This is part I in our “Rural America” Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here. When my family goes on road trips, we often measure our progress relative to population centers — sometimes pulling off the highway, briefly, to stop at a convenience store or a fast food joint along the way. Yet, sometimes, I find myself thinking about what life is like in the space between. My mother was born and raised in the mountains on the border of Washington and Idaho. We laugh at stories of her and her three sisters waking each other to venture out to the outhouse in the middle of the night,…