There are three different ways to grow up regarding your environment: in a loud city, in a suburban neighborhood, and in the middle of absolute nowhere. Obviously, the location of where we grow up is a major factor of who we become, and some stereotypes of people becoming a certain way due to this can be very true at times. For example, people who grow up in smaller towns tend to be more introverted than people who grow up in large cities. But, instead of going over stereotypes that could potentially be frowned upon or taken the wrong way, I'm going to share a bit about growing up surrounded by corn fields and trees.
First of all, as you can imagine, it kind of really sucked. Let's start before I was able to drive. When I wanted to have a friend over, my first worry was someone's parent getting lost on the way over. Then, of course, the friend not being able to come over because their parent didn't have time to drive all the way to the middle of nowhere. And vice versa, my parents never wanted to drive me to a friends house either because that distance was far as well, and going into town took too much time.
Then of course their famous line was, "Why don't you make friends that live near us?" Either my parents wanted me to bring corn stalks home and draw faces on them, or they were completely oblivious to the fact that there were absolutely no other kids around to make friends with. Getting back to the topic of driving, let me talk about needing something from the store. Whenever we went into town for something from the store, we had the longest grocery list possible. If we left anything off of the list by accident, we weren't getting it for another month.
As I'm older and can now drive, the issue of seeing friends is no longer present... I just spend about $50 on gas every week. Aside from spending a ridiculous amount of money driving just to see my friends, I have recently become extremely grateful for growing up in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, there were times where it really did suck.
Especially those 1 am nights when I was craving McDonald's or Taco Bell but didn't want to spend an hour going to get it. The long distance to civilization will always exist when growing up in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, other things that I actually have an appreciation for existing here that I wouldn't have experienced growing up anywhere else.
I'll never forget the fact that we have a family of deer living literally five yards from my backyard line... and then, of course, worrying about my dog's life after she ventured a bit beyond our yard into the deer's territory (she's okay, nothing bad happened). I actually got to witness a few generations of deer grow up there. Having ATV's was also another perk. My siblings and I used to spend our free time together just driving them around the property by our house.
Oh and the night sky! I can't describe how beautiful the stars look without all the lights from the city. Obviously the night sky is said to be prettier without a ton of lights from people, but actually having that view every night is really something special. There are a hundred other things I have to be grateful for growing up here, but my biggest takeaway is being able to appreciate the little things life has to offer. Seeing the beauty in ordinary things isn't something that everyone can do, but I'm glad I had the opportunity in the middle of nowhere to learn how.
