Virginia Schmidt

I offer this narrative because I wish someone had offered it to me — because I wish this as a story we tell and retell in our local community, and that echoes in local communities all over our country. 

In this story, the one who remains in or returns to the homeplace that raised and shaped them is valued and celebrated because the community recognizes and nourishes the value of deep relationships, practical wisdom and relevant context that only can develop through steady, devoted time in a beloved, particular place. 

I am thankful to the late Wendell Berry for helping me to discern the value of such a story in his prophetic 1977 book "The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture." He gives voice to a phenomenon I often hear, one which always leaves me feeling confused. It occurs when folks bemoan how young people no longer stay in our community, and, in the next breath, reveal that the young people they actually commend are those who go off to a prestigious university, then on to a big city to make a bunch of money and a big name for themselves. 

As a woman who grew up in Park County and returned after going to college and traveling, living and working elsewhere, hearing this narrative makes me feel ashamed to be here again. A deeper, wiser part of me recognizes my return brings not just vitality; it also fundamentally offers — by virtue of having been raised here — a perspective and way of being intimately connected to this place and its people. 

Yet the message I regularly hear is apparent: In order to be a young person of whom my community is proud, I can’t be here.

Wendell writes it plainly: 

“I am suggesting that our university-based structures of success … virtually require the … disintegration of culture. The university accumulates information at a rate that is literally inconceivable, yet its structure and its self-esteem institutionalize the likelihood that none of this information will ever be taken home. We do not work where we live, and if we are to hold up our heads in the presence of our teachers and classmates, we must not live where we come from.” 

Wendell, who himself earned both a bachelor’s and master’s from University of Kentucky and later taught there as a professor, is not calling a college education a bad thing, nor am I. What he is pointing out — and what I felt so relieved to have someone explicitly name — is that we have fallen prey to and (in my case) blindly accepted a popularized tale that it is not a respectable or admirable thing to stay in or return to “live where we come from.” 

And yes, Wendell and I are well aware of the industrial, economic and technological factors that often force young folks to leave their home communities. That is a much broader and deeper story, for a more comprehensive understanding of which I strongly suggest reading Wendell’s above-mentioned book. 

This column is specifically to encourage us to align the character arcs we laud with what we say we value and desire. While celebrating higher education and successful livelihood that occurs elsewhere, can we also recognize and lift up the rich, inherent value that comes through people choosing to make their life in the place that reared them, thus bringing pertinent context to their roles in and understanding of the community and land where they have long lived and now live (again)? 

I do not dismiss the value of a college education, nor of new and diverse perspectives and cultures joining our local community (y’all are most appreciated and welcome here!). I do acknowledge and touch my cap to those who have chosen to stay or return — to those who bring history, wisdom and generational bridging to our community in a way that cannot be learned anywhere else or in any other way except by being here, and by being here for a long time. 

As multi-generational Big Horn Basin rancher Tim Flitner said when asked if he thought there was any value to simply having stayed on the same land for a long time, learning from those who came before: 

“What kind of an advantage would it have been … if you had just had a generation ahead of you saying, ‘I wouldn’t do that — winter’s going to come early this year.’ Or, ‘that plant doesn’t grow here?’   

“… It doesn’t mean people are not smart or not capable … It means they’re not packing around 50 years of experience with them … Things seem to be common sense in hindsight, but not if you’re on your first five years on a place. 

“... But [long term multi-generational relationship with a place] makes it easier. I don’t want my kids to start where I started. I want to teach them all the things I learned so they don’t have to start over and figure it out for themselves.”