Giving gated communities the gate?

For once, I felt safe.

Too safe.

This was the week I spent on vacation in a gated community recently in upper New York State near Buffalo and Lake Erie.

Admittedly, I’d never thought of it before – the notion you could actually lock a gate and keep the world out, except for a carefully chosen core community – or that folks really lived that way.

“No drugs,” one resident of this
173-acre gated community sniffed smugly. “You know what this country is like.”

Yes. Diverse. A mix, albeit at times an anxious, awkward one, of Us’s and Thems, the good and the bad, the happy and sad. Life, the adventure of it all!

Inside this gated community, which I will not name out of deference to its residents and visitors, there were many wonderful things: spirituality, learning, fellowship, sisterhood, discovery, joy, worship, glorious nature, meditation, tranquility, a revelation or three, stimulating discussions, like-minded individuals on a metaphysical path, hotels and B and Bs, churches, peace and quiet, a private beach, pleasant children, friendly strolling cats, dogs on leashes, sociable squirrels, an indoor-outdoor daytime cafe, a cafeteria, an auditorium, incredible ice cream, several gift shops, a book store, bicycles, cars, a few boats, abundant public rest rooms and well-situated trash containers, flocks of drakes and ducks, some swans, water turtles, sunfish darting close to the surface of the lake, and the occasionally discordant but always endearing honking of Gretel the Goose.

Yes, I admit I even saw a skateboard. Left out overnight. On the front lawn of its owner’s house. But no one stole it.

The hotel I stayed at rented me a single room for $22/night, sink included. While I had an amazing view of a lake surrounded by tall, graceful maples and oaks, I had no radio, TV, telephone, digital alarm clock, air conditioner, fan, wet bar, cable, computer hookup, Internet, or daily newspaper – in short, many of the customary niceties of 21st-century civilization. It was lovely, it was splendid, it was exquisite, it was divine.

Really restorative.

Oh how I needed this de-pressuring, this exquisitely simple, gentle … escape.

Heavy on the history, this place dating back to 1879 was previously visited by numerous notables:

• Susan B. Anthony
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt
• Russian Countess Alexandra Tolstoy (Leo Tolstoy’s daughter)
• Mae West

And yet, even before my final day in this
gated village, I was becoming restless.

True, the cafe served hot morning muffins, passable bagels, pita and hummus sandwiches stuffed with sprouts, even chai tea with soymilk. But the cafeteria’s somewhat pedestrian dinners and its cook’s apparent penchant for creamed this-and-that was beginning to feel oppressive, despite the delicious chocolate cake offering small temptation to me since I am not a dessert person.

Nevertheless, fascinated with what made a gated community tick, I asked question after question. I learned that although real estate was relatively reasonable, asking prices covered the costs of the domicile but not the land, so mortgages were difficult to obtain. You were governed by a board, which could get endlessly political. Residents paid a $500 annual assessment. There were stringent entrance requirements related to spiritual affiliation and professional certification. Visitors and residents alike paid a daily gate-fee. Winters were brutal.

Soon, although my brief stay in this
gated community was enjoyable, I began to yearn for the outside world like a secret lover, limning its forbidden ecstasies:

Chinese food. Pizza. Garlic! Lox and Philadelphia-brand chive cream cheese on a toasted poppy-seed bagel, with romaine lettuce, sliced tomato and Bermuda onion. White fish salad. Real chocolate. Seafood. Arugula. Wine, despite not drinking. My laptop. WND. Drudge. AOL. IMs. My fondest online friend “Broccoli Bertie-Ray.” Yahoo maps. Current events and global crises. First-run movies and other alluring aspects of a decadent culture.

Call me superficial, but inevitably, I began counting the minutes until we would drive out past the gatekeeper, happily waving goodbye. If there’s a penetrating insight I brought away with me, it’s this: Great ice cream, no matter how scrumptious, can only carry you just so far.