Yeah, I bet that would be a culture shock! I've never been farther west than Kansas City (went there for three days with my youngest brother back in May), but the idea of whole swathes of land with so few neighbors around would be jarring to me and I grew up in an area that used to be semi-rural (35 miles west of Nashville, TN) until the past 20 years. Sounds like you've made some interesting changes in your personal life and that you're content with those, so congrats! I'm mostly the same, moving from residential treatment teaching job every so often because a place closes (I like to think not because of me, but despite me ), so I may be heading back to grad school part-time this summer to work on a second Master's degree, this time in teaching ESL. Had a couple of short story translations published in the past 18 months, one in a big anthology published here by Tor (The Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, both of whom I've come to consider to be good friends of mine), so if you ever wanted to critique the writer/translator's writing style in revenge for my critiques over the years, there's the perfect opportunity!

Take care, John, and hope to see you around at least occasionally