Do 'isolated' and 'empty' mean that rural doesn't measure up? An incorrect implication, writer says

It's a rare item in The Rural Blog that can make your mouth water, your blood boil and your mind wander. But we have the makings of one, thanks to Curtis Seltzer, land consultant and "Country Real Estate" columnist from Highland County, Virginia.

The seminal source for his weekly piece was a recent story in The Washington Post, in which reporter David Farenthold told the engaging tale of how maple-syrup makers in the county were fighting to overcome climate change, lack of the younger generation's interest in their industry and the destruction of a major sap-to-syrup processing facility. Farenthold wrote, "The Allegheny Mountains cursed Highland with isolation but blessed it with a combination of weather, soil and sugar maples, creating an island of New England south of the Potomac River."

“‘Cursed with isolation?’ No one here thinks that," Seltzer, right, e-mailed Farenthold. "We are not isolated from the nation’s politics, economics, wars, culture, media and intellectual ferment. Four mountains and two-lane roads do protect us from many of the things about which reporters in the Post’s newsroom regularly complain.”

After his "knee jerk" message to the writer, Seltzer wrote, "His words got me to thinking: In what sense, if any, is rural America isolated and empty? And what difference does it make? We seem to be about as plugged in as other Americans with television, high-speed Internet and cell phones." We take exception to the Internet point, but endorse the rest:

"We are subject to the same laws, taxes, gasoline prices, global warming, interest rates, stock markets, foreign-policy adventures and telemarketers. It takes us less time than city folks to do many routine things like see a doctor, but more to be greeted at Wal-Mart or eat Thai, both of which are an hour’s drive away. Like many communities, we are isolated from blue-collar manufacturing and high-income, white-collar jobs. We are also largely isolated from gangs, drugs and sirens."

Farenthold also called Highland County "one of the emptiest" in the East. Seltzer wrote, "To casually characterize us as isolated and empty is, I think, implied code for saying we don’t quite measure up because rural is different. The increasing number of urban people moving to the countryside quickly understand that they have not entered a vacuum. Their neighbors are people — not quaint relics, not noble rustics. Like everyone else, we are individuals with good points, bad points, and all points in between. When off-hand descriptions marginalize the 50 million who live in rural America, harm is done. We become the outback other, zoo specimens that are interesting to observe but dangerous in the wild." (Encarta map)

Blood boil? Mind wander? Here's the mouth-watering part, from local Larry Merritt, 66, quoted by Farenthold: "It's like nothing you've ever experienced," he said. And it's nothing like that grocery-store stuff that pours out of the plastic lady's head. "If you order a filet mignon and end up with Spam." (Read more) And we are obliged to note that the 51st annual Highland Maple Festival will be held March 14-15 and March 21-22. For a more detailed report on the local industry, from Andrew Jenner in Lancaster Farming, click here.