While talking to Bremerton mountain climber Craig Anderson for the front page story this month, several times we veered off topic. When that happened it struck me how similar are some of our thought processes. We would hit on something and go on and on.

One of the topics that really interested me was his involvement in the Peace Corps after graduating from Bethel College in Minnesota. He wound up going to Nepal, which is where he wanted to go because of the Himalayas and the exciting possibilities they presented for mountain climbing.

We Americans can be pretty arrogant at times – witness the Cowboy in the White House – and Anderson said he and fellow Peace Corps visitors to Nepal were convinced of their mission.

“We were all going to do good,” he said.

But what Anderson and the others discovered is that the people in Nepal had more to offer them then they did to them.

Nepal is a little country squeezed between two giants, India to the south and Tibet and China to the north. It is a mountainous country where people are forced to rely on each other to survive.

“Families are very, very close,” Anderson said.

And they are very engaging. They have to be. They have to stick together to exist, help each other and talk to each other.

I suspect there is a lot of love there, although Anderson did not say that. But when you are bunched together and need each other, I can’t help but think you have to learn to love, even before you walk.

Anderson made the comparison between Nepal and our country.

“In America, we tend to retreat to our house after a day of work and turn on the TV,” Anderson says. “We might say hi to our neighbor.”

Anderson spent over three years with the Peace Corps in Nepal and when he returned home he went into reverse cultural shock.

“I went into a grocery story and I had to leave because I was overwhelmed by the choices you could buy,” he said.

That happened nearly 35 years ago. Imagine what would happened if just today he returned and walked into a store. He would be really, really overwhelmed. We have so much more than we really need in this country that our choices can boggle the mind even if you haven’t been out of the country for three years.

The Nepal people eat what is in season. If it’s not in season, it’s not available. But in this country, we eat things in season or not. When you really think about it, we are very wasteful, very much a gluttonous people. It’s possible to go to a grocery story now and buy a complete dinner already prepared in an individual package, hot or cold. We simply don’t have to lift a finger to forage for food, just make a trip to the store, return home, turn on the TV and get as fat as we want as quickly as we want.

To counter our fatness, health clubs have spread like malaria in the jungle. So we can pay in excess for food that gives us excess fat and then we can pay in excess to go to a health club to get rid of the excess fat. Then we go home and start the circle all over again. Talk about progress.

We can even have surgery to get rid of the excess fat.

In the meantime, in countries like Nepal the people are lean working machines who are happy and close to their families and community. What a concept.

Believe it or not there are places in America where the old-time way of life still exists. The old-time being when this country was still more farming than manufacturing and service. I grew up in this time where work and play started and ended in the community, and where neighbors were neighbors in the closest sense. We talked, we swapped things we each needed, and borrowed from each other when that was necessary.

That part of the world, back in some of the rural areas of New York state, and probably in other rural areas in the lower 48, still exists. My brother-in-law is now in his 80s and is not capable of snow-plowing his neighbors driveways, but he did that for years. He purchased a plow, attached it to the front of his truck, and plowed like crazy.

Alvin still has the plow. It’s out back of the house he and my sister share. It’s a little rusty, but he could still used it if he could get out and manhandle it to hook it up. So instead, my oldest nephew has taken over the snow-plowing duties with his own plow and truck. Ernie has been doing it for years, just like his father.

The thing is that Ernie doesn’t wait until somebody calls for help. He just shows up and plows as needed, even if that means doing it several times a week. It’s the way, the only way. And it’s the way that will continue I suspect even when Alvin and Ernie are gone. Members of the family will attach their own plows and take over.

I wrote this before, but it’s the same topic. Eight years ago Mary and I went back east to visit and as I drove up to my sister’s house I noticed Alvin’s truck was not there.

I told Mary it looks like they aren’t here. But, lo and behold, they were. So I asked Alvin, where is your truck?

“Oh, it’s not there?” he said.

No, it’s not.

Alvin paused, and then said, “Well, it’ll be back. Somebody must have needed it.”

Sure enough, in another day the truck reappeared. I didn’t ask who had taken it, but whoever did got the use out of it they needed and then returned it.

So it goes back there. Alvin used to keep a refrigerator full of beer out in his two-story chicken-coop, tool storage building out in the back 40 behind their house.

His friends and other people in the community soon learned of it, and whenever they were driving by and felt the urge, would stop off and have a few beers before venturing on to wherever they were going.

Alvin didn’t mind. In fact, he liked it. All he requested was that when the beer got low or (God forbid) ran out, that the refrigerator be filled back up. And so it was.

Sadly, most of his friends have died and Alvin and my sister are relegated mostly to their home. When the weather is good, Alvin might go out in the back 40 and open the frig door, but it isn’t often any more.

A couple years ago when I was back there, I walked out back just to see if the refrigerator was still there.

I walked in the door and hanging out by the frig were Ernie and his brother Tim.

They were engaged in small talk, which is what you get in a small town like that: small talk. They said hi to me like I was a regular visitor, and then continued on with their small talk.

A smile came to my face when I saw what they were holding in their hands.

A beer.

Have a great month.

You are loved.