Rural Connectivity: A response to BlazeWifi

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with railroads. On an otherwise silent day in Yankton, South Dakota, a train's powerful bellow made me tug on my dad's leg, begging him to drive me to the railroad tracks. We emerged from the car and I counted the carriages–sometimes to over 100 (no easy feat for a three-year-old). Visiting my grandparents in Tryon, North Carolina, merely changed the scenery and who had the burden of letting me loose to watch the locomotion. The trains shook the whole house.

Then the trains stopped running.

An artery was severed, and the effects were noticeable. The lights in cozy little stores went dark and the cracks in the sidewalk stopped being fixed. Today, the tracks are overgrown and rusted, but rural connectivity is alive–robust and evolved.

I now live in Tryon, but I have made some notable stops along the way: New Delhi, India, for two years; Washington, D.C., for a few summers; Wellington, New Zealand, for two years. Moving around showed me Tryon does not have the advantages in infrastructure or notoriety a capital city enjoys. However, though the portraits on our walls have stopped shaking in the night and travelers are a bit less common, we are more connected today than ever. We do share the most important resource of all: the internet.

This summer, I am working at an outdoor adventure company in the area. I completed my interview over Skype, sent the paperwork over email, and heard of my acceptance while hundreds of miles away. My story is not unique; the company employs multiple New Zealanders (myself not included) who heard about the nearby Green River and went halfway around the globe to see it. During training, I learned my coworkers came from places like Utah, New York, Texas, Alabama, and more–I was the only local.

What is even more astounding is those who come to see the area. I have met people from at least a dozen states and a handful of countries in the last week alone. While everyone's stories and motivations are different, they often share a common thread: they were inspired by the breathtaking photos or videos they saw on the internet.

Being a nomad offers me a unique perspective in observing the town. I usually come back to Tryon every two years, and each time the accumulation of each tiny change stands out to me in a way I am oblivious to when stationary. I thought the end of the railroad would be a deadly blow. Each time I return, however, the town proves me wrong.

I know how cliché this will sound, but every time I come back I am impressed by Tryon's resilience and ability to live beyond its borders. The local high school teaches Mandarin Chinese and operates a biodiesel generator that runs on sunflower seeds it grows on its own farm. Kids teach themselves instruments and origami from YouTube videos. Online classes have made tertiary education a reality for my peers who work full-time jobs. The Tryon Daily Bulletin, also known as "The World's Smallest Daily Newspaper," has gone digital. I even applied for the community foundation's scholarship program from India. BlazeWifi is looking for the ways the internet changes rural communities. The answer, in my experience, is providing a renewed connection to the world and bringing new energy to the rural lifestyle.

Although trees have fallen across the tracks and the heavy iron nails are now just souvenirs, this town is far from disconnected. If anything, Tryon's charm now has a much more intentional way of attracting wanderers than being a nameless pitstop on the way to a bigger, better town. While the illustrious news stories focus on how technology will shape our cities, the real change is happening in rural connectivity.