Musings of a Town Mouse Turned Country Mouse

“All soup is soul food.”

Bee Wison, First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

About six weeks ago, my husband and I moved from Charlotte to the mountains of Western North Carolina.  We hope to eventually buy a house here, but for now, we’re renting a cabin home situated at an elevation of almost 3000 feet and surrounded by the Nantahala National Forest.

It’s not the wilderness, by any means, but it is a far cry from our civilized life in the Piedmont, where I could walk to the library, the bank, the farmers market, the grocery store, and my favorite local restaurants. 

Late afternoons, I would often ask my husband, “What sounds good for dinner tonight?” Even with the pandemic, meals were usually spontaneous affairs, requiring only a short stroll to Aldi for a specific recipe ingredient or a brisk walk down the block to pick up Chinese to-go. Our choices were usually based on ease and convenience.

Not so here. A grocery store run entails loading a cooler into the car and driving 30 minutes down the mountainside to the nearest town. We consolidate errands and make as few trips as possible.

In advance of the excursion, I plan out meals for the next week or so and create an extensive shopping list. When there are no nearby neighbors to borrow from, you don’t risk forgetting a single item.

As for restaurant take-out as a dinner option, that’s a luxury of the past – the food would be stone cold by the time we arrived home. 

So, I’m putting more time and thought into the process of cooking at home. Such mindful preparation typically means healthier meals. I’m using what I have in the refrigerator and pantry more wisely and repurposing leftovers. 

I’ve discovered that chilly winter nights often inspire soup. This is the perfect season to settle into the meditative chopping of onions, garlic, and greens, and to savor aromas emanating from a pot simmering on the stove. Whatever veggies lurk in the hydrator drawers are pressed into service; the shelves in my fridge are almost bare before I shop for more. These days, less fresh produce goes to waste.

Which brings me to the nasty subject of trash.

An urban amenity I always took for granted is weekly garbage pickup. Nothing increases awareness of how much you’re throwing out quicker than having to pile every last bit of it into your trunk for a ride to the dump.

Okay, scratch that last word. “Dump” is an unfair and inaccurate way to describe the collection center for my county’s landfill. From what I’ve observed, it’s a well-run operation that encourages waste reduction and recycling with their “pay-as-you-throw” program. There’s a fee per bag to dispose of non-recyclables, but there’s no charge for pre-sorted recyclables.

That means that right now I have labeled boxes lined up along the side of our deck to separate plastic, metals, glass, cardboard, and paper cast-offs. As I scan the categorized contents of these boxes, it’s impossible to deny the visual proof of our household’s trashy habits: there is far too much plastic. We must do better.

I’m grateful for these realizations. I’m grateful too for other lessons that conscious consumption and “less-is-more” living continue to provide.

And, by the way, our new house will definitely have a compost bin.

“For what is the environmental crisis, if not a crisis of the way we live? The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us… If the environmental crisis is ultimately a crisis of character, as Wendell Berry told us way back in the 1970’s, then sooner or later it will have to be addressed at that level – at home, as it were. In our yards and kitchens and minds.”

Michael Pollan, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation