After running the Medusa General Store where they perused its trinkets and treats as children, April Caprio and her husband, Jason, still have questions.

They operated the store, in the southwestern Albany County hamlet of Medusa, while hosting talks about agricultural infrastructure, debates about global warming, and, through social media and a blog, arguing for the benefit of spending locally.

Having closed the store in December, the family has set out on the road, heading south through Pennsylvania, in a 1976 RV fitted with bunk beds for the children — they have six.

The Caprios are part of what’s known as the global Transition movement, which, like their endeavors, looks for ways small, local communities can face large, global issues.

Following is a condensed interview The Enterprise had with April Caprio, who has a Ph.D. in public policy, just before the family embarked on its adventure.

What are you doing with your trip?

We had been doing some soul searching…We’re a home-schooling family, anxious to find neat, exploratory things to do with our kids. And our experience in Medusa has led us to be very concerned about the degree of resiliency that our communities have. We’re interested in figuring out if there are other communities out there who have struggled with the questions of rural resiliency, some of the big issues, like climate change and peak oil, and these dramatic examples of income inequality in our country.

What were you trying to do with the general store?

I think our hope has always been it would regain its stature as a cornerstone of the community, and I think we did that.

The last five years we are incredibly proud of and we wouldn’t ever regret or take back anything. It’s also incredibly hard and challenging service to your community, and I think that took a toll on us after a while. We’re hopeful that there’s maybe a model out there that we can find that will be sustainable. It’s always possible to find either someone to lease the store, or possibly reopen it in a way that it doesn’t infiltrate our lives.

Do you have any expectations about what you’re going to find on the road?

If there aren’t people who are further down the line with grappling with the same issues that we have, I’m a huge believer in being able to share stories.

We’ve talked about this a lot within our community, that, if you can change the narrative, you can really change your future. We have these bizarre collective accounts of what the Hilltowns are and who we are as a people, and perhaps we just don’t have an opportunity to revisit those stories enough and tell them maybe in a different way or allow people to daydream bigger things.

What’s the story you would tell people?

The Hilltowns story is one that that I think is replicated throughout the country. We’ve become a bedroom community of a large metropolitan area. When we struggle to find jobs, there aren’t a whole lot of them — I’ve spoken with a lot of government officials, for example, about the declining and sparse Hilltown population.

I’m hoping that will change, maybe Transition will encourage more local-level economic development. Maybe it will embrace green development sustainability.

What are some of the connections between the global climate and the local economy?

I think the impacts of peak oil and climate change suggest that our economy is at this point where small interruptions can lead to very disastrous consequences. So we can either be prepared for some of the unpredictable nature of climate change and the fact that we’re not always going to have former dinosaurs to suck up out of the ground to use for energy, or we choose not to be prepared.

I think the Hilltowns are well placed, that we still have lots of old families in the region who still do things like can. We know what survival means. That’s bare minimum, though. Wouldn’t it be better, if we know we’re facing huge changes to come, that we prepare in a way that will build thriving, prosperous communities instead of ones that are able to survive?

Could you describe the state of Medusa?

I think a whole bunch of people who live in our village now are commuters somewhere else.

Similar to what you’ll find in other hamlets, it tends to be a very eclectic mix of folks who are middle to upper income. And then those folks who have always been fairly blue-collar families, have always done well patching together lots of different income from different areas. That’s not so anymore. There’s significantly less to go around.

When all of our electric bills doubled last spring, I had folks coming to our store in tears saying, “April, I have no idea what we’re going to do; we cannot absorb bills like this all of a sudden, month after month after month.”

Perhaps Albany is sharing fewer jobs with we in the rural hinterlands these days. We have lots more homes being stuck in the middle of hay fields that aren’t necessarily part of our community. From a social perspective, from an economic perspective, they’re not farming anymore. So, it’s akin to a lot of the difficulties first faced by suburban areas.

I wonder if you have ideas or advice for people who live in rural areas, in daily life?

No. My biggest issue all along was, if you want to do urban sustainability projects, there are lists and lists of amazing and creative, innovative things to do. When it comes to what to do if you’re in a rural area, I think there are very few models to look to. How sad is that?

I’ve asked this very question: Are we relevant? Should we continue to struggle in places like the Hilltowns, to be something more than bedroom communities?

I assumed you were starting with the idea that Medusa and places like it are relevant.

I think you have to keep revisiting the question. This is really a decades-old question at this point. And I don’t think that’s a terrible thing. You can love a place without saying it’s never going to change.

What do you hope for your family?

We are thrilled to be unschooling. We love being with our kids. We had three additional children just in our tenure at the general store. Unschooling is very simply a way of nourishing your kids’ interests, and letting them follow those, providing this rich very nurturing environment so they can figure it out along the way. I think in general travel is good for kids.

Living in Medusa is awesome as it is and as many people we considered our extended family for so long, it’s also insular to some degree. You’re in Medusa. We’re going to stay in the U.S. But I think the South is very different than upstate New York.

Traveling is supposed to be good for the soul, right? So we’re going to see if, in addition to being good for our soul, it’s good for the soul of the Hilltowns.

****

The Caprios plan to post about their travels on a Facebook page titled “Determined to thrive: A pilgrimage to find America,” and at ruralresiliency.blogspot.com.

This is an edited and condensed version of the interview.