I grew up in a small town. We claimed 1,200 residents, but that probably was a slight exaggeration. From there, I moved to Billings, MT, which had a population of 100,000 in those days. I remember honing my “city” skills in those days, learning to look up and find addresses, driving on streets with more than one lane of traffic in each direction, parking in parking lots, figuring out where to find goods and services, and using the Yellow Pages in the phone book. Next, Susan and I moved to Chicago.

I remember driving into Chicago for the first time. I was alone, on an advance trip to take move our household goods. I had a borrowed short box pickup. We didn’t have all that many things in those days. It was late afternoon. A friend had suggested that I tune the radio to a particular station to get the road reports. I did so and found out there was a traffic delay on my planned route. The problem was that I didn’t know any alternate routes. So I drove right into the thick traffic. Eventually I found the University of Chicago campus and our apartment building. It was dark by the time I found someone to give me access to the storage area, got unloaded, and headed back towards home.

By the time I returned with my wife and our own car, I had driven to the campus once. I still didn’t know any alternate routes, but was able to drive right to our new home.

We got lucky and were assigned an apartment on the alley side of the building. Our apartment building was on Woodlawn Avenue, just a block east of University Avenue, in the 5700 block, which was the main route for the fire trucks which were dispatched from 53rd street and most often headed past 64th into the area just south of the University. It seemed like there were sirens and trucks coming and going all night long. We could hear the sirens on our side of the building, but it wasn’t as loud as the other side.

After four years in Chicago, I felt like we had developed some pretty good urban skills. I had learned to lock the car without locking the keys inside. I also had learned to get into the car when I did lock the keys inside. I had learned to drive in city traffic and to find addresses in a much larger and more complex city. I had learned about suburbs and exurbs and how to find the goods and services we needed. I had learned to ride busses and trains and go to places where parking would have been next to impossible. I had developed a taste for museums, galleries and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

From there we moved to a small town in rural North Dakota. I hadn’t forgotten my small town skills. I was at home with farm machinery on the streets, a post office that you walked to, a cafe where people gathered for coffee in the morning, and the quiet and peace of the countryside.

Having collected both urban and rural skills has served me well in this life. I’m not intimidated by a visit to a city. I’ve driven in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Denver, Cleveland, Washington DC and a host of other cities. I’ve figured out public transportation in cities around the world. But I am also very much at home on the gravel roads in the heart of the Reservation or the empty, open spaces of the prairies. I can drive on narrow mountain roads and love the peace and quiet of being alone in a remote location.

Our current home is a pretty good mix. Rapid City doesn’t really have traffic but there are a few moments each day that bring out the worst in driving skills and demand patience for other drivers. And we have enough urban amenities that give us access to good music, good theatre and an occasional art show worth remembering. We’ve got a decent library and plenty of interesting places to go out to eat. Still, our home is on the outskirts of town without street lights and other nuisances that keep you from seeing the stars at night or hearing the coyotes sing through your open bedroom window. We’ve got deer and turkeys as well as people for neighbors and we seem to get along pretty well.

Once in a while, however, events bring us back to the city. Last night, as I prepared to go to sleep, I stared out the window of our 10th floor motel room at the lights of Denver that seemed to stretch as far as I could see. There were streets filled with cars without any sign of the traffic letting up. There were so many lights that you couldn’t see the stars in the sky. Even up fairly high, we could hear the sounds of traffic and a fair amount of sirens as the city went about its business.

When I lay in the bed I realized that I had been carrying tension in my shoulders from driving in all of the traffic. Navigating in a city is a lot easier with GPS than it was back in our seminary days, but it still takes planning and attention to what I am doing. Being able to see the motel wasn’t the same thing as getting there. It took a trip around the block to find the narrow entrance to the parking garage. Walking to the grocery store across the street required finding the right button to get a “walk” light and then walking briskly across the street to make it in the allotted time, while watching for cars making right turns against the red light.

We realize that we aren’t by nature city people. While most of the world’s population live in cities and the majority of the people have learned to thrive in such environments, we are a bit less than comfortable. We like the quiet of isolation. We like the dark of night. We know how to deal with the critters with whom we share the forest. We don’t get lost in the woods in the same way that we get lost in large buildings and city streets.

It’s good to get some city time. We don’t mind it. It reminds us of why we are happy with a little distance between us and the city.

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