What I love (and hate) about living in a small mountain town

I am begging leaf peepers to just pull over.

Earlier this week I met up with a sporadic reader of this newsletter. She’d picked up from various stories that my home was the one she’d just left. She lived here for three years before deciding it wasn’t the right fit — for right now and maybe forever. I said, “well anytime you come back, I’ll be here.”

Barring some sort of massive life shift in either the magical or merciless directions, I can’t see why we would ever leave. We bought this house with forever in mind, or at the very least, twenty years.

I tell people I goldilocks’ed North America: as an adult I lived on a sailboat in the Caribbean, a row house in D.C., a 4th floor walk-up in the East Village, an in-law suite in an old Victorian in downtown Boulder, a garden room in Santa Monica six blocks from the beach, and an old hunting cabin in Topanga Canyon on a single lane road of 27%, and that’s putting aside the years in Ohio, Idaho, and North Carolina. I have tried on a number of climates and lifestyles to know when one suits me. And this one does. 

So here, on this beautiful fall day where I am somehow still sick, I present: my favorite things about living in a small mountain town. And a few of the things that drive me crazy. And after writing this, it turns out all the pros are also the cons. So you’ll just have to see which side of the coin you land on. 

PRO: choice paralysis is for cities. 

There are an estimated 25,000 restaurants in LA County. And if you read Eater with any semblance of regularity, you would constantly find yourself being tempted by new ones. This is a gift and a burden. And when you’re spending 2.5 hours driving across the city at 5pm hoping to make your reservation, it can definitely feel like a burden. 

There are like, maybe 30 restaurants in the tourist town over the ridge. In the other direction, there’s one nice restaurant and one dive bar and one cafe. You can narrow down your selection quite quickly! No one delivers, and you can get takeout from just a handful of places. So, do you want thai, pizza, or burgers? 

There are only ever two movies playing at the theater at a time. They play for a week and then they’re replaced. If a musician you’ve heard of is coming, you can get tickets. If you’re looking for something to do this weekend, it’s whatever is happening in town. You want a dog? These are the six that are available for adoption. You want a dentist? There are two: one’s kinda hot and one’s less hot. You want a doctor? Here, this is the doctor. It’s very simple! And if all this sounds like a con to you, then I would listen to that voice. 

We once had a fair-weather acquaintance move briefly to this town, and upon learning he couldn’t get food delivered here, he said to me, “so do you like… cook every night? That’s what you do for fun?” I mean, it’s not what I do for fun, but do I spend most evenings putting on some music and being at home with my animals and my books and my honey? Well, yeah.

CON: the food selection.

If you’re one of the lucky few, you get a CSA box here. The rest of us are permanently waitlisted, buying whatever wilted vegetables are at the store. Every week at the market is like the first week of Covid: everything is always sold out. I’ve started timing my visits to when they might have restocked the half’n’half and peanut butter. 

This isn’t a food desert, but it’s also not a cornucopia. The closest Whole Foods is four hours. The closest Trader Joe’s is six hours. I don’t even know where a Costco is. Don’t even get me started on specialty ingredients — we save that for the internet. 

This also applies to the restaurants, unfortunately. What I would give for a little more diversity in food, both in origin and price. I paid $15 for a burrito from a cart the other day. That did not include the extra cup of salsa. It was $27 for two chicken kabobs, some fries, and a Spindrift. With tip, a dirty chai with oat milk can cost you $11, always known as your dignity.

PRO: you feel like you’re part of a community, even when you’re new.

In a big city, you have the usual repeat customers: the people who share your commute, the people who live on your block, the staff at your favorite haunts. But those things take time to establish. Here, they don’t. Even when you don’t have a surplus of friends, you recognize people and they recognize you and it creates this soft quilt of living — of knowing that if for some reason you suddenly went blind, people would immediately help instead of wondering if they were being filmed for some elaborate internet prank. 

CON: anonymity doesn’t exist. 

Not only do I recognize people, but I recognize their dogs and their cars. You will run into people everywhere. If you are having a bad day, you’d better learn to smile through it or at least expertly admit it. If you’re the kind of person who participates in any kind of secret activity, you know where you belong. Newsletter writers, you’ve been warned. 

Also, other people’s reputations follow them. This is one I hadn’t really thought about before we moved here, but the reason we can say “we bought Dick’s house” is because everyone not only knew Dick, but had an opinion about him. The other day, a friend said she had someone we should meet, but that she couldn’t introduce us to him because he’d dumped one of her friends, and that hadn’t smoothed over yet, so she could give us his number but we would have to reach out. But the dumped friend is also my friend and so I couldn’t even take his number because first I need to ask her how bad the breakup was! 

PRO: it’s easy to share hobbies here.

90% of the people here run, ski, ride, climb, etc. If you yell “I love skate skiing!” into a crowd, at least a third of that crowd will yell it back. It makes finding companions and common ground and used gear incredibly easy. 

CON: the humans can feel a little copy/paste.

Look, I’m a white blonde woman in a Tacoma and a puffy — I am part of the problem, and the lack of diversity here is a big problem. Ben and I talked about this ad nauseam when we were considering moving because we didn’t want to have a racist kid, or even a racially ignorant one. Like a lot of mountain towns, a good deal of the working staff here is Spanish speaking and drives in from over an hour away. It’s not the first place I’ve lived that felt segregated, but it’s definitely one of the worst. Friends of ours with an adopted daughter with brown skin said they transferred her midway through high school because the kids were so racist. That’s a horrible reality we’ll have to fight for as long as we live here. 

In a significantly more benign copy/paste problem, it took me over a year to tell people apart here. Everyone is athletically framed, wears the same kinds of boots and the same kinds of jackets and drives the same kind of cars. But that’s because those boots and jackets and cars are the most capable! And now I look like everyone else save for the few days a year when I wear this hideous jacket. 

Also, a friend visiting from the big city showed me the local Tinder profiles as she swiped through. For more than ten men in a row, their profile photo was of them on a mountain, in a flannel, with a beard. Nearly interchangeable specimen. A true anthropological find. 

ALTERNATE REALITY CON: dating.

There are two sayings I’ve heard here: 

1. From the women: The odds are good, but the goods are odd.

2. From the men: She’s not your girlfriend, it’s just your turn.

If Ben dies in an avalanche, I’ll report back on this. Until then, I’m glad I don’t have to. 

PRO: Seasons!

Real seasons. Not spider season and marine layer season. But spring blooms and hot dirt and painted landscapes and deep stillness. I’m talking buds on the trees, jumping in the lake, carving pumpkins, and snow angels seasons. Living in LA feels like being in the control group in an experiment — nothing ever changes! Sure, fine, there was rain this year, but most years it felt like you were in a time loop. This was a struggle for me even in North Carolina where there were December days that just oop! were 70 degrees. It messes with my head!

With seasons, time moves slower and I relish that.

CON: April and May are the fucking worst months of the year.

Until time moves too slow. I can’t tell you how much I hate April here, because in April winter is not ending, it is merely still happening. And that’s so much winter. Winter says hi here in October, and then it follows you around in November, and then in December, January, February, March, and April, it just mauls you. This is fun for a few months! But 5.5 months? And then it’s topped off with May, which should be lovely but is just a leafless mud trap where all the good trails are still covered in snow. 

Of course this one isn’t true for every small mountain town, but be warned: it could be. 

PRO: October is a fantasy.

It’s off-season and it’s amazing. It’s quiet. Nothing is happening. There’s no one here. It’s stunningly beautiful. It’s mountain biking and sweaters and coffee strolls and library events and cemetery walks and it’s perfect. 

CON: everything is closed during off season.

Somehow this is charming in October but maddening in May. I can’t explain why because I don’t know why. 

PRO: there’s no traffic!

Given that I’ve driven to the vet over twenty times this year, I can’t tell you what a joy it is to live somewhere there just isn’t traffic. You leave your house and you just drive straight to the destination. That’s it. Fine, sure, occasionally you make the mistake of driving into town during school drop-off, but you learn! And even when there’s a festival, we have these smug little stickers on the cars that indicate who the locals are so they can skip the parking lines and actually get to the grocery store. It’s a dream! Also, it’s just beautiful. Everywhere you drive is beautiful.

CON: when there is traffic, it is the most erratic drivers on Earth.

What is it with overlanders that makes them feel like they can just pull over literally wherever they want to have a tailgate, pumping and deflating each other’s tires? Why do people think it’s OK to drive 25 in a 55 merely because the leaves are changing colors? Do you think people who read the “No OHVs” signs from their OHVs simply can’t read? Why are all these jeeps so loud? Why are they all flying American flags? Why doesn’t anyone use a turn signal when they’re pulling over?

PRO: incredible access to nature.

It’s everywhere, and it’s awesome. There is no counter con to this, unless you’re afraid of marmots. Being able to walk outside right onto a trail is hands down one of the best things to ever happen to me. The dirt roads, the animals everywhere, the miles and miles and miles of untouched terrain — it’s a dream. It’s magical. It’s home. 

---

Given that I plan to stay here forever, I feel like this list balances out. As we enter spooky season, I can’t help but find my social calendar absolutely enchanting. An event to paint ghosts into old paintings at the library! A lantern tour of the cemetery! Movie marathon dates! I feel like I fell into the scene heading for the Gilmore Girls pilot. I’m an extra in Practical Magic. I am just old enough to find all of the heartwarming and not mindnumbingly boring.

That’s part of it, obviously. Before I moved here, I loved long hikes and chai lattes and smutty books and mountain biking and skiing and libraries and feeling like I knew everyone and everyone knew me. I loved snow days and shoveling and big trucks and dirt on my soles. I loved living here before I ever did. That’s how I knew. And that’s why it worked.