They moved to a Buddhist retreat in rural America. Have they found happiness?

Nestled in Arkansas, the Buddhist center is remote and summers are sweltering. I spent a week shadowing practitioners to learn whether it changed them in the ways they had hoped

Ani Wangmo and I are being tailgated. We're in a white pickup truck, and the man behind us is driving a mid-size silver Pontiac. There's real risk: deer and armadillo are splattered all over the narrow, cliffside Ozark road. If we need to stop suddenly, there's nowhere for the Pontiac to swerve. The car will drive into us, the oncoming lane, or off the cliff.

We're on the six-hour grocery run that Wangmo makes twice a month for the practitioners who are in retreat at the Katog Rit'hrod Buddhist center in Parthenon, Arkansas. These practitioners cannot go into town: they're immersed in a three-year, off-grid retreat to intensively practice and study Nyingma Tibetan Buddhism.