This story (ordinarily the type I’d ignore) really struck a chord with me:
I decided, four years ago, to leave London, selling the flat I owned in Dalston and moving to Somerset.
The life I’d been building in London evaporated and I felt broken. The country seemed to offer a gentle place where I could retreat, lick my wounds and start again. After all, the countryside is where I had always been happy. Or so I told myself.
Of course, the reality blew a ten-foot hole in that dream, because of course life in the country isn’t as idyllic as it’s often painted. Read the thing for the details.
Anyway, the reason why this silly woman’s article interested me is that I’m a little like her (minus the foolishness).
I’ve often thought about finding a small place out in the boonies — “small” in country terms, i.e. just large enough to where I could make a short .22 range where I could bang away for hours on end without disturbing the neighbors — but of course there are several factors which have always stopped me from doing just that.
The first is that I’m a city boy by inclination. I mean, most of my life has been spent in the ‘burbs, but the times when I’ve really enjoyed my life was when I lived in downtown Johannesburg and Chicago, and spent lengthy periods in places like London or Vienna. I liked having a dizzying choice of places to eat out and drink, the movie houses and auditoriums, the shops which sold pretty much anything I needed (outside the gun world, of course), and even art galleries: all within walking distance of my living room. For that, I was prepared to put up with the noise of the city, the proximity of neighbors and all the things which would drive other people away.
Likewise when I’ve traveled abroad, I’ve always preferred to stay in the great cities (London, Paris and so on) over the small countryside towns. Then again, it must be said that I really enjoyed living out in rural Hardy Country at Mr. Free Market’s country estate as well — probably the first time in my life that I’ve properly lived out in the sticks.
I have no illusions about living in the city, because I’ve been there and done that, on two continents. Also, having spent half a year out in the company of The Englishman and Mr. Free Market, I have no illusions there too — although it must also be said that the Brits do a good job of making their small towns very livable, as anyone who’s ever been to places like Marlborough or Devizes will attest.
So while I often ask myself the question: if you won the lottery, where would you spend most of your time? the answer is probably “close to or actually in a city” more than “out in a country retreat”.
If for some reason I did choose the country option, however, I know I’d make a better job of it than the stupid woman who wrote that article.
The first 50 years of my life were lived in suburbia and though there were benefits there was also much misery. From what?
Too many people. Too many assholes. Too much gov’t.
I’m now 70 and have spent the past 20 years living in heavily wooded ruralville on small acreage among neighbors I rarely see but are friendly with when we meet, and I have a 50 yd shooting range littered with brass.
I traded the assholes of suburbia for the amazement of wild animals and regret daily that we didn’t move here 20 or more years earlier.
Looking back, the restaurants, the stores, all the conveniences worked in tandem to keep me distracted, poor, in debt, and there were moments of glee there were more of misery.
We moved to the woods to find ourselves and discovered along the way that the illusion of society is vain, shallow, and mostly nonbeneficial. We are better people out here.
I split my youth between suburbia and rural. I came deal with either but much prefer a rural setting. I have lived in an urban environment too, not a fan.
My current digs are 10 acres with a 3k ft^2 Cape Cod that was a mess when we bought it. I took a deer with my bow on Sunday in wooded portion. That is what I want, although more acreage would be better.
Unfortunately, job change has us moving and will probably rent for a bit in the new location. Lord willing we will find another similar place eventually.
The part where she said she would often go days or even a week without seeing another person – sounds fucking perfect. Of course, being in the USA, I’d just buy a trailer and park it somewhere rather than buy a falling down cottage built some 500 years ago out of peat and sheep dung.
I grew up in suburbia with easy access into the city by trolley. It was nice to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there. After I got married we moved to Vermont because we thought we liked the rural life. We were near a ski resort so restaurants and the grocery store were on the pricey side. There was not a lot of work in the area. Now we’re in the suburbs but on the rural end of town and enjoy it much better.
There are a few restaurants in the area although my town is mostly crummy chinese food and pizza shops. Within a half hour drive I can find many more restaurants with a variety of cuisines. My street is generally very quiet. Sure we lose power a couple of times a year. The power either comes back quickly or it is out for several days. The gun club isn’t that far away. If I want to socialize there are opportunities out here. I found the right balance except for the state and local politics and taxes. I’d also like a non dive bar with a dart board.
I visited my cousin a few times when he lived in Philly. I guess it is kind of convenient to be able to walk to a bunch of cafes, restaurants and shops but it seems that the apartment they lived in was just like a place to sleep. If you wanted coffee, you went out. Want to watch a sporting event on tv, then you went to a bar etc.
We differ here. I’m a country boy at heart. I live in a growing urban area and………hate it more every year. I stay because of my job, that is all. There’s no free lunch as there’s tradeoffs living in the country too. But sign me up.
Listen to an old man here. If you have the desire to seek your fortunes elsewhere, do not hesitate. Go for it! You tell yourself you’re not ready. You say your fortunes will be better in a year or so. The kids are in school. You’re beginning to make headway in your job. You don’t want to leave your parents behind because they’re getting older. There are lots of reasons to wait just a little while. Things will get better and then you can make the jump.
So, exactly where do “good reasons” become lame excuses? If your dreams lay over the horizon, why are you still right where you’ve always been? Over the course of my years, I’ve traveled some. I’ve been halfway around the world in both directions, and I’ve seen some fine places where I might have been tempted to relocate to and begin again.
If you were to draw a circle with a 50-mile radius centered on where I was the on the day I turned seven years old, I have spent 95% of my life within that circle, because I always had an excuse (not a reason) to stay. Woulda, coulda, shoulda, kept me fixed in the desert when I dreamed of oceans, kept me cursing the heat when I wished for cool mountain breezes.
Youngsters, learn from my mistakes. Follow your dreams. A lifetime from now, you will look back and know that the scary choices were the right choices after all.
I live in the centre of a modest city – town, really – and I’m in clover. I can walk to everything. The only thing I lack is space. I’d love a big garden, but then I’d have to pay someone to take care of it – I can mow but I lack green fingers. I can walk to my club. I can walk to the Bridge Club. I can walk to the shops. I can walk to the cinema. Etc.
I found my Shangri La at the end of a mile long dirt road in southern Arizona, a few miles from the Mexican border. I’d gone to graduate school, courtesy of the US Navy, in the Southwest and loved it. Bought a small farm in New Mexico with the intentions of building a retirement home on it someday, but a misunderstanding with the local Indian tribe found me on the losing end of a lawsuit just for trying to build a house on it. Settled on a land exchange with the Nature Conservancy and wound up a few hundred miles west in Arizona. Built a small house on 70+ acres, no neighbors, just outside a small border town. I’d built it for my Late Wife, who I’d hope would survive her much-needed lung transplant and we’d settle down in this quiet little town for our dotage. She never got the lung transplant and never even got to see the house.
I eventually retired from the Navy after 38 years and as soon as practical, moved myself and my then 14 year old daughter to the Sky Islands of southern Arizona. She hated it, but I didn’t. Then life happened, I got remarried to the Last Wife and moved back inside the wire (Northern Virginia), which I continue to loathe.
I sold the house a couple of years ago after the Last Wife, who is 15 years younger than I, made it clear that under no circumstances would she move to the middle of nowhere when she retired, which she has no plans of ever doing. The open border had ruined it as a vacation rental, what with the odd homicidal drug dealing coyotes wandering willy nilly across the landscape, so I took a massive bath on it and let it go.
God, I miss it so. I’m 68 and stuck in a massive 8800 sq ft home I neither need nor want, in an area of the country I absolutely despise. The only bright spot is I’m with a lovely, smart woman who is a workaholic nympho. It’s all about balance, you see.
I was out in Arizona last summer and drove by the old place. I shouldn’t have. It hurt too much. I came back and promptly bought an 8-acre parcel on the the Virginia side of West Virginia border, just a little over an hour from where I live. No house, no well, no electricity, just a dirt road off a gravel road. If you didn’t know it was there, you wouldn’t. I parked a 22′ travel trailer under some poplar trees and put it up on blocks cuz it ain’t moving. Once or twice a month, I’ll drive up there with a 12-pack, some beans, potatoes and steaks, and just listen. It doesn’t look like southern Arizona, but it sounds like it. And that will do.
I’m solidly on the “city” side of this. I want to be able to walk to go get pizza, or sushi, or a drink. I like being within 20 minutes of several different medical facilities, where going to the grocery store–one with lots of options–isn’t a 3 hour task.
OTOH, if I wind up with lottery money I *will* have a “country estate” that is functionally self sufficient, and then pen a deal with some international hotel chain that I get the best suite in the hotel when I show up for a fixed monthly fee–whether that’s in Paris, or Wyoming.