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Comment by thekingofh | Hacker News Reader

I had the pleasure of driving through and visiting Oklahoma a decade or so ago. Some people don't like the rural states, but it felt so serene out there. We stopped at a shaved ice place off of some random exit and just sat there on the hood staring out at the plains. There's not much out there but it felt so peaceful. It felt like home.

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This has been my experience as well. I live in a city now, but I love the times I have spent traveling through or to rural areas. They have a bad reputation that is based on false notions of urban superiority and stereotypes that feel as baseless and unhinged as claims of other types of superiority (e.g. racial).

The reality is when you visit these rural places, talk to the people there, take part in their culture, take in the land...there is a lot these areas and those lifestyles have to offer. I was also surprised to find the people so charming, warm, and welcoming - and it dispelled my fears of expecting discrimination, which in retrospect I've only experienced in bigger American cities. It does feel comforting, raw, grounded, and yes like home.

> I come from Minneapolis, and before that I lived in Seattle and Boston — three of the bluest, most left-leaning cities in the United States. I was an urban woman and couldn’t imagine living anywhere other than a city. My husband concurred. Then our 28-year-old son died in late 2016.

> Suddenly the traffic and noise and confusion became too much. John and I took off on a year’s driving tour of gentler parts — both of us working from the road, a computer security consultant and a writer. We grew nearly silent in grief.

> We considered Asheville, N.C., and Santa Fe, N.M. But on a chilly, silver January day, we drove into the Ozarks of Northwest Arkansas. Though neither of us could put our finger on exactly why, this felt like our place. People back home were flummoxed: I heard them say a lot about white, rural Christians who reject outsiders and “cling to their guns.”

> But what city folk don’t know is how beautiful it is here, and by that I mean way more than you imagine. We’re surrounded by low mountains, bony shale bluffs, forest, shining lakes and mysterious twisting roads. The wide-open sky brings every bird formation and low-hanging planet into relief.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2018/09/14/i-was-yan...

Damn I never wanted to go to Arkansas before, now I do!

Please, visit! The Buffalo National River is one of the most amazing natural attractions in my neck of the woods. Nearby in Bentonville, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is the best world-class museum in the state, if not the region. I think we have some pretty famous art, if you’re into that kind of thing. Also in Bentonville is the corporate HQ of a little store which started in Arkansas, and kept growing, which you may have heard of: Walmart. A short trip from there takes you to Fayetteville, AR which is currently #4 in the nation for best places to live, according to U.S. News & World Report. Doesn’t hurt that the University of Arkansas is also in Fayetteville; my time on campus was longer ago every day, but the campus and its surrounding metro area is as vibrant as ever, and I hear good things about its Walton School of Business.

We have a legacy to bear as well, but I think we honor our mistakes and errors as well as our virtues. On that note, one of the projects I’m most proud of in NWA is our massive bike trails network that connects the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers-Bentonville-Bella Vista area. This area was on the route of the Trail of Tears; this section of paths is the Northwest Arkansas Heritage Trail, part of the NWA Razorback Regional Greenway.

https://www.nps.gov/buff/index.htm

https://crystalbridges.org/blog/what-to-expect-for-crystal-b...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hvUCYRsUoQ

https://realestate.usnews.com/places/arkansas/fayetteville

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Arkansas

https://www.nwarpc.org/bicycle-and-pedestrian/

https://trails.cast.uark.edu/

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=0dd0...

As a native and resident, Arkansas has a history and a reputation, but it also has amazing strength of character, and people who care about each other and their community. There are folks from all over the world who call my state home, and I’m proud to welcome them all.

Except the KKK. They are the bane of my home state, and it is my wish that I live to see each and every one of every group’s members publicly repudiate their membership and their belief in the groups. /rant

I had a different feeling. It wasn't empty in the sense that the desert is, which is very pleasant and beautiful, but scarred with industrialized agriculture, and silos stretching out into the infinite surrounding. The fact that there was absolutely nothing at all as far as the eye can see, no mountain or woods, just field upon industrial field with no farm house or town in sight, felt extremely isolating and uncomfortable. A feeling of having no bearings, no difference in any direction; no idea where to run.

The small towns felt disturbing. Tulsa felt disturbing. The lack of minorities out in public was painfully glaring. It was all so very patriotic and dystopian. The unsettling overbearing flatness on the featureless terrain dominated my perspective of the area. Not for me, and I couldn't leave soon enough.

There's a big difference between Eastern Oklahoma and Western Oklahoma.

GP's description sounds like Eastern Oklahoma which is more similar in landscape and vegetation to places in Arkansas and Missouri like the Ozarks.

Your description sounds like Western Oklahoma. I lived there from age 12 to 20 and yes it's exactly as you describe, getting worse the farther West you go in the state. Dystopian agriculture.

Although Tulsa is east of OKC, I would put the dividing line between the East/West change in landscape around the Tulsa area.

While the agriculture may feel dystopic, there really wasn’t ever much west of the cross timbers to begin with.

The dividing line you describe is the area between the 98th and 100th meridian.

> The lack of minorities out in public was painfully glaring.

What does this mean?

Poster was amazed and disturbed by everyone being white.

My own experience: having had a good portion of my childhood (after immigration) in a Rocky Mountain West state, I moved to Chicago for school. The first time I came back to visit for Christmas, I was blown away by how white the area was, and that I had never noticed before! Suddenly all of the childhood struggles I had with people quietly judging me fell into place (little things: assuming promiscuity, passing me over for a leadership position for someone less qualified, etc). That Christmas, the only person of color I saw was the guy behind the grocery's store's sushi counter, who was - wait for it, Japanese. It left me deeply disturbed, excited to come back to Chicago and excited to leave that state permanently.

Rural areas are almost uniformly beautiful and serene. It's the beliefs of the people in them that can be hostile.

Ah yes, unlike cities which house only the most pure of thought.

This is an "affirming the consequent" logical fallacy. My sentence says nothing about the virtue or vice of cities.

I'm responding to "Some people don't like the rural states". Almost no one dislikes rural states for their natural beauty. They dislike them for the people.

Whether that dislike is morally wrong, or whether they should also dislike urban areas is irrelevant to my claim. All I was observing is that the people are why some other people don't like rural areas.

I think making a blanket statement might be incorrect. I've heard a lot of people who dislike rural areas for their lack of people. That is to say, lack of amenities, entertainment, cultural events, etc that can only be had in a dense area with surplus people.

I'm not sure which reason is the majority, or if there even is a majority.

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