COUNTRY DREAMING

Image Gallery Bottom land is cherished . . .right on up to the house's porch.

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By Paula Thompson

They set out in search of a new beginning.

Many people now in their 30s and early 40s came to northwest Arkansas 10 to 15 years ago, following a dream or escaping a nightmare. Like other waves of immigrants before them, they set out in search of inexpensive land and a new beginning.

Why They Came

Despite his degree in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech, Bob Jordan chose to live in the country. He found Vermont winters too hard on southern bones, and according to the map he consulted, Arkansas had less population per square mile anyway. In 1974, at age 29, Bob came "to settle down."

Barbara Jordan wanted to live someplace warmer and prettier than the south side of Chicago, where she grew up. In 1971, at age 21, she discovered rural Arkansas and "fell in love." She stayed.

After a 1972 visit to friends here, Wyit and Lillian Wright bought 40 isolated acres. Two more years at their Tucson jobs, teaching and managing a satellite tracking station, paid for their land: "When we moved onto it at last, in search of freedom and tranquility, we felt like a retired couple in our late 20s."

Bill Brown, a corporate headhunter in Memphis, read Future Shock the year he turned 30. He experienced it the morning after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. That day, Bill and his wife, Jeannette, began planning their family's flight from the city.

Gregg Thomas (1973), Loretta Shelton (1975), and Mike Stephenson (1975) all came to learn about agriculture. Nancy followed Mike from a New Orleans society family. She was "into health foods" and imagined farming would be "heaven." All were in their early 20s.

What They Found

"Despite all our reading and planning, we were ill prepared," Bill said, shaking his head ruefully. "My corporate skills didn't apply in the new context. The first winter, I bought a woodstove because it was part of our lifestyle image. Of course I didn't have a chain saw, an axe, a truck, or any place to cut wood, but I had a woodstove."

The urban escapists learned a lot of things the hard way. They bought hundreds of acres of inexpensive land, only to find that it had neither water nor access roads — that even minimal utilities were years away. Wyit developed a rule of thumb for friends looking for acreage: "Buy a place with at least an old house on it. That means somebody once was able to live there."

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