Adjusting to rural America

I’ll admit, Wyoming was never a state I thought I’d eventually live in. When I was younger, I always thought of the place as a large, deserted piece of land with multiple tiny and isolated towns placed randomly across the state limits. The thought of there being so many small towns spread far apart from one another with no big cities close by seemed too painful for me to bear. I thought I might be able to live in a bigger Wyoming city like Cheyenne or Casper, but I never thought I could live in one of the multiple small towns like Saratoga.

I had a love for big cities ever since I was young. Growing up near San Francisco, I was the kind of kid who loved the thrills of big cities and found small towns to be awfully boring. I thought of small towns as the “lame and useless” part of America, since there weren’t enough non-outdoor-related things to do in them to keep me entertained. Looking back, I guess I just got bored too easily, or I wasn’t creative enough to come up with interesting things to do for entertainment. As a teenager, I always wanted to end up living right in San Francisco, or in another big, high-profile city like Los Angeles or New York City. I guess I just always liked the idea of there being multiple things to do in order to stay entertained. I also thought it would be cool to brag to people and say, “Oh yeah, I live and work in (insert big city here),” and then hear them “ooh” and “ahh” and talk about how great that must be. Before moving to Wyoming, I lived in Salt Lake City, which was nice because it was a big enough city with a big enough metropolitan area.

I left because newspaper reporter jobs seemed to be more plentiful and easier to get in Wyoming. Even though I desperately wanted to be hired to write for a newspaper again, I wasn’t sure if moving to a small-town in Wyoming would be worth it. I mean, could I really move to a town that didn’t even have a Wal-Mart? Or not even a McDonald’s? Not even a 7-Eleven?

That was the old me. After living in rural Wyoming for long enough, I now see the positives of small-town life and negatives of a big city. Of course, in a small town there is no traffic, and the crime and drug rates are much lower or even nonexistent. You also don’t have people aggressively begging for money on every street corner, and all the residents are much more friendly and respectful compared to those in a big city. It’s always nice to see people you don’t know, or who don’t know you either, wave at you from their cars or while on the street. The cost of living is also much cheaper than that of a big city. True, some outsiders to Saratoga may say “there’s nothing to do here,” but there is indeed plenty to do if you’re an outdoors enthusiast. And what other city has a hot-springs pool that is free and open 24-7?

Even though Wyoming is one of the largest states and has the lowest population out of all 50, I’m starting to see the positives of the state and its small towns. Time will tell if I’ll continue to seek out living in small towns my whole life, and begin to think of big cities as the “lame and useless” part of America.