Everything could be wonderful - #76

Where everyone doesn't know your name.

Our little town of few people and many dogs runs its own government. We have a mayor, a town manager, a planning and zoning committee, the works. We manage our own trash, supply our own water, plow our own roads — you get the idea. And when things come up for debate, the town manages it internally. The problem with that is that “the town” can sometimes be the mere seven or so people who show up to the meeting. 

When we moved here, we made a decision together to wait one year until we participated in local government. First, we wanted a lay of the land. Who’s involved and why? What were the historic grievances? What issues have come up for vote again and again? Who supports ATVs and who doesn’t? Has becoming an actual Dark Sky community been addressed? Who decides when town-owned lots go for sale? And to who? 

We went to our first meeting last month, incentivized by an issue we cared about: affordable housing for locals. The vote was 8-9, with maybe 9 or 10 people abstaining, and it was hard to not see the obvious line in the sand: the people voting in favor of exploring more housing options were predominantly renters, while those against expansion were mostly homeowners. The main issue was this: the houses were going to be built in what was considered a moderately risky zone for avalanches. By the vote, it was deemed too dangerous to build. 

Depending on which map you look at, our house is also in a moderately risky zone for avalanches. Our neighbors have a massive stone wall behind their house for this exact reason: slow the wall of snow cement from plowing their house down. We chose these houses knowing the risk, having a plan, and being prepared to execute it. But other locals have been denied this opportunity. The town voted against developing those lots — lots that had been, at least in rumor, guaranteed to people who rent here. Tensions in the room trickled out into real world relationships. Here, there is no avoiding that. It’s not 53% of your district — it’s your actual neighbors. 

This is the reality of community — it doesn’t mean you agree, it just means you’re in it together, for better or worse. 

But I want to be a part of a community even when it’s challenging, which is how I ended up going to a writing workshop at the local library where I left feeling like a worse writer than when I walked in, or why I went to a donation-based yoga class only to be the only person there, every introverted molecule of my being begging the man to just let me go and him insisting we still hold the class. It’s also how I ended up volunteering at a local skate skiing race.

When I first saw the race posted, I wanted to enter it. I was going to spend one more week skate skiing and see if I felt comfortable enough with my progress to register. Of course that week my cat died, I set my house on fire, an avalanche knocked out my power, the house froze, the pipes burst, and I fell into a depressive episode that my depression is happy to report I am still in. 

Not one to be deterred completely by the relentless onslaught of life’s paper cuts and gouges, I thought maybe I could still do the race, but for reasons lost to me, my body has decided that skate skiing is the one precious place we should definitely burst into the full body tears that we don’t feel safe having around people because we spent too many years having adults tell us we were dramatic so we learned to run through humanity like it is a never ending baggage claim and wait till we’re in our car to scream. Anyway, because I cry every time I ski, I thought it better to volunteer than race. 

I felt good about this decision! I was going to help with registration and maybe I would learn some people’s names and maybe I would strengthen the links on some very tenuous acquaintances. Maybe I would even make a friend! 

I don’t know why I still think like this — this amount of unbridled optimism has rarely panned out for me. And yet, it is the cornerstone of my personality: everything could be wonderful! Maybe! Everything was not. 

If there is one grievance I can air about moving to a small town it is this: for an undetermined amount of time, everyone will know each other and they will not know you. There are days when it feels like I transferred to a school full of Olympic athletes, except we don’t even have classes together because I take my classes from my room, so I just see them periodically where they say things like, “oh hey! Haven’t seen you around!” and you say something regrettably cringe like, “just been in my house,” while they’ve been scaling mountains. 

The first hour of volunteering was like waiting for your parents to pick you up when they’re delayed, but your Walkman has run out of batteries so you sit there in the silence of empty headphones avoiding conversation and offering facial expressions that you hope say, “I promise someone loves me.” I went to the registration table, but they didn’t need me. I carried a few things, but other people stepped in. In the end, I got the solitary task of taping signs to tables while everyone around me hugged each other because they’ve known each other for years. 

Not one to give up in the face of the world’s smallest modicum of adversity, I introduced myself to a couple volunteers. Each one, around the 45-second mark, said it was nice to meet me, and now they were going to go talk to one of their friends. And I would stand there in the sun and snow with my emotional support cider making the same face you make when you’ve passed a coworker you’re not close with for the fifth time that day. It’s this one.

Not everyone’s role in life is to be the extrovert savior, lofting through life picking up lost introverts like stray kittens, but god it would be nice if there were more of them. Eventually an actual friend showed up. I glommed onto her like one of those desperate seals you see in viral videos flinging themselves onto someone’s boat until the orcas leave. Except instead of being surrounded by killer whales, I was surrounded by nice people who just wanted to talk to someone else. Am I the orca?

Through my friend, I met one of her friends: a cherubic soul of warmth and curiosity who had moved here only six months ago but had the mixed advantage of being welcomed into the friend group of her own established boyfriend. She’d moved from New York, and we shared our New York histories, after which she offered this nugget: “you still have time to bask in anonymity here.” 

Somewhere in that New York history, I had been at a cafe in the East Village writing a piece not dissimilar from this one. I asked a guy next to me if he could watch my laptop while I went to the bathroom. Upon my return, he was yelling at another guy who had tried to take that laptop. I couldn’t believe it. The people you ask to watch your laptop never actually have to defend it, they only ever stand guard like the line that waits naturally outside the restroom, trusting the first person to have checked to make sure the door was really locked. I apologized to him, not realizing I was saddling with him actual responsibility, only for him to tell me he had loved it. I’d given him an opportunity to be a good person, and he got to be a very good person. Anonymity was only ever how a story started before it got good.

I am too in the muck of my own despondent emotions to appreciate the many lessons and morals of this story. I can’t see that the writing workshop got me out of the house, that it gave me to the chance to show a writer I respect that I actually respect her. I can’t see that the accidental private yoga session genuinely helped relieve tension, and that he offered me a nugget in finding quality kundalini breath exercises online. I can’t see that the purpose of volunteering is not for your own benefit, but for the benefit of others. I can’t see that most people who move to a remote mountain town full-time aren’t walking away because they hate me, but because they’re like me: more deeply connected to nature than anything else and unsure of how to translate that bond to a new human. Hello, nice to meet you, are you good at carrying a conversation?

Earlier this week, I got an email about joining one of our town’s committees. I looked at the recipients and recognized being singled out amidst a slew of familiars not being included. This particular committee would focus on sustainability, energy efficiency, waste reduction, the local greenhouse, water conservation, and more — many of the very things I write about. It was called the Self-Reliance Committee. But it isn’t self-reliance; it’s community support. It is a community working on compromises to ensure the longevity of this valley for everyone in it: the homeowners and the renters seeking permanence in a fragile world, the dogs who police their wild brethren, the cats lurking in windows and gardens, the alpine flowers being bullied out by dandelions, the pine trees whispering through roots and fungi of the coming beetles, the mama bear whose cubs leave their den this spring and emerge into adolescence, the mountain lion who leaves her prey hanging in the trees, the magpies hovering over the compost, the aspens always clattering about their fall performance. 

Would I ever be as adept at local politics as I was at romanticizing the world around me?

At a party last winter, I sidled into a conversation, trying to make friends. They were talking about an overnight cross-country ski race someone had just done. Then someone turned to me and asked, “So what do you race?” 

“Time?” I joked. No one laughed. Oh no. “Um, nothing, not really that good at anything. More of a snacks and photos kind of girl.” Silence sucked the tipsy out of every single person in the circle until they returned to their own stories of athletic mastery. That moment has proved to be one of many moments here where you can almost see your photo being filed into someone else’s Nothing In Common file. In a city, these moments typically passed for me without consequence, but in a small town I see those people again and again. They are a worthwhile reminder of the stories we tell ourselves about how we’re perceived. It’s easy to gloss over the fact that it’s my own narrative that put me in that file. 

I can’t earn my stripes climbing a mountain, carving down a couloir, or bombing a downhill. But stripes can be earned elsewhere. I replied to the committee email with my availability. Once I’m on actual committee that can yell at advise people about crushing cans and slowing down, my anonymity will melt like spring slush. Maybe I’ll make a friend, I thought as I hit send. Everything could be wonderful, my dumb little brain thought again.