The muscular black BMW M5  was pulled off onto the grass on the side of the road. I could see the setting sun reflecting off its symmetric obsidian curves.  I spotted it as I was traveling up Rainbow Road on my way home.  A few meters away from the six digit Teutonic piece of industrial art I saw a women.  She was dressed in business attire and was walking toward the barb wire fence by the side of the road.

I was concerned.  Was there a problem? An accident?  A flat tire? I slowed my car.

As I passed I got a closer look at what was going on. I saw her kneel down by the  fence.  I saw her smiling broadly as she put her hands through the fence to pet the miniature pony on the other side.

For me this captures so much of the spirit of Northwest Arkansas.  People move here from all over the globe.  They bring with them their aspirations, their worries, and their hopes.  They also bring with them their obsession with stuff…and many start to engage in their gradual divorce from it.

Once you are here, you tend to become aware that stuff is really not that important.  In fact, you start to realize that stuff really gets in the way of enjoying your life. You start to realize that it is a distraction and the real way to enjoy life is experiencing it.  And there really is so much to experience here.

This evening my wife, our kids, and some close friends and some other complete strangers sat around at Peddlers pub.  We do this often.  We play Scrabble and Jenga with our kids and we drink beer and eat unhealthy cheese fries and pizza.  We know many of the folks at Bike Rack Brewing Company and many of the servers at Peddler’s Pub.   They are, by and large, good people and you feel comfortable in the hodgepodge social nest that you make here. Tonight we got to enjoy an amazing duo as pedestrians stopped and watched and the sun set as marshmellow clouds loitered in the sky.  Truly beautiful.

 

When we were infants what we principally wanted was the attention of our parents and others.  We wanted to belong and have social engagement.  We are, of course, social animals.  Early on we become polluted with the promise of what “things” can provide.  It is a drug that we get addicted to.  The next car, the next house, the next this, the next that.  It doesn’t stop. It’s a drug.

In NWA, you get a chance to get grounded again if you so choose. You rediscover what you knew as an infant.  It is not about “stuff”, it is about experiences. It is about the people around you.  The lake, the trees, the river, the long bike ride or the walk in the woods. It is about being with people you love. It is about learning and exploring the unknown.  This is the stuff that makes life worth living.

That young women stepping out of her BMW to pet that pony captures that essence perfectly.  This is the transformation that many choose when they get here.  She perhaps took her first step on that journey.

It’s nice to have nice things, but their reward is temporary and fleeting.  You may or may not remember that fancy car in your twilight years.  You will always remember the time you pulled your car off to the side of a rural road in Arkansas, knelt down, and spent some time with a pony.  I expect she will be driving a used Subaru soon.

So remember to take some time to pull off on your own road and check out your own ponies. You will likely find it is time well spent.

 

“You should come over. They’re having game night!”

My wife and I looked at each other uneasily.  We were not really accustomed to talking to our neighbors let alone joining them for “game night” at a strangers house.  We declined the invitation at the time, but would take up other invitations in the future.  We were just settling in.

When you move to NWA from a metro area one of the major adjustments will be the level of friendliness and intimacy of not only the natives, but that adopted hospitality of most every transplant who moved here.

People are just generally nice and welcoming.  It can be unnerving moving from Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, or other metros where you generally mind your own business. Living in these metros, if others are being nice for no reason they have some kind of angle to try and take advantage of you.

I remember my mother visiting us in Los Angeles from a rural ‘burg in the middle of Pennsylvania. I love my Mom, but I remember my embarrassment as she struck up a conversation with whomever she was around; random people in the grocery store, waitresses at the restaurant, the barista at the coffee shop.  I forgot that’s how normal human beings are suppose to behave.

It’s like that here.  All the time. For the first few months my on-going inner dialog when in public was “what does this person want from me?” and “why are they talking to me?” It was actually really uncomfortable. Eyes front, mind you’re own business was my mantra.  It took me sometime to trust that the idle chatter and friendliness was not always some kind of scam in progress….it was people being friendly.  People being…human.

It’s easy to get in the spirit.  Almost contagious.  You easily slip into a habit of holding open the door for others, letting people in front of you in the grocery store, and letting other cars merge in front of you.  For the uninitiated it is down right bizarre.  In Los Angeles the turn signal was a sign of weakness.  Here people readily wave in front of them with eye contact and smile.

There is a surprising paucity of  rude behavior, and when it does happen, the full wrath of Arkansan social norms collapses on you like a vice. Being a jerk is simply not tolerated. Although you will never hear a car horn here.  I think there may be a local ordinance requiring car horn castration.

Random acts of kindness are common place and part of the social fabric of the Bville bubble.  A few months after moving here I purchased a outdoor grill at Home Depot.  Forgetting I had driven a friend’s car (a subcompact), I was left in the parking lot figuring out how to fit my new toy into the vehicle.  I was struggling contorting the grill into the itty bitty Honda.

Up pulls a F-150 truck and a guy jumps out.

“Y’all need some help with that?” friendly guy says.

“What?” I said, suspiciously.

“You need some help getting that home? Do you live near by, I can get it home for you… no problem.” the Samaritan said.

“Ummm no I’m good”

I had my full anti-grift antennae up and waved him on. This was very suspicious behavior to me.  I would come to learn this is just what you come to expect in NWA.  People, in general, help others in need.

A friend of mind related a story about a car accident on Walton Boulevard in Bentonville.  One car had collided with another; nothing severe but more than a fender bender.  In one of the cars were two young children.  Immediately  three other uninvolved cars  stopped in the middle of the road and their drivers raced out of their vehicles to check on those affected in the accident. The kids were fine.  This kind of social responsibility simply doesn’t happen elsewhere.

It works in reverse as well.  You must reacclimatize when leaving the Bville Bubble.  I remember flying back to Los Angeles, making my way through LAX and getting on the rental car bus after a long day of travel.

“Hey, you bumped into me with your backpack” a fellow passenger said to me.

He was clearly irritated with me, but i missed the social cue.  I momentarily forget my social context and said “Oh. My. God! Are you going to be okay?” and smiled broadly.  I thought he was joking. He was not.  I think he took my joking as some sort of a threat rather than playful banter it was intended to be and sat down in an huff glaring at me.

It was at that point I looked forward to getting back to  what I finally regarded as ‘home’. Funny that turning point in your life when the definition of ‘home’ changes.

So decompress. It’s cool. As Leo Babauta recommends… Breath.  Relax.  People here are for the most part WSIWG.

And if you are invited to game night: go.

One of the first things you will notice moving here from a metro area is the refreshing and somewhat disorienting lack of governmental regulation and oversight.

For example, say you wake up one day and have a fixin’ to go kill some squirrels.  You can waltz into your local Walmart Super Center, buy yourself a nice bolt action rifle, walk out and go shoot some squirrels.  All within about 10-20 minutes.  Yes, you need an Arkansas drivers’ license and there are hunting seasons, but they are pretty liberal…especially for squirrels.

For me, nothing quite captures this governmental laissez-faire as much as the 4th of July in NWA.

My first 4th here I marveled at the large firework tents that sprouted as if a circus convention arrived in town.

Walking into one of the large tents on Rainbow Road (past the family of gophers that inexplicable lived in the hedges right next to the road) I pulled into the lot not sure what to expect. When I walked in I couldn’t believe the vast quantity and quality of fireworks whose use would result in misdemeanor charges back in Southern California.

The young store keeper (ring master?) was not the distant and indifferent adolescent I had become accustom to elsewhere; he was an enthusiastic firework aficionado. He provided an expert and personal overview of his curated pyrotechnical wares.

“Would you like to see some?” the young man asked.

“What now?  It’s 3 o’clock on Saturday?  Can you do that?”

With a hesitation he withdrew to a dirt clearing about 20 feet away from the tent and started setting off fireworks.  He lit one after another…giggling after each one burst into the air. I grew a bit uncomfortable,  Was this normal?

I made my modest purchase of firecrackers and rocket type things he demonstrated and made my way home.

Later that night, at around sunset I slinked out to my back lawn to test my new toys out.  It was very quiet and lightning bugs strobed in the early evening air.  Being that is was July 3rd I surmised it might be permissable to test one or two of these out.  I ignited the fuse of one rocket and I ran back and watched. It it flew into the air with a “fffflllllffffttt!” and then exploded with a bang that echoed off the surrounding houses and hills.

“Oh sh*t that was loud” I thought to myself.  I was fairly sure I was going to see security or the police show up soon. I went inside thinking it was too risky to light another.

Little did I know.

July 4th started pretty tame.  By early afternoon you would here some local pops here and there and the occasional report of machine gun fire from lady fingers. Later that day I began hearing what seemed like the “KAAA – BOOM” of mortar fire behind my neighbor’s house

Curious I walked down to street to see what was going on.  There stood my middle aged neighbor in flip flops and golf shirt with a small group around him flinging M-80s into the storm drain one after another.  I watched for a while then walked back to my house and waited for security to show up to harsh everyone’s mellow.  Security never came.

Once night came, all hell broke loose.  It was like the Do Lung Bridge scene from Apocalypse Now. There was nearly non-stop explosions and lights in all directions for a solid 3 hours.

Later in the night I saw in the near distance what seemed like 9/10th scale version of Disneyland’s Forever firework display.  I would later learn it was just a neighbor with a keen interest and budget for pyrotechnics.  Truly awe inspiring.

I am sure there were some injuries.  I am sure there was some drunkenness.  I am also sure those states were highly correlated.  But the spirit in the air was very light hearted and carefree, but respectful.  There were no fights or loud arguments.  There was no vandalism.

Later, I saw my M-80 wielding neighbor stumbling up and down the street picking of the paper remnants of his expended arsenal.  Others did the same, picking up discarded cups and cans. The mayhem stopped around 11pm and all was quiet again.  In short, people by and large respect and take care of their own community here.

So while the regulation is light, the civic mindedness of the people who live here makes such regulation largely superflous.  By and large, people do the right thing because they know it is the right thing to do…not because they are compelled to do so by the rules.  I hope that spirit perseveres.

That night, I marveled at this new found freedom as I pondered the acquisition of some squirrel eradication weaponry myself.  My kids fell asleep exhausted from all the commotion and the next day we were back to the normal rhythm of the summer.  It was all-in-all a pretty incredible 4th.

I look forward to this 4th of July here in NWA. Please take some time have some cold ones, a hot dog or two, and apple pie.  I would also encourage you take a moment to think about the gift of freedom we enjoy everyday and the responsibility that imbues upon each of us.  Thanks for reading. I wish you a safe and happy one.