If you want to be lonely, go to the city

It's strange, but if you want to be lonely, you have to go to a city. I was thinking about that last weekend. We had a big family thing in the Twin Cities, and Saturday morning I left the hotel room early while everyone else was still asleep. I wasn't planning a walk -- I was just done sleeping. I took a left when I went out of the hotel and started to stroll. I have to admit, I didn't really blend into city life.

Whenever I spend time in the sun, I wear a large hat. People who've never met a cowboy think I am one, while real cowboys just think I got a deal on the hat -- or else lost a bet. But the hat serves my purpose, which is to keep my doctor from looking at lumps on my bald scalp, shaking his head, and reaching for a scalpel. I don't mind looking like I don't blend in. I've found that most people are willing to help a clueless stranger, even if it is just pointing the way to a coffee shop at 6:00 a.m.

Lonely place

A big city in the early morning can be a sad place, completely different than a country morning.

Most of the people I saw out in the dawn light were waiting at bus stops, likely headed home from working all night for too little money doing jobs I wouldn't want to do. The only other folks I saw were a smattering of street people with too many layers of clothes on, already anticipating a Minnesota winter. Every now and then, one of them stuck a cup under my nose or asked for a cigarette as a way of beginning a conversation that might lead to a bigger payday. I confess, I found it a mournful way to begin the day.

Brings hope

Living the country life is something quite different. An early morning always seems to bring hope.

I meet few people on my morning stroll at home. None of them are the lost and lonely trying to make it through another day. The loudest noises I hear are the rumbles of farm machinery firing up, a sound not nearly as intrusive as garbage trucks and buses that speed by on city streets. I find it comforting and endearing, particularly since the farm machinery is usually run by people who make a pretty good living doing something they love.

There are gardens in a city -- trees and a park-like expanse of lawn now and then -- but there's never the untrammeled wildness and untidy exuberance of nature as there is along a country trail.

Over the past half century, I've noticed how many more farms now are as nicely groomed as any suburban development. I suppose that's a good thing -- an example of how country life isn't nearly as close to the margins as in the hard old days. But what I love is an untidy woodlot or an unruly stand of wild plum. A dusty wild rose flourishing on the rocky margin of a gravel road makes me happier than a hybrid tea rose in a formal garden. As I stump along my country road, I'm quite often all alone. But I'm never lonely.