I’ve always said I could live either in a huge city or the middle-of-nowhere.  Well, the city part of that sentence is definitely true. The middle-of-nowhere part?  That may yet turn out to be a bunch of malarky.

A recap of the city part:   I lived in Manhattan for 15 years as a women’s magazine editor—Glamour, Cosmopolitan, the now defunct Jane. Like a lot of single women in the city, my life revolved around working too much, going to lounges, subsisting on sushi, cottage cheese and steamed vegetables, going to yoga and dating a man-boy whose complexion was creamier and more buffed than mine.

That was my life. It wasn’t perfect, but I was independent and making money. My friends were smart, ironic and wry. That I required a tall glass of wine before going to therapy each week didn’t seem a big deal.  I wouldn’t call my state of mind ‘happy.’  More like ‘caustically content.’

The giddy face behind Rurally Screwed

Let’s segue to the country part:  I was sent on assignment to write a story about a rodeo that takes place every year in the Badlands of Montana. There, I met a lean, brown-eyed bullrider who radiated such optimism  and old-world gentlemanliness that I—being a skeptic to the marrow—thought he was full of cow-pie.  (And he called me “ma’am,” which I was not down with.)

But he wasn’t full of cow-pie. He was the real deal. (Well, except for the cowboy part.  Turns out he was more of a cowboy in spirit in that he grew up in Baltimore, graduated college and wasn’t addicted to chew!) He even had a cowboy name—Jake!  He had calloused hands and could make bar stools out of old tractor seats. He fashioned my name out of barbed wire.  He liked to bake coffee cake.

He was The Horse Whisperer with a dash of gregarious ”hey-hon!” Bawlmerese.  Animals and grizzled old men congregated around him. Those things scared me. He knew how to two-step. I was still trying to rave. He was red state. I was blue state. He was religious. I was not. He was in the Army Reserves. I wasn’t exactly sure what that was.

He was the sunrise to my dusk. By the end of the weekend, I knew I was going to marry this guy.

Jake

After a long-distance romance that included an 18-month deployment to Iraq, we decided to close the gap.  Jake drove his horse trailer into Manhattan, packed up my Chelsea apartment on 20th Street, and off we drove into the sunset on I-95.

We settled in a small town (population 7,000) in rural Virginia, the closest place where I could retain ties to Eastcoast civilization and Jake could wear a cowboy hat without being mistaken for one of the Village People.  We bought a charming little house on a pristine chunk of acreage and got hitched.

There are now cows to the left of me and horses to the right of me.  I’ve traded Whole Foods for Tractor Supply. I hear the wind in the trees and sometimes wonder if it’s the sound of my brain atrophying. The skills that made me successful in New York have no currency here, and I find that I’ve had to re-learn how to live life.  I now sew more clothes than I buy.  I joined then dropped out of a ladies Bible club. I have become weirdly proficient at gardening, canning and eating lots of venison jerky (that I dehydrate myself, naturally).  I heat my house with wood and own 30 chickens. I have quite literally raised a barn.

In short, I have become a homesteader.

That this transformation coincides with what increasingly feels like a back-to-the-land zeitgeist makes me wonder if I’m actually ahead of the curve for once.  (Or maybe that’s what I tell myself to justify driving an hour to the nearest Ross Dress For Less.)  I really don’t know where this journey is taking me—but one thing I’ve learned is that it’s not the place that makes you happy.   It’s having enough imagination and resourcefulness to make the best of it once you’re there.

Which is another way of saying there’s probably a butter churning competition in my future.

These are my stories.

(Want to contact me directly?  Reach me at www.jessieknadler.com)