It is safe to say that I am not a city person. I grew up in a small town, attended a small college and an even smaller graduate school, and served congregations in rural and isolated areas. I also served a congregation in Boise, Idaho, which at the time was a city of about 120,000 people and another in Rapid City, South Dakota, while not one of the world’s large cities, is certainly a regional hub. We have retired to a home in what is called a census designated place. Our community has a name, but is not incorporated. We have to drive for all of our services such as groceries, health care, and such.

I have, however, had to gain a modest amount of urban skills over the years. We went to graduate school in Chicago and for two years I served an internship in the suburbs while living in the city. That meant I had to commute. Granted I was commuting in the opposite direction of the bulk of the traffic, but I did get a taste of urban freeway driving. Then, over the years, we have visited a lot of cities. For a decade, when we lived in Boise, our Conference Office was located in Portland, Oregon. Although those two cities are 430 miles apart, the work of the church often took me to Portland. At the time my sister was living in Portland, so I learned my way around the city and knew how to drive on its various freeways and city streets.

By nature, however, I’ve always felt a bit more at home in rural areas than in cities. I know how to behave on a farm and help out on a ranch and I don’t feel threatened by driving in isolated locations. I prefer back roads and two lane highways and often seek them out even though they are what my family refers to as “another one of Dad’s long cuts.”

Yesterday was a city day for us. We drove from our home to Portland Oregon, which meant driving directly through Seattle and Tacoma Washington. The I-5 corridor through Seattle is a long stretch of city freeway driving. It can take 3 hours to get from our home through the city to SeaTac Airport. Although we live not far from two cities, Seattle and Vancouver BC, we don’t spend much time in either one. We don’t seem to need city entertainments or shopping. But we have family in Portland and the surrounding area and now is a good time for some visiting.

We were lucky with traffic on the way down. We made the trip in about 6 hours including a good stop for lunch along the way. Traffic was light through Seattle and Tacoma and not bad coming through Portland. We went around Portland on a beltway connector which can be very busy at certain times of the day, but weren’t delayed by traffic.

In the late afternoon, however, things were different when we headed into the city to meet a couple of nephews for dinner. A drive that used to take about a half hour in the days when we lived in Boise took us an hour and a half. We traveled most of the way to downtown on a freeway that was going less than 20 mph in stop and go traffic. The highway was full of cars going both directions. There were simply more vehicles than the road could handle. Every ramp was a mess of congestion. Cars were having difficulty changing lanes. We were a half hour late to our appointed meeting place. When we got there, the line for seating at the restaurant was out in the street. Fortunately for us, our nephews had arrived before us and at least we were able to sit inside while we waited for our table. The restaurant was crowded and noisy, but when we finally were escorted to our table in a back room, it was a very good place to enjoy a delicious dinner and share conversation. The noise of the entryway was muted and we could enjoy a dinner in peace.

The changes win Portland in the decades since we used to come here regularly are dramatic. There are encampments of homeless people along the freeways. There are a lot more housing developments in the suburbs which stretch even farther from the urban core. There are a lot more people and a lot more cars in a confined space. And several of our relatives are part of that population explosion. Our families have grown with the addition of children and grandchildren. We now have four nieces and nephews in the area.

My sisters and the two nephews we met for dinner last night all grew up in small towns in Montana. However, small towns in Montana, and small towns in other inland states as well, do not offer many jobs for young people. They have all drifted to an urban center to make their lives. And they are not alone. As the farming and ranching country of the midwest and west decrease in population, urban centers have continued to grow. Most of the world’s people live in cities. Our nephews grew up in a town of a couple thousand people where everyone knew everyone else. Now they live in a city of 650,000 people. Our little adventure of being in traffic was not a surprise to them. It is a way of life. Meeting someone for dinner can often involve a wait of half hour for traffic. Both boys have all kinds of urban skills, including the ability to find places to park cars, the ability to navigate through the city on public transportation, and the skills of finding a place to eat when there are crowds of people filling up every restaurant in an area. I have a few skills in that area, but they are a bit rusty. I managed to park our car in a very tight parallel parking space after cruising around several blocks looking from someone vacating a parking place. We navigated the city without getting lost and returned to my sister’s home with the aid of our GPS device and a few recognized landmarks.

I’m not a city person, but it seems that I need to keep honing my city skills. More and more of the people I love are moving to the cities.