Finding Peace in the Ohio Countryside

By Juliana Pearson (November 5, 2001)

My shoulders have been just a little too tense since the September 11 attacks. I knew it was a problem one morning last week when the sound of my breakfast popping out of the toaster startled me, I tossed my glass of orange juice into the air. I knew then that I had been watching too much CNN, and something had to be done.

This weekend, my college search process provided an unexpected opportunity to relax my emotional muscles. My family and I spent Friday and Saturday in the small town of Wooster, Ohio, smack dab in the middle of the Buckeye State. I had the sense from the beginning of the trip that it would provide some sort of emotional solace. I would simply be getting away from Washington. I would be leaving a world of policemen and concrete barriers; a world where men in white Hazmat suits test my father’s office for Anthrax. Instead of planning a disaster escape route, I would simply escape into the countryside.

The tendrils of terror have not fully reached the community of Wooster. Yes, patriotic signs in the conservative, well-kept town wish America well, and recollections of a dark Tuesday in September still linger. However, the overall mindset of the people there is a sharp contrast to Washington. The chances of immediate threat are remote in rural Ohio. I spent all of Friday on the College of Wooster campus and did not once hear mention of terrorists or Afghanistan. This is not to say that rural Ohio residents care any less about our world; the attacks are just less a part of their lives.

The visual landscape certainly makes it easier to hide thoughts of terror’s threat. Wooster’s brick main street seemed to embody small town America. The proprietors of art galleries and restaurants are already decorating for the December holidays. The endless, rolling farms surrounding the town are fading from emerald to a crisp brown. The smell of burning leaves is easily detected. Perhaps the sharpest contrast to our anxious concrete is Wooster’s Amish community. These pious, plain people have a great influence in town. Liquor is not served in most restaurants. Surrounding farms seem especially quaint and well kept. It was soothing to see long-bearded Amish men and their families in horse drawn buggies, or bright pieces of old-fashioned laundry drying in the fall breeze.

The Amish reminded me of something that had been absent from my life for the past six weeks or so. Emotional barriers had temporarily prevented me from really admiring the simplicity and goodness in our changing, tumultuous world. In Ohio this weekend, I yearned to abandon it all and live as the Amish do, shrouded in simplicity. Of course, for now it’s impossible for any of us to abandon our relatively fast-paced lifestyles. Perhaps, however, we can work to bring more genuine simplicity to them. My Episcopal-priest uncle told me to go out into the woods near my house and watch a leaf fall. Take a moment to do something that simple. Watch leaves fall. Smell the crispness of fall sliding into winter. Begin diluting the concrete barriers of emotional stress