Love this analysis. I now live in a small village in rural New Mexico, and your 2nd paragraph precisely describes things here. We love our neighbors - not as p

Love this analysis. I now live in a small village in rural New Mexico, and your 2nd paragraph precisely describes things here. We love our neighbors - not as people to bare our hearts to, but as people we can rely on (and they can rely on us). Yes, I do miss the sense of a deeper connection, especially since I've been fortunate to find a few (remote) friends in life where that happened from day one. But you know what, sometimes you just have to grow that over time. Before this location, I lived on an amazing block in suburban Philadelphia, where the middle of the block had five families/households (us among them) who were similarly "utterly dependable". But over time, we became closer to some of them (amidst the christmas round-robin dinners and block parties and standing around outside while raking leaves), and so last summer we were invited to a the daughter's wedding, and next month one of them might join me on a 1600 bike ride from Santa Fe to Seattle. I do like meeting people that I just immediately click with, but we should not discount the merits of long, long neighborly relationships that deepen and ripen over many years to become a different, but similarly valuable sort of friendship.