Part 1 establishes a landscape defined by storytelling and hidden depths, immediately adding metafictional depth to their country retreat. Through a curated collection of five epigraphs—an explorer’s descent into a “dazzling, vanished world” (3), a newspaper clipping of local legends, a Russian folktale of magical transformation, and a scholar’s meditation on the unseen interior of a mountain—the text frames rural Vermont as a series of overlapping narratives. These initial fragments introduce the central motifs of caves and the underworld, the Jeremiah Wylkes Society, and the “hollow Earth” theory, suggesting that the “real” country is a subterranean space of mystery and myth. This structural choice frames the family’s move as an entry into a world where the line between folklore and reality blurs. The initial conflict isn’t between urban and rural but between the visible, pastoral surface and the rich, potentially dangerous, world of stories that lies beneath, a tension that informs The Romanticization of Rural Life that the family brings with them from California.

The contrast between Kate’s and Miles’s professional lives establishes a central tension around the theme of Searching for Meaning in the Modern World. Kate returns from her first Milton seminar energized and fulfilled, her intellectual rigor rewarded by engaged students and a clear sense of purpose. Her academic success is concrete and recognized by her colleagues, as when her department chair, Eleanor, tells Miles that the college wishes it could “steal her.” Miles, meanwhile, feels his own lack of direction acutely. During a solitary hike, he reflects on his 14-year dissertation, which has drifted aimlessly through literary history, and feels like a “disappointment” to his wife. While Kate finds meaning through disciplined engagement with the literary canon, Miles seeks it through a more diffuse and passive absorption of stories and folklore. His professional stagnation and relegation to the role of primary caregiver position him as an appendage to Kate’s career, amplifying his search for a personal narrative and purpose in their new rural setting.

Their differing life paths are made more thematically important through the motif of literary allusions. Miles routinely alludes to the writers that he and his wife study, such as John Milton, and often conveys his internal dialogue through stylistic, sometimes poetic prose. When describing their first week in Vermont, he quotes, “O verdurous wall of Paradise! O fruits of golden hue!” from Paradise Lost (46), a tone he mimics when thinking, “And what woods!” and “The quiet!!!” on a hike (49-50). His emulation of these writers emphasizes how their lives are shaped, and in some ways sheltered, by these traditional literary themes and frameworks. However, the quoting primarily of authors whom his wife studies or teaches—as well as the emulation, sometimes exaggerated through the extra punctuation—demonstrates how Kate’s pursuits take center stage in their relationship, filtering their experiences and expectations largely through her actions and needs rather than his. 

Their differing approaches to their academic pursuits also mirror the styles of literature they study, as the Western canon—like Milton and William Blake—often engages in a more heroic narrative with a clear protagonist, an external antagonist, and a structured conclusion. In contrast, Russian literature concerns itself largely with self-consciousness and philosophical exploration, with story acting as a vehicle for these more internal conflicts. A trope of Russian novels is also their length, such as works by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, matching Miles’s extended work on his dissertation. These elements combine to convey his deep uncertainty and interiority, as well as an aimlessness that juxtaposes his organized wife and her clearly defined professional goals. Combined with his belief that her remission from MS has left him no longer “necessary,” his shame over his life choices and critical self-perception create a simmering tension that undercuts his earnest admiration for Kate and prepares for later conflict.

The introduction of local characters and media satirizes both the eccentricities of rural life and the naive perceptions of urban outsiders. The recurring motif of the radio show titled The Miscellaneous Minute presents a version of the community that’s both mundane and bizarre, where callers discuss common gardening problems alongside finding a “Bigfoot” skull in a chimney. This is mirrored in the figure of Hugh, the “Autumn Ramble” guide, a self-proclaimed expert who’s corrected on basic nature facts by a child yet confidently espouses hollow-Earth theories. The novel uses these figures to gently mock the simplistic fantasies associated with The Romanticization of Rural Life. The “country people” are not stoic, salt-of-the-earth farmers but conspiracy theorists and gossips, their beliefs a strange amalgam of practical knowledge, local legend, and misinformation. The satire is double edged, as Miles and the other urban hikers are shown to be credulous consumers of these narratives, whether it’s gossip about Beyoncé or the fantastical legend of Jeremiah Wylkes.

Miles’s role as the family storyteller reveals the dual nature of narrative as both a source of connection and a potential danger. He uses stories to entertain his children on the cross-country drive and later creates a new series about the dog Whiskey, which demonstrates his investment in Finding Purpose and Community Through Storytelling. However, Kate’s concern over these new tales reveals Wesley’s extreme suggestibility and the real-world consequences of his father’s fiction. His adoption of false beliefs mimics the townspeople’s eager consumption of myths and fantastical narratives, foreshadowing a later engagement in the novel with the facts and fiction of these stories. This is further hinted through their dog, Giuseppe, recurringly digging in dirt in a mysterious location, looking “as if he had burrowed deep underground” (33). His actions provide a physical, tangible link to the Prologue’s abstract ideas about subterranean worlds and the unseen “cathedral within” a mountain.