Welcome to Small Town, America

Very recently, our little family packed up our lives into an SUV and a moving truck and moved from the high-speed suburbs of Chicago to a slow, sleepy town in the rural mountains of Idaho. If that sounds crazy to you, I agree. My husband and I are predictable people, until we get a “grand plan”. And this was one of our grandest. One of our favorite pastimes is daydreaming and planning our grand plans…until it’s time to actually pull the trigger, and we don’t. Not this time, though. This was it.

When people ask what caused us to make such a drastic physical move, both my husband and I go silent, get shifty-eyed, and give this awkward “I don’t know” response. It’s hard to put into words. The truth is, I don’t think we exactly know why we felt so compelled to come west. An opportunity presented itself, and we just felt called to go.

We were very happy in the suburbs. Fast-moving, always busy, but happy nonetheless. We had (and have) a very healthy marriage and kids. We had the 3-bedroom, fenced-in-yard house with two cars in the garage and perfect neighbors surrounding us on all sides. Okay, that’s partially a lie. I have yet to meet a garage in the suburbs that fits a full-sized pickup truck. So we had one car in the garage and one truck in the driveway. I digress…

But something just felt missing in Illinois. No, scratch that. Maybe it wasn’t so much what was missing but actually that nothing was missing…we had everything at our fingertips. The Chicago suburbs (and I assume any big city in this country) are the epitome of the American dream.

Folks! Come to the Suburbs of America! A Starbucks on every corner with a salary to fund it, along with every travel sport available for your sure-to-be future professional athlete child! And we had bought into that dream, hook, line, and sinker. And we were good at living it.

So, when the opportunity to slow down was offered to us, we paused. Okay, we more than paused. We stopped dead in our tracks and had one of those “after the kids go to bed, this is terrifying” talks that comes up in your marriage once a decade. At least, that’s how often they’ve come up in our 10-year marriage. And we ultimately decided we would try a different pace of life. We would slow down drastically, have more time together as a family, and pour into the small community that would be ours.

We would be choosing to have less outside of our family so that we could have more inside our family.

With mixed emotions, we decided yes. Yes, we would make this crazy choice.

Yes to less activities.

Yes to fewer stores.

Yes to shorter commutes.

Yes to less.

So we told our family and friends. And while there were tears of sadness on one side of the country, there were tears of joy on the other. See, I’m a born and bred Chicago suburbs girl, and I married a born and bred Idaho mountain boy. And we’ve been living in my world for quite some time now. So we would trade.

After taking the long, scenic 1,600-mile route from Chicago to Idaho (yes, there is both a scenic and non-scenic route to get to Idaho), we pulled into our new tiny town on coffee and a prayer. The prayer was for the pressure drop and funny noise that had started in one of the back tires at mile 1,596. The coffee was just for sanity.

Our sweet, new little town is nestled in a valley that sits at about 5,500 feet in elevation, between mountains that feel like they’re welcoming you with a hug when you drive into town. The town is “famous” (read: unknown to anyone outside of the area) for being a resting site for pioneers on the Oregon Trail where they would drink and cook with the naturally carbonated spring water in the area. Assuming they avoided dysentery up to that point, of course. You can even still see original wagon ruts of the Oregon Trail on one of the fairways of the town’s golf course. It’s the real deal.

The modern-day town boasts a whopping 3,000 residents. I recently spoke with a man who told me this was a “huge” town, because he lived in a town of 300. To be clear, I came from a never-ending sprawl of nearly 10 million people, so this is nothing short of minuscule to me. No one talk to me about how “huge” you think this town is.

The town is tiny but efficient. If Marie Kondo, Joshua Becker, and Allie Casazza (my bookshelf resident minimalists) built a town, this would be it. It has everything important and nothing more. If it doesn’t spark joy, if it’s not used, if it doesn’t have purpose, it won’t last here. We’re talking two grocery stores, three gas stations, a playground, and a handful of restaurants.

Our new ‘hood has more churches than stoplights, clocking in at three stoplights and seven churches. The town, situated a few hours north of Salt Lake City, was settled and developed by Mormon (Church of Latter-Day Saints) pioneers and still highly reflects that demographic today. As non-denominational Christians, our family is a spiritual minority in town, though I’m already growing to love the community values that are weaved throughout the town. I don’t know if it’s a pioneer or religious mentality, but these are some of the nicest folks you’ll meet. The kind that bring you food to welcome you to town and gather a group of people to unload your moving truck 5 minutes after meeting you.

The town itself can be driven from end-to-end in about 90 seconds, at which point you’re at the edge of farm fields on either side. On Sundays there’s no reason to drive anywhere but church, since those are the only buildings that are open. The exception is the one grocery store and two fast food restaurants that stay open for highway travelers. (Did you just think of Radiator Springs from the movie Cars when I said “highway travelers”? Yeah, me too. It’s kind of like that.) If you want to hit the Walmart, pack a lunch and make sure you have a flare gun in the winter, because you’ll be driving an hour through the mountains to get there. Target run? Better pack dinner and blankets too, because that’s an hour and a half.

While the distance to Target is heart-breaking and was nearly a deal-breaker for me moving here, the town is flanked on two sides by 2,000,000+ acres of national forest (thank you American taxpayers for my new playground). We are also 2 hours from Grand Teton National Park and 3 hours from Yellowstone. Shockingly, given the choice between driving to Target and a national park, I’ll almost always choose a national park. Almost.

The town and its 3,000 residents (slightly higher than enrollment at my high school) are supported by numerous farmers, cattle ranchers, and two phosphate manufacturers. What the heck do we use phosphate for in this country? I am the wrong person to ask, but my husband tells me one of the facilities helps farmers grow plants and the other helps farmers kill plants (weeds). Oh, the irony.

I doubt this place is very different than any other rural town in America, but this one is ours.

This is it. Welcome to Small Town, America. Welcome to a simpler life. The cell service is spotty, but the pace of life is coming in clear. The jury’s still out on whether or not we’ve made a good decision. But then again, maybe there aren’t good and bad decisions, there’s just choices weaved through our lives that make our stories what they are.

Thanks so much for coming on this journey with me. I’d love to hear from you (since there’s only 2,999 other people to talk to here), so feel free to reach out to me at heythere@livingagoodelife.org, follow me on Facebook (Living A Goode Life) / Instagram (@living.a.goode.life) or leave a comment here.

And if you missed it, shoot back to the first post, Meet A Goode Life, to hear about how I got here.