My hometown — the place where I was born and raised — is thriving. When I was a kid, Bozeman, Montana, had a population of about twelve thousand residents, plus six thousand students attending Montana State University.

Over the past forty years, Bozeman has grown to 40,000 people, largely because high-tech businesses have found a home there. Montana State University is the state’s science and engineering school, so the technology companies have a ready source of well-trained nerdy types to fill the jobs. Many out-of-state techies have relocated to Bozeman, too, not just for the well-paid jobs, but because the surroundings are so breathtakingly beautiful. Bozeman is nestled between the majestic Bridger and Hyalite Mountains. The headwaters of the Missouri River, formed by three of the country’s best trout streams, The Madison, The Jefferson, and The Gallatin rivers, lie just 30 miles to the west. Yellowstone Park is 100 miles away as the highway flies (drivers do fly down Montana highways). In many ways, Bozeman is the perfect place to live, although the winters can be dreadful. The point is, my hometown is in great shape.

When I was fifteen, my family relocated to the supposedly more urbane Great Falls, Montana, which at the time had a population of about 60,000, plus several thousand stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base, one of the bases responsible for the nation’s ICBM arsenal. When I say urbane, I am speaking in an arch tone. Urbane and Montana don’t work and play well together. Still, when I moved to Great Falls, I saw it as a step up the sophistication and excitement ladder. It wasn’t much, but at fifteen, I thought, “Cool.”

Today, Great Falls is in an economic funk: The air force base has been trimmed down to next to nothing, and the state’s principle power company, which once had a huge presence in Great Falls, has all but completely pulled out, even though seven very large and powerful hydroelectric dams keep pumping out megawatts. Luckily, I missed the downturn. After high school, I set my sights on the city lights along the West Coast.

About that same time, my parents and three of my siblings moved to little Lewistown, Montana, population roughly 8,000. Pop bought into the local radio station, and mom taught English at Fergus High School (I know, she has earned a high place in Heaven). Thankfully mom is still with us today, so now when I visit home I am talking about Lewistown.

Lewistown is a cowtown. I don’t say that as an insult but as a fact. The primary economic engine is cattle ranching, mostly open range, by which I mean that fences are placed randomly and with little regard for actual property lines. The area terrain is rough, to say the least, and surveys are, at best, 75 percent reliable. The various land-use arrangements have worked out pretty well over the years. Without some give and take, it would have been impossible to figure out who had what rights in what land. There’s a fair amount of farming, too. Lewistown was never an economic titan, but between agriculture and small business, things went along swimmingly.

That was then. Now things in Lewistown are not good. The sad fact is that Lewistown is dying, and there’s little anyone can do to resuscitate the community. Most young people can’t wait to cut out for the glitz and glamor of larger towns or the big city. Staying put is not an option for most high school graduates. There’s precious little work except for service jobs at low, low wages. There are young people who would like to stay or move back after college, but their hopes are largely futile unless they’re willing to work for next to nothing.

When I last visited mom — about two months ago — I saw a downtown with just about every storefront boarded up. There are a thousand tumbling tumbleweeds for every paying customer. Folks now sign in to Amazon, or motor to Great Falls or Billings, to do their shopping. The only businesses that still prosper are the old bars: The Mint, The Glacier, the Montana Tavern. The town’s spirit is in the deep, dark, dumps. The situation will likely never improve.

Which prompts the question: Why do so many of the old guard stay? Maybe they should just let the town die. Or so suggests Kevin Williamson in a recent piece at National Review:

My own experience in Appalachia and the South Bronx suggests that the best thing that people trapped in poverty in these undercapitalized and dysfunctional communities could do is — move. Get the hell out of Dodge, or Eastern Kentucky, or the Bronx.

I don’t want to over-read Mr. Williamson’s argument. I don’t think he’s an economic Darwinist, and he is surely correct to say that one solution to severe rural poverty is the higher wages of larger communities.

But the missing nuance brings me up short. Surely there are other issues to be addressed than mere economic interest. Small towns — even those in the economic doldrums — are vastly more than the jobs available. I don’t want to over-romanticize; Lewistown has had its share of scandals (including the first widely-publicized school shooting), but rural communities offer something I’ve rarely seen in the metropolis: a consistent ethos of charity. Except for inveterate recluses, no one in Lewistown is left completely alone. This is worth preserving, even when economic hard times run amok.

I live in Billings, Montana’s largest town (population about 130,000). Billings is a small town with a big-city chip on its shoulder. If I had a heart attack while out on my afternoon stroll, I might lie there for hours until someone looked out the window and — if they didn’t have anything better to do — called an ambulance. In Lewistown, folks gather ’round when a neighbor has a hangnail.

Okay. I’m overstating my case. The point is that small towns preserve the humane in day-to-day life, something of profound importance in a world of isolated individuals rooting around for more and more stuff while pursuing the modern go-go-go of success, often with complete disregard for the needs and sufferings and joys of their neighbors.

Responding to Williamson, Gracy Olmstead of The American Conservative makes the salient point:

Yet this mobility can often take a long-term toll on family and community life—while staying “close to home” can offer a safety net, support group, and a community. Small-town living is less glamorous, but it does offer a good deal of security, comfort, and community.

Another way of saying this is that small towns, even those falling off the economic radar screen, fill a deep longing of the human heart for a sense of place and a form of extended family, things often lost in a world of constant upward mobility.

Little Lewistown is filled with people who cherish the simple over the complex, and who thus maintain the virtues that come with squelching the constant urge to make hay while the sun is shining. They are ambitious, but in the pursuit of the modest desire to live quiet lives of service and simply decency. Sure, they can be parochial, sometimes backward. But at bottom, they serve as a counterforce to the relentless drive to live life solely in the pursuit of prosperity.

Small town life is the spiritual equivalent of a quiet mind that’s free to live in the permanent things. Lewistown stands athwart the Amazon corporate lifestyle with its ethic of backstabbing and relentless competition. Like most small towns across the country, Lewistown shouts, “Stop,” and so reminds us that we need a respite from the rush of ambition pounding in our ears. Small town life can be a refuge from the interpersonal perpetual warfare of relentless competition, a refuge for a heart that longs for rest.

I have no idea how to restore the economic vibrancy Lewistown needs. All the government dollars on the printing press won’t bring back prosperity. But I can’t shake the uneasy feeling that just doing nothing as small town America perishes will mean an incalculable loss to the social and spiritual capital the nation so desperately needs. We need Lewistown every bit as much as Bozeman or New York. There’s no money in it, but there is spiritual currency, and we need small towns to guard the vault.