And That’s What I Like About the North

Although I’ve lived Upstate for a decade, suburban friends everywhere still query, with varying degrees of puzzlement, “What on earth are you doing up there?” They suggest, none too subtly, that there are so many places with so much more to offer. Joe, my long-time pal from Kansas City, usually punctuates our conversations with “Have you put the “For Sale” sign in the front yard yet?”

Joe and the others, for all their good intentions, seem to forget that I have already lived so many places and have sampled so much of what they think I’m missing. I came to the Susquehanna Valley by choice, amicably divorcing the suburbs. I gave them the endless commuting, the cookie-cutter shopping malls, supermarkets filled with overwrapped products , the multiplexes, the big boxes, the housing “developments” made of ticky-tacky that all look just the same, forever more asphalt and concrete and cars, cars, cars in the settlement.

Recently, I spent the day researching a new book, savoring the rural New York I love. On the back roads and in valley enclaves I discover how New Yorkers diligently and passionately spend their most precious commodity – their time. That day’s road trip took me to Grant’s Cottage (north of Saratoga Springs,) then to the Sundae’s Best Fudge Sauce production kitchen; lunch at Troy’s local product-supporting Ilium Café and then on to the Savor New York chocolate producer, Candyman Chocolates of Catskill, NY. The way home included a nickel tour of Irish East Durham and a mental note to arrange a visit to a Buddhist temple, located deep in the Catskills.

After my gratifying day of discovery, I was happily nearing home when a light flashed from the dashboard. “Add Fuel Now” it warned. Fuel? As in gas? I drive a Prius hybrid and, at 50 miles to the gallon, I don’t fill very often. Yet, with my mind a-whir with new places and people, new products, and new chapters to write, I had overlooked a basic tenet, even for a Prius: put gas in the tank. There I was on the beautiful, isolated Upstate back roads, in the rain, daylight fading, no cell service, no prospect of an open gas station, and my lone fuel bar insistently blinking that I was on fumes. This is one situation I doubt I would face in suburban America.

I did the only thing I could do; I approached a roadside house, knocked on the door and fervently hoped that my mother’s childhood fear mongering would prove untrue and I would not end up at the bottom of a well. My worst fears vaporized when I was greeted warmly and sympathetically by a pleasant woman in cozy slippers and her friendly dog. She confirmed that I was, indeed, in a pickle. She also confessed to being a kind person who, with true Upstate resourcefulness, had just replenished the five- gallon tank she kept for her mower. I needed only a gallon to get me to petrol salvation, which she gave good-humoredly, assuring me that I was not the first soul she encountered in similar straits. Despite her protests, I paid her for the fuel and for saving me much time and even greater vexation. We parted with her open-ended invitation that the next time I pass, if the fire was going, be sure to stop for a friendly libation.

I wonder if my experience would have been the same in suburbia.