A decade ago I was still living in town in the same duplex where I’d been for fifteen years. I wouldn’t have moved even then if the property hadn’t changed hands. The new owner knew someone who wanted my place, and that was all that mattered. At first I looked for another place in the same neighborhood, but they were all rented before I got a chance to look at them. That’s how I ended up out here in the country, miles from the nearest pretty much everything.

It’s not that I regret living in the wilderness. In fact, it would take some unimaginable incentive to get me to move back into town, with your noisy neighbors and your barking dogs and traffic going every which-a-way at all hours. If I had to move again, I might look for a place even farther from all that.

But I reflected today that if there’s anything I miss most about living in town it’s walking to the post office every day. It’s just too far to do that where I am now. I made this observation while I was walking to the post office, but not from home. There was no parking near the post office, so I had to drive on by for several blocks to a public lot, then walk back. I don’t mind doing that, but something in me says it’s wrong to do it deliberately. It seems like a waste to drive beyond the destination, just for the experience of walking (on company time).

During that walk I also recalled something else. That place was the third home in a row I was forced out of by a landlord who wanted someone they knew to move into it. You’d think an owner would have more appreciation for a tenant who always pays the rent on time and never complains (and there was plenty to complain about at that duplex). But no, life isn’t always that fair.