I live in the rural Mountain West. Last week, my wife interviewed in the rural east. It was a good reminder of just how different the two are, from a lifestyle standpoint.
I live in a town of 5,000. In a county with 10,000 or so, spanning a county significantly larger than Delaware. To get to the nearest “city” of any significance is Redstone, which is roughly an hour away. But Redstone doesn’t have a decent airport and lacks a lot of the amenities of a lot of cities. So it’s two hours to Summit. To get to the interview out east, it was a five hour drive because that’s what it takes to get to an airport with non-stop flights across the country.
The town where Clancy interviewed had about 5,000. But it was next to another town with about 3,000. Ten miles away is another town of a couple thousand. Twenty miles, a town with twenty thousand. Within an hour, there are more than three towns with over 50,000 people. Within a couple hours
You may not think about how different it is to live in a small town that is so isolated and a small town with at least some access to “urban” amenities.
But from where I stand, it makes all the difference in the world.
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7 Responses to Rural, East vs. West
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Arapaho
Greetings from Callie, Arapaho, a red town in a red state known for growing red meat. And from Redstone, Arapaho (Aw-RAH-pah-hoe), a blue city with blue collar roots that's been feeling blue for quite some time.
Nothing written on this site should be taken as strictly true, though if the author were making it all up rest assured the main character and his life would be a lot less unremarkable.
Whereabouts in the East?
We’re considering a move from where we are to coal country, but still in the East. Superficially, these are both areas where towns are roughly ten miles apart, but they are pretty different: terrain and culture.
A4
Queenland.
Nice. Maybe.
We were driving back this weekend from scouting our possible move (Vandalia, maybe? Maybe near the border of Queenland), and much preferred parts of Queenland in terms of apparent livability to where the job possibility was.
The math problems have gotten much harder!
A4
FWIW, if Queensland is the inland portion of a real world location that I’m thinking of, then you’ll be the third person that I know who has located there if you do ultimately move there. One is a ex-New Yorker who loves it, and the other is a military brat who has come to tolerate it, but isn’t fully fond of it. If you’re in the coastal region where the crabs come from, then you’re in a Southern region with Northern taxes and regulations which is just useless.
And with non-southern cost-of-living. It’s not ideal, but we’re really looking to get out of the situation we’re in.
There is a fellowship training program located in a town of 5,000 people? Is the progrtam affiliated with an academic center in one of the cities?
Yeah, it’s affiliated with the state’s flagship state university. If this goes through, she will be an employee of the University of Queenland. She may also be an employee of the local medical group since she would be doing things that fall outside of the scope of the fellowship.