What? Me worry?
As gas prices head toward $5 a gallon, real estate prices plummet, and global warming threatens to turn much of the West into a desert, I find myself just where I want to be – out here and gone.
The little northeastern Montana town my wife and I now call home is small enough we can ride our bikes wherever we need to go, there are plenty of critters to hunt within a few miles of town and the lake we fish is only 20 miles from the house.
My crop of sweet corn will be knee high by the Fourth of July and the tomato plants have already set fruit. Lately I’ve been spending the cool of the mornings fishing for walleye and pike, the afternoons fixing up our old stone house, the evenings counting my blessings.
An old hippie who for years longed to get back to the land, I’ve gotten back to a small town instead where the grocery, lumberyard and hardware store are but a few blocks away.
My Hutterite friends, from whom I stole the term “out here and gone,” keep us supplied with baked goods, the bounty of their garden and provide a shining example of “the simple life,” minus Paris Hilton.
No longer able to work my hoops magic because of aching knees, I joined the local gun club and shoot trap a couple times a week at a range north of town. I’m humbled there just like I was on the basketball court, but belonging to the gun club is considerably cheaper than my old health club membership.
It’s a very good life, however it’s not perfect. I miss the mountains. My daughters and grandchildren live farther away than I would like. I don’t see enough of my old friends.
The mosquitoes up here are legendary and the rattlesnakes can be an annoyance at times. But hey, they keep out the riff-raff.
And I’m certainly not recommending this lifestyle. No, you’re far better off staying where you are, commuting to those no-longer-so-high-paying jobs, shopping with everyone else at the air-conditioned mall and sitting in line at the fast-food drive-thru.
But please, come for a visit when you’ve saved up enough cash for a couple tanks of gas. We’ll go fishing out at the lake, come home and eat fresh sweet corn and turn in shortly after the curfew siren goes off at 9:30 p.m.
It’s a pretty simple life.
Paris Hilton would be bored to tears.
Thank goodness.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net
Selected columns are available at parkerheinlein.blogspot.com/