It’s easy to take a place for granted. Maybe you’ve lived here your whole life, or maybe you’ve just never paid attention. But from this recent Madison transplant’s point of view, you have a pretty good thing going.

It was the dead of winter, yes, that winter – the winter that needs no explanation. The lights were low and the fire was warming a small cabin in the middle of the woods in the far northwest corner of the state. I was sitting there, alone with my thoughts, contemplating what it was that I was actually doing there.

The action – the verb I was looking for – was living. My wife, Suzannah, and I had bought a property in the middle of the “Barrens,” a stretch of land along the northern half of the St. Croix River Valley where pine trees grow in sandy soil. We decided to start a farm. For three years we raised chickens and goats and grew vegetables on a 10-acre tract of land we called “Sterling Homestead.”

It was all very lovely. Surrounded by nature in a beautiful part of the state, literally no unnatural sounds, and no road visible from the house. It was what many city friends of mine have envied and talked about doing themselves. While on the surface everything appeared perfect, rural life is not always what it seems.

For starters, it’s all about the automobile. Homesteading was not exactly lucrative, meaning that side jobs were a necessity. Side jobs meant a half-hour each way to town, on rural, often unplowed roads, during said winter.

While there was a small liberal streak in my former town, it was still rural Wisconsin. During the last presidential election there were yard signs just north of where we lived stating, “Let’s put the white back in the White House.” The county I lived in, Polk County, received some statewide and even national attention when county supervisors passed an “English as the official language” resolution, making it even harder and more uncomfortable to be anything but white in the county.

This is not a political statement. This is about respect, civility, and common decency. Obviously, people who would work toward English only laws and place racist signs in their front yards can be found anywhere. That said, in a small town they are your barber, restaurateur, and hardware store owner. There is no burying your head in the sand.

I pass along this information for two reasons. First, last month we accepted an offer on our property and will be back in Polk County for the closing this week. I guess this column is a form of catharsis, as every negative memory I have submitted can be offset by dozens of positive ones.

Second, and most importantly, I implore the readers of this newspaper, college students, and residents of Madison to take advantage of the positive things this community offers.

The day after I arrived here I rode my bike from the north side (on designated bike lanes!) to the capital. I walked around, had coffee at Bradbury’s, and enjoyed my urban, yet remarkably quaint environment. Just two hours later I was with a friend in a canoe in the middle of Cherokee Marsh, sipping a beer and back in undisturbed nature. It was dusk and bats were flying around us, as fish rippled the surface of the Yahara River.

The more we, as a community, invest in this place, the more it will become everything we want it to be. In less than a week I will no longer own a physical cabin in the woods. The parts of it worth preserving, however, have made the trip down to Madison and will continue to be with me wherever I go.