I recently moved to a teeny tiny town in Eastern Washington called Washtucna. I now join a population of just over 200 people (no that is not a typo – 200 people). My youngest son and I moved here the first part of September and lived with my ex-sister-in-law and her family until we could move into our own place. One of the reasons we moved was to have my son Jake in a smaller school. The Washtucna school probably has a total of 70 students – kindergarten to high school. Jake is a special needs child and being in a more quiet environment with less disruption is key to his success in school. Outside of school he has lots of friends to play with – many more than when we were living in a larger town. Since it is a small town, the kids all know each other and play together – and the parents and grandparents all keep an eye out for the kids, making sure they are safe and getting along okay. There is one Tavern/Restaurant in town and one Convenience Store/Espresso Shop/Gift Store. No post office, no bank, no library. You have to drive 45 minutes to get to the nearest Walmart which is a difficult transition for me. It used to be I could get to a Walmart in 5 minutes. Now I have to plan my shopping trips more carefully unless I want to pay a lot in gas to go back and forth. But the pros greatly outweigh the cons. Small towns allow you to really get to know your neighbors and build relationships. The people here look out for each other and care about how you are doing and what is going on in your life. Life is more relaxed, more peaceful which is a wonderful thing. I have not felt more free in a very long time. Living here brings me happiness and a sense of well being and that is something that means more to me than being able to run over to Dairy Queen for a blizzard on a whim. Hmmmm… a blizzard sounds really good though….I wonder how far I have to drive to get there…..

18 Nov This entry was published on November 18, 2013 at 6:16 pm. It’s filed under Uncategorized and tagged country, dairy queen, family, free, freedom, friends, move, moving, peace, relationships, small town, special needs, walmart, washington, washtucna. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.