Life in the Village: PROLOGUE

I grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, the town(s) I lived in were on the small side (assuming you consider populations of 80- 100,000 small), but when you consider that I was insolated if not surrounded by a 50 miles stretch on almost all sides of urban sprawl with no open space in between, you can hardly call this living outside The City. As a young adult I was on a quest to relocate closer to the action, a fairly normal practice for people my age. Indeed, I am a city girl at heart, even though I love nature and being outside, I just don’t know how to function in small towns.

When I was a kid, we had, well still technically have, a cottage in coastal Oregon. It wasn’t huge, but nice, each of us had our own room, and the house sat on a half acre of land, so there was plenty of space to run around in our little forest, although one had to be mindful of the poison ivy patches. The beach was 10 minutes away by car, (bear in mind it was an Oregon beach, so it was usually overcast and freezing), there were a couple kids around, but every activity they suggested we do, seemed like a cruel joke to me. The mere suggestion of trying to trap woodland creatures for no apparent reason led me to help my dad organize the garage, rather than join the local kids on their bizarre “fun” adventures. Yes, I pretty much hated it there. After a few days, I was bored out of my mind, so bored in fact that my preferred task was getting a jump start on my summer reading list for school. I regularly knocked out two books a week, and this coming from the world's least motivated student! My favorite activities included going to the costume store and trying on funny outfits, getting a meatball sub, at “The Sandwich Station” followed by a float from the old school A&W root beer stand, but these hubs for fun were in town proper, almost 20 minutes away by car! In lieu of a ride to town, I had to settle for walking to the local mercantile; located in a log cabin along the main road. In this shop you could get all manner of sundries, and you could rent films! There wasn’t much of a selection, but they did have the Lost Boys, which had just been released on VHS, my favorite movie at the time. I rented it over and over! If I were to have written one of those first week back to school English essays about my summer, it would have read like this: I spent my summer playing horse shoes with my dad, until I lost the horse’s shoes in the poison ivy ravine at the base of the forest. Therefore, I began practicing archery, until I lost all the arrows in the poison ivy ravine at the base of the forest. After that, I switched to darts; until those too were gobbled up by the poison ivy ravine at the base of the forest. Later in the summer I wised-up, avoiding the middle-man, my brother and I just hit golf balls into the poison ivy ravine. Once I had exhausted our family’s supply of airborne sporting objects; I read the entire Sweet Valley High canon, watched Lost Boys more times than the film's editors, and counted the days until I could return to LA. The End.

I offer this preface to give the reader an idea of my point of reference when it comes to talking about villages, and villagers. Am I a city snob? Without question. Am I biased? Absolutely. Am I ashamed of my blanket judgments on village life and villager? Well not entirely, because there is some truth to every stereotype, and it's no as if I'm malevolent towards the village existence, I envy villager; I envy the simplicity in which they live; their ties to their community and their sense of self and purpose is admirable, but that doesn't mean I understand it.