Rural Heritage: What an Outsider Learned about Things that Matter

Despite having spent my teenage years in Rural Utah, it was still an uncomfortable place for me to be. 

The people were different. They talked differently, they did different things for fun, and even what mattered to them was slightly different from what mattered to me. Basketball, I knew from growing up, was something not just the high school kids, but many of the local adults valued. Among other things they also valued the hunt, their quiet outdoor spots the tourists didn’t know about, and their cattle. Those things never resonated with me. So when I ended up back in podunkville, Utah, I had little idea how to defend it, or even what was worth defending.

I have since learned that so many of those things actually do matter to me, because I was able to puzzle out the values behind them. They are the things that are alluded to in the country songs, John Deere ads, and rural politicians’ slogans, but they are much more than cowboy-booted-feet stepping off tractors.

Soon I found that a lot of rural heritage, in the practice of faith, family, and liberty, boils down to three things: community support, treating people like they are family, and freedom.

Community Support

Rural heritage is a culture of support.

The first time I was exposed to this was when a toddler in Tropic was diagnosed with cancer in 2014. The kid loved trucks, so everyone and their dog who owned a backhoe, a tractor, or any kind of truck-like vehicle had it on display all over the four Bryce Valley towns within days. There were fundraising basketball games and rodeos, and the whole community came together in solidarity for this kid. 

Fluke? Maybe. A few years later they did the same thing for a boy in high school, this time someone I knew much better. Then it happened a third time, and a fourth.

Eventually Bryce Valley began regularly celebrating Gold Month to support childhood cancer research. “There is nothing better than seeing a high school full of teenagers dressed in gold attire,” the mother of one of the cancer victims later told The Byway, “cheering each other on all while raising money and awareness for something great!”

Rural people do not even know how special this is. In a bigger city, certain groups might get together to do things for a family experiencing a tragic death or diagnosis, infertility or even good things like taking students to Washington, DC, or an athlete’s family going to Paris for the Olympics. But it would not be a community-wide thing. That doesn’t happen.

Rural heritage taught me to support the people around me, even those I do not know.

Treating People Like They Are Family

Another related part to rural heritage is family.

Family is an important value for many Americans. Americans will travel great distances to be with family for holidays, and in Utah, that family culture is even stronger. But there is something special about the way rural people treat family.

For rural people, everyone is family — relative or not. I had a friend in high school who would point to most anyone walking the halls in the morning and say, “That’s my cousin.” Cousin, second cousin, not-really-a-cousin-but-just-a-really-good-friend, it was all the same to her!

When a sophomore at Piute High School passed away tragically in January 2023, the high school closed its doors for a day to offer services to the students as they grieved her loss. Later following a wrestling dual, the school held a vigil in her memory. “Everyone was welcomed to use a microphone that was passed around to share their favorite memory of Jacky and express their love for her,” wrote Ari Hurdsman, who reported on it at the time.

Jacky was not just another student at PHS. She was family. The Byway reported on similar events following the passing of two teenage girls in Panguitch.

This can be an aspect of rural culture that is especially jarring for outsiders. A Bryce Valley student who wrote for us a year ago, for example, did not know what to do when everyone she asked directed her to a teacher’s classroom by the teacher’s first name. And I cannot say my family was not a little surprised when we came home and there was produce sitting on our countertop that a neighbor just came in and placed there.

Familiarity like this is not everyone’s cup of tea — it’s definitely not always mine — but rural heritage taught me to at least try to treat everyone I meet more like family.

Freedom

Freedom is the last piece to the rural heritage puzzle, but it might not be quite what you think.

When I mention freedom, I do not even mean this in a political sense, even though I think rural people value that too. Rural people value freedom to ride up the mountain in an old truck or on a horse and just have the place to themselves, freedom to let their dogs run loose and their kids ride four-wheelers and ATVs through town, freedom to enjoy the land and the people around them in the way that they choose.

Freedom, seen this way, means so much more. It’s something you can get in the city, but it’s a state of mind that does not come naturally surrounded by traffic and buildings. There’s a reason so many homegrown cowboys feel claustrophobic in the city. Rural freedom is emptiness, space. As John Mellencamp sings, “I can breathe in a small town.”

Because I lived in a rural community, I will always value the spaces where I feel free.

Disclaimer

From my experience, these values represent the very best that rural communities can offer. But they can also become their worst traits. Anyone can go too far in believing that their values are better than anyone else’s.

Even good things like support, family, and freedom can get out of hand. Support could go horribly wrong when mixed with popularity contests, and family values could become exclusionary. Even freedom could create a sense of self-importance if not checked by a value for others’ freedoms.

Additionally, convincing people to respect rural heritage is a lot easier if you are also willing to respect theirs. Welcome conflicting values, the things that outsiders bring to your communities, and be willing to let go of appendages to your values if they get in the way of understanding another person.

What I learned writing for The Byway, when I chose to learn it, was that local heritage really matters.

Small town heritage is largely misunderstood. In an internet age where much of the rest of the world is connecting over internet forums and social media, many small town people are connecting over community-wide fundraisers, first names, and ATV rides. It’s a totally different world. And the people on the outside have no idea.

Heritage matters because understanding it helps humans understand themselves and others better. And to be able to go out and defend their own, because their own is worth defending.

– by Abbie Call

Feature image caption: The northwest side of Cannonville, with houses following main street towards Highway 12.

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