People out here have a unique style of communication. It’s an incredibly slow, drawling talk that meanders along  painfully while not really saying or asking anything. It strikes me as though they don’t really want to talk to you at all. A conversation (or a loose approximation of one) starts and goes nowhere; you can talk for 10 or 15 minutes with neither side even introducing themselves much less revealing anything else.

As you might imagine, it kind of drives me crazy. Brad, on the other hand, has taken to it quite well.

This afternoon, on a walk, we saw a man standing at his gate. We approached. He closed his gate. At first, I thought we might never speak. Then one of us said hello. We talked for a while….slowly. He said he’d heard we were building a house and asked if we’d be living there “full time.” (A common question, many people own land here but only visit it for a few weeks a year.) We said yes.

“Well, hopefully, you have a skill,” he said to Brad.

Long pause.

Brad replied, “Well, hopefully I do.”