I know, I know.\u00a0 It’s complicated.\u00a0 But last night as I sat on Lake Clear beach watching kids play in the waves, I kept thinking, Why aren’t we fighting people off with sticks?<\/p>\n
I could see the blueberry bushes ripening along the shore.\u00a0 A windsurfer was cutting across the waves.\u00a0 My son and niece were howling with laughter as they dunked each other.\u00a0 It couldn’t be any better.<\/p>\n
A generation ago, Washington state and Oregon were just as rural, just as dependent on natural resources and low-wage tourism jobs as the North Country is now.<\/p>\n
But people flocked to the beauty and sense of community and opportunity that those places offered.\u00a0 And with remarkable speed they built up thriving, bustling economies.<\/p>\n
And that was before the age of tele-commuting and freelance work made it possible to choose, far more deliberately, where you want to live.<\/p>\n
So why aren’t people swarming to our beauty and quality of life?<\/p>\n
The truth is that we have all the ingredients.\u00a0 Cool, intact little communities.\u00a0 Relatively affordable real estate, compared with other parts of the US.\u00a0 A lot of our towns have broadband.\u00a0 Good schools.<\/p>\n
You can paddle a lake in the morning, work an eight-hour day, then be in an art gallery, a funky concert, or a professional theater performance by night.<\/p>\n
I’m sure there are equally great places to raise kids, somewhere in the world — but there are certainly none better.<\/p>\n
There is, of course, winter.\u00a0 And black flies.\u00a0 But please.\u00a0 For anyone willing to adjust their sensibilities a little, our version of winter becomes a celebration, from moonlight cross-country skis to luminous ice palaces.<\/p>\n
And surely a few bugs are no more oppressive than a long, rush-hour commute, or an office cubicle, or a community where there is no actual community.<\/p>\n
At the end of the day, I’m chalking this one up to pure mystery.\u00a0 For whatever reason, the richness of life here is one of New York state’s best kept secret — maybe one of the best kept secrets in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I know, I know.\u00a0 It’s complicated.\u00a0 But last night as I sat on Lake Clear […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[10,6280,6828],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6119"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6120,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6119\/revisions\/6120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}