Unplugged In The Mountains
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Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
I hope everyone had a happy and hippity-hoppity Easter! I spent most of Easter Day driving home through dark thunderstorms across the top of Georgia and Alabama only to have the clouds clear and the sun start to shine as soon as I entered Mississippi. The Easter bunny blessed us with gorgeous weather, locally. It was much appreciated and the least that could be done for us considering the ice storm fiasco which was not holy.
I don’t have much to report from Water Valley this week as I’ve been in town now for only the last 12 hours of it. I spent the past two weeks at a cabin way up in the hinterlands of the north Georgia mountains at an artist’s residency in Rabun Gap. If you aren’t familiar, the point of an artist residency is that artists of varying sorts go there for uninterrupted time to work on their projects – maybe a series of paintings if you’re a painter, an album if you’re a musician or a book if you’re a writer and so on.
But you aren’t actually obligated to do any of that at residencies. Nobody is checking. Artist residencies are self-regulated in terms of artistic output. Which means there’s generally a lot of wine drinking and swimming and ping-pong playing. Not me, though! I don’t play ping-pong.
The residency I was at has no internet or cell service. This lack of access to the rest of life on Earth is supposed to entice one to focus on their artistic pursuit. In my case, it enticed me to get in my vehicle and drive 3.4 miles down the road each day to sit in an abandoned fire station parking lot where I could get a signal.
Although I wasn’t actively trying to live off the grid, I must say that not having internet for a couple of weeks wound up being a really good thing. Occasionally, I found myself becoming bored – just sitting there and staring around the room. The number of times I picked up my phone expecting a different result than the “no internet connection” message should be studied by scientists. It’s like I never caught on. If I were a mouse in a maze then I would clearly always be the last to find the cheese.
Eventually, instead of reaching for my phone to scroll recipes I’ll never make or workout regimens I’ll never practice, I did the only other thing left to do: I read a book. In fact, I read three and half books! I also read, organized and filed every Wagner Letter from 1902 to 1906 (Yes, I brought them with me.) All this to say, I think we should bring boredom back. I had forgotten how productive and interesting it is to be bored! Make America Bored Again.
If you’re planning to be in Water Valley this Friday evening then you will not be bored because the Water Valley Main Street Association’s 2026 Spring Wine Down is happening! Friday evening, April 10, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.. Restaurants, shops, and art galleries will be open after hours with live music, specials, treats, and wine tastings at participating locations. Register online beforehand or at Pocket Park day-of. See ya there!
