We moved back deliberately for family reasons – when my wife and I had Sophie (now 7), we lived on an island off the coast of Washington state. She had one uncle and one cousin. And she was the only grandchild my mother hadn’t seen. Soph was almost two when we moved, and we bought a house around the corner from where I grew up, so she (and her little brother) can walk to grandma’s, and she has fourteen cousins in the immediate area.

Cindy and I both swore we’d never live there – and there are a lot of reasons it drives us crazy that we do. But we ignore the crazy stuff, embrace the stuff we benefit from, and try to shape the rest of our lives around the things we want to fill them with.

I survive it in part through terraforming: I took over the old LDS church in Taylor and turned it into my studio – http://pics.livejournal.com/coppervale/gallery/00006pa5

The library where your Aunt Eva worked when I was a kid is my office; I teach art classes in the old cultural hall where I remember pinewood derbys; and the old chapel is now a soundstage.

We also tend to see ‘home’ as a base, where we can return after roaming around. I’m writing this from an office at the Warner Studios in Burbank; in two days, I’ll be reading it over again from my office in Taylor. And in late Spring of next year, I and my family will be spending a few months in Rome, while I finish a novel. And as excited as I am to get to live in Rome – I’m just as excited at the prospect of returning to Taylor having LIVED in Rome. So I guess it’s context, for me.

Or maybe I’m just trying to have my Trapper’s Pie, and eat it, too.

Rural areas are the nation’s psychedelic Disneyworld.