Traveling from ranch country to the big city can be exhausting. For my wife and I, it takes preparation and that begins with our personal space.

Personal space for ranch folk is about a quarter mile. For city dwellers, it extends from six to eighteen inches—less on the crowded East Coast.

Without this mental adjustment, walking on a city sidewalk, nose to toes with everyone else, is like having too many pigs in a pen. In extreme cases, ears and tails get nipped.

Arriving in the city, communication differences are the issue.

At home, people stop and talk when they meet. Chatting is almost a requirement in ranch country. This is how far-flung neighbors stay in touch with each other’s lives. It’s part of the glue that holds a spread-out community together.

City folks will have no doubt you’re a stranger. Communication, if it happens, is terse, direct and “in-your-face.” Shouting occurs in direct relationship to the number of sirens and amount of bus traffic.

In the city, friendships are based on mutual interest, rather than geographic proximity. Neighbors are something you don’t acknowledge. If a city dweller doesn’t know the name of the person living next door—they look it up in the phonebook. Assisting someone in trouble isn’t being neighborly. It’s called a fund-raiser and might end up on the nightly news.

When we travel, we often take our dogs.

City dogs leave behind the same sort of presents as those on a ranch. However their owners are required to deal with the end result differently than ranchers do. City people carry little plastic bags in their pocket when they walk their dog. This makes it easier to remove the little treasures their dog leaves behind. They turn the bag inside out, recover the misplaced item and seal the bag. Then they toss everything in the nearest garbage can.