Hell Hollow Road. Hazard Pond. Mount Misery. With names like these, what’s not to love about a little place called Voluntown?

When I first moved here from the city three years ago, I thought I had slipped back in time to Sleepy Hollow. Surely there would be headless horsemen at every turn once the sun dipped below the branches of the caterpillar-blighted, moonlit oaks in my backyard. When my wife and I walked our pups down the lane for the first time — in broad daylight — we thought grizzlies and rabid moose would jump out of the woods and snatch them up for a snack.

Moving from the rush of the Concrete Jungle to be being surrounded by a bazillion acres of state forest has been an eye-opener. Contrary to the town’s odd naming conventions, though, what I’ve found so far is that the town and its people are quite the opposite of the names that dot the map in its 40 square miles. They’ve been welcoming, open, and friendly.

I come from the North Shore of Boston originally, where all the sarcasm and cynicism comes from, so I was actually suspect of my neighbors when we moved here – because they waved at us. They waved hello and said things like, “Nice to meet you.”

One fella and his girlfriend even brought us over a six-pack sampler arranged in a galvanized bucket filled with freshly fallen snow. Clearly they couldn’t be trusted.

I kept waiting for the punch line. As time rolled along, however, I started to get to know these people and realized that the joke was on me.

We learned each other’s names, even their kids’ names, and started hanging out together.

My last house was in Cranston, R.I., a stone’s throw from Providence. We lived there for nine years and hardly knew anyone’s names – and it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Things are much different down here. For example, the first neighbor I ever saw on my street was a horse. I couldn’t see the person waking the horse on the other side, as they weren’t riding it, so I thought, yikes, we are really in the woods.

So I’m experiencing a bit of culture shock, but it’s shocking in all the right directions. I had no idea that a mere 45 minutes from my old house, I’d find myself in a state forest so big I have still yet to cover all its trails. I’ve hit most of the drivable ones in my aging Xterra, looking for potential stage rally roads, but I know there’s a vast wildness that I have yet to experience.

One area that I have become fairly familiar with is Green Falls. Before the world blew up, my wife and I raced in the Rough Patch Off-Road Triathlon in 2019. Our training sessions on the trails took us to places we might not have ventured to, and learned new tricks like how to kayak on the pond for the paddle leg of the tri (my wife braved the swim), how to ford a rushing stream in heavy spring snowmelt, and bike up “the slabs” on the other side of the pond.

That race was 14 miles long, and I never saw the same view twice, and it all happened about five minutes from my house. I once had to travel to the White Mountains in New Hampshire to get a similar experience.

So, in a place where the names of things reflect the opposite of its people, I have started to settle in, get comfortable, and relax a bit. Voluntown is a we bit different from the city, but I feel like I’ve gotten to exhale since I’ve been here.

And when I inhale its fresh pine, not bus fumes, it really is an amazing place.

Hmmm, now that the weekend is here, do I want to skip stones on Dark Hollow Brook, or take an afternoon stroll up Coal Pit Hill?

Kris Gove lives in Voluntown.