I hate to say it) both men and women seemed to be very unattractive in terms of physical condition or grooming. Overfat and unhealthy-looking people were the norm.  Overheard public language (from both genders) also seemed more crude or unrefined. People, in general, seemed less well educated than those on the coast.

But, on the upside, these people seemed to have an independence of spirit and appeared to be proud of their freedoms and of living in America.  The old symbols of patriotism seemed more alive than in the more urbane area in which I live. I observed and sensed a distinct regional character—an old American character, but sadly one in which the old “American dream” seemed to burn less brightly.  

  

Yet for all of the differences between up-country living and that where I am from, I enjoyed being in the up-country—the beauty of it if one did not look to closely, the sounds and smells of nature and the smoke of a wood fire rising from a chimney, the inherent serenity of clouds, sunrise, sunset, and starlit night or hearing a dog or coyote barking in a distant canyon.  And the people, one-on-one, seemed decent and were courteous to one who was an obvious ‘outsider.’  Of that I was appreciative, and I tried to be likewise.

All of us—at least those of us who are citizens—are Americans in our own way.  We can all learn from each other.