“The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.” – Goethe

Wednesday morning Rebekah and I headed all the way over to Pittsboro to visit our friends Faye and Jerry. They moved to the Galloway Ridge senior living community earlier this year, occupying a lovely home in a picture-perfect neighborhood just a short walk from the hub of the development.

Galloway Ridge is a carefully planned lifestyle concept that incorporates the best from a variety of settings, folding disparate strands into a perfectly calibrated town-in-miniature, built around an inviting hub that includes amenities such as casual and fine-dining, fitness, recreation, light shopping, a plethora of support services and an extensive library – among other features.

The community is meticulously maintained and carefully designed to promote walking, offering both sidewalks along the streets and pathways through the woods. Faye and Jerry’s home is situated on a corner lot nestled into a stand of trees and backing up to one of the natural areas home to the trails.

We enjoyed an excellent lunch at one of the restaurants, a tour, their beautiful home and not nearly enough time for catching up.

But the best part of the day was seeing how settled and happy and relaxed our friends are. It’s never easy to leave a home town where you have invested yourselves for a lifetime, so it was important to see that they have landed not only on their feet but in such style!

Tarboro a competetive “senior destination”

Our move to Tarboro, of course, was essentially the same idea – with the added bonus that we don’t have to get in a car even to go to church!

I’m not even joking about the broader comparison, and the possibilities are endless.

If our town would invest more resources into projects such as making the sidewalks safe for older people to walk without tripping, and be more proactive when it comes to bringing more business into downtown (specifically: a bodega, a couple more restaurants, an art gallery, a design studio, a bike shop…) then – especially as our historic district is already anchored by The Barclay – Tarboro would enjoy all the appeal of a “senior living community” and more so.

I could easily see more people from the Raleigh area following our example and moving here for the quiet, the absence of city traffic, the amazing sense of community, and the not unreasonably affordable opportunity to both restore and invest in one of the state’s most significant historic districts.

(We even have an amazing community college and a championship baseball team!!)

This community is still poised on the knife-edge of promise or decay. But here is the question: Do we have the vision to nudge our future into The Possible?

“Where there is no vision, the people perish…”

Proverbs 29:18