Should we be talking Fort Nebraska now?

I don't want to cause a panic, but we better start building some very high walls around our beloved state. We should probably consider an alligator-infested moat and drawbridge, too.

I say this for two reasons.

First, a Time magazine article recently portrayed Nebraska as the new promised land. The basic message was if you want to get rich, go to Nebraska and farm. The author touted our ridiculously low unemployment rate (second only to North Dakota, which doesn't count because there's only 62 people up there) and our recession-defying economic conditions.

Apparently the Asians are eating beef like nobody's business and, of course, there is no beef without our corn so the Wall Street economic gurus are betting big on a major boom for farmers. The article featured a Grand Island farmer who went from the rags of living in a bad trailer and working with a broken-down tractor to the riches of owning farmland worth more than $24 million and raking in some serious annual profits. With those numbers, you can bet people are already packing their cars and heading our way.

But even more worrisome is that I made my first trip back to California since moving here two years ago. Every minute was scheduled with friends and family, so I interacted with a lot of Californians. And, unfortunately for us, they saw in me living proof that Nebraska is fabulous.

And trust me, when those folks learn about something that makes people happy, word travels like wildfire. I didn't help matters by giving them details about our particular brand of magic.

Just about everyone I saw told me that they'd never seen me look so happy, so peaceful and calm. They probed about my life and I recited the simple recipe again and again — I'm doing work I love in a wonderful community where people have histories and farms and local businesses. I never sit in traffic and I grow my own vegetables. I experience all four seasons and awe-inspiring storms and, for a few weeks a year, fireflies dance outside my windows and nobody charges me to watch the incredible show, which still amazes me every time I see it. Nobody makes me feel like I need to get Botox injections to be a good person. Then I put a cherry on top by casually mentioning the Huskers.

That sealed the deal every time, and I could see them quickly consulting their Smartphones, asking a bit later, "Is Omaha the capital and do they have an airport there?" Yep, here we go.

But the most interesting exchange came when a friend asked during lunch overlooking the breathtaking San Diego Bay, "If you could have your Nebraska life in San Diego, would you move back?" It was like a worm wiggling on the hook and I almost said yes, but that answer just didn't seem right, which surprised me. Surely I could find elsewhere many of the things that make my Nebraska life wonderful, but it wouldn't be the same, would it? What an intriguing question.

It didn't take long to realize that the answer was no. We can find charming physical surroundings and interesting weather in a lot of places, but it's people and a shared way of life that make a place special. I've written about that fact so many times here and yet I couldn't articulate it very well to my friend, which usually means you're dealing with a gut feeling that can't be marketed on a billboard or in a magazine article (not surprisingly, the Time article gave little attention to quality of life here).

Somehow I just knew that even if I could export all the things from my life here to sunny San Diego, it wouldn't be the same — and I'd likely lose that happiness and peace that everyone was now seeing in me.

But we should open the drawbridge when my friend and others like her arrive because she finally saved me from my struggle to explain by nodding and saying, "I get it."

And now I do, too.

Pamela Everett is a freelance writer and an assistant professor at Wayne State College, where she teaches criminal law and related legal/justice classes. She moved to Wayne from California, where she practiced law for 14 years.

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