A love letter to small rural towns on the verge of destruction

If we want small towns to survive, we need to change how we treat them. And by "we" I mean the government.

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the lake i love

Every summer we spend at least a month in our cabin on a lake in northern Michigan. My husband’s family has lived here for 3 generations — our kids will be the 4th.

I love being here. I remember the first time I saw the lake from the car, then the first time I stepped onto the land which would one day be ours. I felt like I’d come home, if not physically, then spiritually. I know that I sound extra woo when I say this, but there is something about the energy here that just feels good.

I love the high canopy of branches that crisscross overhead and the smell of cedar. I love hearing the wind rustling gently through the trees and birds chirping outside my window. I love hearing the waves at night through my open windows and I love waking up to see the sun rising over the lake.

I love the yarrow and daisies that grow wild on the side of the highway leading to the cabin. I love the apples trees that have naturally pollinated and spread along the highways heading into town. I love the moss covering the median strip of our unpaved driveway and the dandelions that dot it in late spring.

There is something magical about this land, this water, this place, that touches my soul.

Our cabin is in a part of Michigan that is largely rural. The largest town closest to the lake is fairly small and is mostly kept alive by summer tourism.

Industry left this town years ago, its dilapidated remnants rotting at the edge of the downtown area. A small, local group is trying to buy the former factory and turn it into housing and shops. But the current owners are holding up the sale and holding up progress as a result. In terms of larger businesses, there’s a Walmart, a Family Fare, a Dollar Store, Tractor Supply, lots of fast food restaurants, a bunch of car dealerships, and a small emergency room that services the area and smaller towns nearby — but no urgent care. You have to drive 30 minutes to the closest urgent care and make a reservation for a walk-in appointment.

The cell towers are not very strong here, so if I need to make a call from the cabin, I have to sit in a particular part of the house — the corner of my bed, right next to the window with my feet propped on the dresser. And even then, sometimes the call is dropped.

The internet is spotty. In fact, we currently don’t have internet — we’re waiting for them to finish installing fiber, which will hopefully be better than what it’s been for the past 6 years. Even my cell phone has trouble connecting to wifi, so we’re having a somewhat low-tech summer so far.

We don’t have air conditioning, a dishwasher, or a dryer, but none of that really bothers me. We have lots of fans, open windows, and a small cabin with great airflow. We can wash and dry our dishes by hand. And we have a clothesline outside, which does the trick for clothes on hot, sunny days.

Our cabin is a 20 minute drive to the closest town, so going to town isn’t ever a casual trip. It’s a multi-errand adventure so I can make the most of the time and the gas spent.

In spite of all of that, I love it here. The library is fantastic, with one of the best children’s sections I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen quite a few). You can check out books of course, but also board games, tools, and even fishing poles.

During the summer there’s a free weekly concert series in the park on Main Street and the bands are almost always really great. There’s a farmer’s market twice a week with local farms and other vendors. I know most of the farmers I buy produce from by name, even though I’m currently only here during the summer. They know and remember me every year, too. So do the librarians.

The movie theater in town has old school theater vibes and cheap matinee tickets, like the ones I went to when I was a kid. There’s even a “zero waste” store where I can get dry goods, dish soap, and hand soap in glass jars, plus local goods and specialty items I can’t get at the Family Fare.

There are lots of really great shops along Main Street, some bars (most of which offer live music) and restaurants, an Opera House, a yoga studio, and 2 ice cream shops. There’s even a shop that will process real film.

In the 10 years that I’ve been coming here, I’ve barely scratched the surface of all this town has to offer.

It’s a great little town.

And I love it here despite the fact that it is undoubtably Trump country, as so many rural small towns are these days. Although there is an active and vocal progressive contingent, many of the year round locals are a conservative and Christian and predominantly white bunch.

Our neighbor on the lake has no less than 8 flags on his property, some of them with Trump’s face on them.

Like the owners of the old factory in town, our neighbor isn’t interested in his land thriving or prospering, he’s interested in dominion.

When he purchased the lot next to ours, the first thing he did was clear a lot of healthy trees and created a surburban-esque lawn in the front and back of his house, something that doesn’t really exist naturally by the lake. In order to maintain this lawn, he sprays chemicals on his grass regularly, all of which run off into the lake —something we’re expressly not supposed to do in order to preserve the health of the lake.

He has a pontoon boat, which he parks at the end of his dock. He treats it like a speedboat, racing across the lake and zooming through the shallows. This probably makes him feel like king of the lake, but what he’s really doing is harming plant and animal life in the lake — tearing up seaweed, lily pads, and turtles indiscriminately.

He doesn’t think or probably care about any of this.

He’s not worried about polluting the lake so long as he can ride his boat on it, feeling big and powerful.

He isn’t concerned about cutting down too many trees, so long as he has a good view of the lake from his cabin and huge external garage to house his multiple gas guzzling vehicles (in addition to his boat, dude has 3 cars, 2 motorcycles, and a golf cart.

He doesn’t care about the amount of electricity he uses or water he drains from the well because he expects there to always be enough for him. He sees the land as an endless resource that he can take as much from as he wants with little consequence.

That’s because he believes the land as his to do with as he pleases.

It belongs to him.

He doesn’t care much about tending the land for future generations— he does have 2 children, both several years older than my oldest. But I don’t think he thinks about passing on the land to them. If anything, I suspect he simply thinks of passing on the property to them when he’s gone.

And there is a difference there.

I don’t see our cabin as “our property” or even “land that we own” despite the fact that we have legal documents that say both of those things. Land isn’t something one person can really own. The land belongs to all of us. The water belongs to all of us. The air we breathe belongs to all of us.

So how my neighbor treats his property impacts our land and the water we both use.

We are all connected, as one of my daughter’s books reminds me.

My father-in-law has spent most of his life tending to this land. Planting new trees when old ones come down. Being conscious of water use so as not to overload the septic system. Being a steward of the land instead of a consumer.

I frequently wonder what this land that we live on by the lake will look like in 50 years. What the town will be like in 50 years. Maybe I’ll be fortunate to see it, but I’m also not sure I want to. I worry for the future of my children and possible grandchildren. I worry that there won’t be any town left. That there won’t be anything special keeping folks here.

I remember years ago, the brother of my college boyfriend wanting to do a documentary about Puerto Rico and how the communities were not gathering in the plazas anymore for shopping and connection, instead going to the Walmarts built slightly outside of town. How it was stripping those towns of their identities. 20 years later, I see that in the small towns I’ve lived in across America. I worry that will happen here.

I worry that the lake will become un-swimmable. The pollutants in the water will continue to impact the algae bloom, but also do irreparable damage to the plant and animal life. That too many trees will be cut down and not enough replaced. Native plants will be relentless mowed until they stop growing. “Weeds” like dandelions will be sprayed and obliterated. The color will disappear from the sides of the road and along our driveways. The transformation from wildness to suburbia will be complete. Nature will be uniform in its ugliness.

That is my fear, based on how my neighbor treats his land.

And how the person leading his cult and our country feels about preserving the environment, not to mention small rural towns.

It’s incredible how much this country and the current government especially invests in destruction rather than sustainability.

How they prefer mining the earth, scouring her of all of her natural resources, instead of building sustainable systems and investing in renewable energy.

How they willingly open up wild natural areas that are supposed to be protected and preserved in order to access more natural resources, like logging the forests and fracking.

How they ignore the realities of global warming because it is an “inconvenient truth” that would force them to change their behavior in ways they don’t want, if they took it seriously.

People struggle with this on an individual level, honestly. How many people still choose plastic water bottles over reusable ones? And how many simply throw those plastic bottles away when they’re done instead of recycling them? I’m not making a judgment here, just an observation.

In this town that I love, recycling isn’t available for weekly pick up. Instead you have to drive your recycling to a drop-off center. This has been the case in several of the smaller towns I’ve lived in. And while people do use them, I suspect it’s not the majority because it’s not convenient.

We are a convenience-based culture. To be clear, I’m not exempting myself from this.

It’s just frustrating to watch convenience-based behaviors lead to complacency and ultimately lead to destruction.

This is not just about the environment, either.

Despite its claims, this administration isn’t investing in small rural towns or their people.

Rural hospitals are closing thanks to our for-profit health care system. Women in rural areas are especially impacted by this as labor and delivery units are often shuttered first as “non-essential.” In one of the small towns I lived in, there was no regular OB on staff at the hospital. Instead, there was an OB who would come to town sporadically for prenatal appointments but was not the person delivering babies. That happened at the ER.

Many folks pregnant in that town couldn’t safely give birth in that town if they had any "issues” with their pregnancy and had to drive 90 minutes to the nearest hospital in order to give birth safely.

And thanks to the medicaid cuts in the spending bill that republicans are trying to jam through congress, an estimated 144 rural hospitals' labor-and-delivery units will close or experience drastic service reductions, affecting maternal and infant health care significantly. So much for “pro-life.”

Speaking of medicaid, if the “big, bananas bill” actually passes, people in rural areas will be among the most impacted. Many will lose health care coverage they receive through medicaid — people who live in rural areas are more likely to be covered under medicaid since they don’t typically have jobs that provide health insurance.

There’s more, too that’s insidious in other ways and divests from small, rural communities. The defunding of libraries will hit rural communities hard. Libraries are safe community spaces that do so much for kids and adults in rural areas.

The defunding of public radio will hurt rural areas more than it will larger cities or college towns, where more folks can afford to donate to keep it afloat. In many rural areas, public radio is the only source of local news and important information, as well as critical information about weather or infrastructure-related emergencies.

Small town newspapers are also hit hard by this. Untrickled by Michelle Teheux posted a note about this a few days ago. About the 10 year anniversary of being fired as the editor of her small town, local newspaper when a hedge fund bought it and got rid of most of the senior staff. She wrote:

“Nobody except one public radio guy who used to be a sports stringer for us is covering the town at all now. Nobody knows what’s going on. I sure don’t.

I was so proud to lead such a good newspaper. We broke a lot of important news. Each year, we were recognized for our excellence via press organizations. We were small but mighty and held our own against much larger news organizations.”

The same thing happened to our local newspaper here, too. Now, the only way people stay connected and aware of local information is through a bitchy facebook group — which too frequently gets taken over in the post and comments by people who think being uneducated will make American great again.

There’s all of this and so much more.

And as I sit here, typing frantically in my local library, trying to finish this up before my kids get mad or hungry or both, I mourn the fact that people in rural small towns are voting against their interests because they’ve been conned by America’s favorite conman.

I hope that we realize that our survival is dependent on community care.

I hope we figure out that caring for our neighbors is as important as making sure our own needs are met. Because that is one of the lessons I’ve personally learned when living in a small town.

I hope we figure out that sustainability, not destruction, is the birthright we need to pass onto our children. That if we teach them to care for the land instead of simply consuming it, we’ll have more to share with one another.

I hope that people in congress, particularly those who say they speak for rural communities, actually take actions that help rather than continue to harm them. That it’s not just lip service, but genuine action that saves lives instead of making life harder.

And more than anything, I hope that in 10 years, 25 years, 50 years I can still hear the sounds of the loons on the water. That apple trees flourish by the side of the road. That I can safely dip my toes in the water. That my kids will inherit an appreciation of the land, the town, and a desire to help it thrive for generations to come.

*****

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