The temperature is rising. The snow has (almost) melted. Jogging Jesus was recently spotted in short sleeves. Spring is just around the corner.

Jogging Jesus is a local marathoner, a bearded man who lets his long hair flow freely as he logs miles and miles on the roads around town. Everyone in town knows Jogging Jesus, because he’s ubiquitous. You drive out to the farm stand, and he’s running along the High Road. You drive out the back way to the interstate, and he’s running along the low road. You take the baby for a short walk in the south end, and he’s running through town. You go for a hike in the park with the dog, and he’s running the trails. You go to the gym, and 70 miles a week must not be enough exercise for him, because he’s there too, running on the treadmill. And, believe it or not, if you log on to Match.com, he’s one of the bachelors on offer. (No, I’m not looking, but I have single friends who keep me posted on the latest Match.com appearances.)

Jogging Jesus is one of the benefits of living in a small town. I grew up in the suburbs and hightailed it to the city as soon as I had a steady paycheck, so for years my only experience of small towns was through fiction. Books, movies, and television made small towns seem claustrophobia-inducing, until “Northern Exposure.” After I got hooked on that in the early ‘90s, I thought it would be great to move to a remote village, interact with hip, quirky characters, and see livestock roaming through the center of town. I even quit my job and joined the Peace Corps where, alas, I was posted to a capital city (but with plenty of livestock).

When I moved back to the States and met Husband, he told me (on our third date) that he would never leave Urbanity, and my vague wish to experience small-town life seemed poised to die a natural death. Then Husband and I married and decided to start a family. We both wholeheartedly believe that a city is the best place to raise a child. This conflicts with another deeply-held belief, however, that one thousand dollars a square foot is too much to pay for living space, which coincides nicely with other beliefs that 1. we don’t have a million dollars and 2. all our stuff won’t fit in a 1000 square foot apartment. Hence, our move to Port City .

Port City, however, does not disappoint. It’s like Peyton Place, Stars Hollow, and Harper Valley (of PTA fame) rolled into one. Each stroll through town is another installment in the running entertainment that is town life. The local luminaries are a cast of characters that everyone knows, sources of gossip and speculation. There’s Jogging Jesus, of course. There’s the Mayor, whose husband punched out the soccer coach after uncovering a salacious e-mail exchange. There’s the overwhelmingly popular county sheriff, one of the few African-Americans in town. There’s the best-selling novelist whose last name nobody is quite sure how to pronounce. There’s the editor of an influential political tabloid that everyone disparages (but everyone advertises in, too). There’s the wealthy New Yorker who moved to town, bought up a bunch of properties, and then died in a mysterious fall from the third story of her inn, leaving behind a husband who subsequently made a million dollar donation to the local women’s shelter. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

I sometimes wonder how Aitch will feel about growing up in this environment. I hope he will enjoy it, but I will not feel heartbroken at all if he decides to move away after college. In my experience, the image “my hometown” lives in close proximity to images of “shaking off the dust of” and “getting the hell out of.” That feeling seems essential to the process of separating oneself from one’s parents. Hell, I know someone who grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (which is Mecca to me and the place to which Husband and I will retire when we are old and alone and can reconcile ourselves to living in a studio apartment), and she escaped…here, to Port City. Where we’ll know it’s summer as soon as we see Jogging Jesus running barechested.