Small Towns

Avoiding the fate of always seeing but never having

It’s been a moderately busy day finishing up some videos for internal work projects, having conference calls with my Brazilian research team counterparts at work, and realizing that my writing has fallen behind. There’s also that realization that I’d “run out” of photos to tell stories to and about, so refreshing the pool would be necessary.

There’s an impending storm again this weekend, and the utilities are all on high alert. Getting ahead of what they were projecting seemed apropos, so I hit the road once the major checklist items were completed.

I used to live in the north-central Massachusetts town of Hubbardston. It’s not much to speak of: a Main Street lined with houses, a post office, and a few shops. It’s a town you drive through, not around, and you’ll spend more time getting from the south end to the north end than expected. Small roads branch off from that main artery, bisecting the town, but they lead to other places, journeys, and stories.

One such town in the approximate middle of nowhere is Petersham. I can’t tell you much about it, but I can tell you that for all of its similarities with Hubbardston, it differs in one significant way: it has a town “square.” It may be playing fast and loose with the definition of our quadratic symbol, but for all intents and purposes, it’s there.

We’re used to a perspective of life from the driver’s seat. We watch houses, businesses, people, flora, and fauna whip by while driving our metal beasts of burden across vast swaths of asphalt and paint. We’re habituated to the noise of tires droning on our highways, a constant background thrum to the tunes we play on our stereos. We’re causally blind to what surrounds us, concerned only with what lies straight ahead, our destination, and the time it takes to get there.

I sent my drone up 250m in the sky to see if I could see something different from the patterned habits of the usual. I was looking for a break in the ordinary, an understanding of what it meant to exist in this drive-by space from a perspective that was closer to God than man and closer to bird than beast.

I could see the Unitarian church with its proud steeple arcing towards the sky, like so many hands raised in supplication. I could see the golden dome of the town administrative building, resplendent in its impoverished demesne. The library building was cobbled and etched with river stone and time, the country store had cars and people spilling in and out of its tired, homey facade. What I saw was humanity milling about like ants, dedicated to their movements of “somewhere” and disregarding connections.

What I didn’t see, however, is what binds this town together. I didn’t see the ethereal connections of family, kith, and kin. I didn’t see the hands held together, the wizened faces of generations held fast in each other's arms. I didn’t hear the low murmur of voices, inquiries about business, other banter, or the gentle hush of concern when trying to understand how a child got sick. I didn’t experience community in Petersham because, for everything I’ve pined for previously, I drove through from the air and on the ground.

I face the dichotomy of my stories daily. I face the longing for a simpler time, of analog choices, of flesh and bone connection. I engage in digital surveyance, a type of voyeuristic nonsense that falls so easily in my lap because of technology. It’s to this dichotomy that I lead you knowing full well you’re in much the same boat as I.

We have the opportunity to pause when we encounter a new place. An opportunity, however scant, to sink our teeth into the marrow of a different life. To pause, listen, smell, taste, and see what being off the asphalt truly means. We don’t need to suffer a voyeur's fate: always seeing but never having. We are allowed to pause and enjoin the moments presented.

Dear souls, the next time you’re faced with these moments, do the counter-intuitive thing: pause, stop, observe. Don’t fall prey to the mechanisms and media that urge you to fast-forward, to push through, to hurry. Stop. Listen. Eat. Stay. and let these moments be the field in which your soul can grow.

May it ever be so.