Something Happening Here: Head for the Hills, Mountains, and Other Remote Areas!

Something Happening Here image of mountain

Preparing to Move into a Rural or Remote Area? Or Just Thinking About It?

There are many reasons why moving to a rural, remote area is a great idea. Here are a few things you need to consider:

Number One, know for sure that if you plan on leaving your job because of "the rat race" or because you have made up your mind that being stifled in an office environment is not what you bargained for, and move into a completely rural or remote area, that you had better be prepared for a sharp drop in income. Unless you have roughly half in savings or other easily liquified investment stored up, that is, half of your yearly income now, you might not make it your first two years. That is because income from working in rural and remote areas is probably a quarter of what you are making now. You simply CANNOT count on selling your house (which, probably, you still owe a mortgage on. I just hope it isn't "neg am"!) to shore up the difference. But, cheer up, because you will find very few places to spend your money, except for food stores, gas stations, lumber yards/hardware stores, local craft shops, or feed stores! Be prepared to travel at least two hours to get to the nearest Wal-Mart or other. If you only have to travel an hour, you may not be rural enough!

Number Two, if you have kids, prepare to homeschool or "unschool" them, because otherwise you will be spending probably two hours a day either picking them up from public school or dropping them off. DO NOT ASSUME your "local" school system provides for transportation! Most rural/remote public school systems are too poor to provide bus service, because most rural systems do not receive enough Federal funding in order to have the money to do this...in fact, some rural systems DO NOT RECEIVE Federal funding and are totally funded by school taxes because they don't want to have to adhere to Federal guidelines (which, if you think about it, makes the school system a superior one!). And, speaking of "if you have kids," prepare for lots of griping and complaining from them because likelihood is you will be moving into an area which has very, very few children their age. Finally, if you don't have kids now but want to have them in the future, consider having more than one...because he or she will be VERY LONELY if you don't, even if the child does attend public school! Weekends will drive them nuts! Unless you are prepared.

Number Three, prepare for what could be your "worst nightmares" if all you have ever known is city life: calloused hands, filthy fingernails, the smell of cattle/horse/dog/cat/goat droppings, the smell of skunks...especially if your dog likes to chase them! And other wildlife, including but not limited to: javelinas and other wild hogs chewing up your garden, burros and donkeys braying at all hours and leaving nice little "packages" for you to avoid walking into, birds chirping and singing at all hours, too, and I mean all sorts of birds, not just the occasional sparrow or starling if you are lucky enough to have a tree or two where you are now, cicadas and crickets "ree-ing" at two in the morning, scorpions and centipedes and brown recluse spiders and black widow spiders getting under your bed covers and in other places you wouldn't normally look for instant pain and suffering...your shoes, for instace...foxes and wolves and racoons and bobcats and moose and marmots and gophers and groundhogs and prairie dogs and elk and all sorts of deer...and, OH YEAH! Mountain lions and bears! Oh, my!

Number Four, can you handle the fact that it will take HOURS for the plumber or electrician or septic tank cleaner person or internet service provider or telephone repair person or tow truck or TV repair person or washing machine repair person or construction job laborers or almost any "convenient" service of any kind to come to your house, not minutes? Are you prepared to perhaps spend from 30 minutes to an hour JUST TO PICK UP YOUR MAIL? Are you prepared for the possibility that someone you want to do maintenance will refuse to come to your house because your rural or remote roads are usually in bad shape...especially if you live in the mountains or forest area? Are you prepared to GO BACK TO DIALUP or, if you are lucky and if you can afford it, go with satellite internet, which costs three times what your DSL cost, for slower speeds? For that matter, are you prepared for the possibility that you may have to LIVE OFF THE GRID for weeks at a time due to severe weather, floods, outages, or because you can't afford to pay the bills because living in a rural area might cause your income to be VERY LOW? Do you realize that many businesses in rural areas cannot afford to pay more than the minimum wage? In some areas, you are competeing job-wise against "illegal aliens" who wouldn't mind working for $5 an hour or less! In fact, if you are not prepared to live off $20,000 or less for a family of four a year for your first two years, then you are not prepared to live in a rural or remote area! I am not trying to scare you, but THESE ARE THE WAY THINGS ARE "OUT HERE!"

Number Five, are you prepared to grow a garden big enough to feed your family at least for six months during growing season (and a few months after...do you know how to "can" food?) AS WELL AS fence it high enough so the deer can't jump the fence and secure enough at the bottom so rabbits, wild hogs/javelinas, racoons and what not can't get in...and are you prepared for all the grasshoppers who will try to eat up your veggies WITHOUT pesticides (I am assuming you want to go organic, right?)...And are you prepared for livestock, the fencing and barn raising and sheer work it will take to have them? Not to mention the predators that will love you if you do have them? If you do have to buy food at the store, are you prepared to do that as well as ALL your errands one day a week? It isn't like you will be able to drop into your local supermarket whenever you please, because at the very least you will put lots of wear and tear on your vehicle...and then there's the price of gas, which as you know is much higher in rural areas. Also, do you know how to sew, so that when your jeans get holes in the knees you simply put a patch on it instead of driving two hours or more to Wal-Mart or pay double for new ones at a nearby clothier?

And, before I forget, are you ready to:

either get satellite TV or give it up? Can you afford it?

put up with neighbors who are either very nosey or are very likely to want to shoot you if you bother them?

have some neighbors who are most likely Republican?

have some neighbors who most likely still support the War in Iraq and who think nuking Iran might be a good idea?

learn how to change your oil, change your brake pads, change your transmission fluid/brake fluid/power steering fluid/windshield wipers and rotate your tires, not to mention change a tire in case of a flat EVEN IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE A WOMAN? Can you do it WHEN PREGNANT like I had to?

And speaking of being pregnant, are you prepared to have your child AT HOME like I did?

learn basic fist aid, such as taking care of snake bites, scorpion stings, bee stings, spider bites, tripping over a rock, overturning an ATV, falling off your porch and breaking a limb, poison ivy/oak, falling off a horse, dehydration, and other interesting problems you won't find in a city or suburb?

have neighbors with "trashy looking trailers" or "dumpy looking wooden cabins" or other conditions that one would never find in a nicely ordered suburb?

pay through the nose for dumping your garbage at an "approved" dump site, thanks to all those "concerned environmentalists" out there?

change your tires at least once a year because of bad road conditions, spending roughly $500 annually for tires?

teach yourself how to maintain your house without a local specialist nearby?

deal with having to sign "CC & R's," that is, covenants and restrictions that you MUST live by in order to keep you from losing your land? In fact, it is likely that you will no longer find land that doesn't have some sort of "encumbrance" like CC&R's attached to it, and, if you do, make sure the land isn't owned by the Feds!

fight for your land against those who would use "eminent domain" against it, such as "the Sierra Club" and "the Nature Conservancy", those well-healed rich people's "environmental" groups that want your land so they can sell it off to the government or some rich Hollywood celebrity. If you are buying land out west, be prepared to deal with these critters!

chop your own wood in the fall, winter, and maybe even spring?

walk half a mile for kindling in the fall, winter, and maybe even spring?

become part of your local volunteer fire department?

deal with often short-sighted, power-hungry individuals in your community who, having most likely come from a place similar to where you came from, are trying to convert your rural or remote community into a city or suburb?

deal with an individual who likes to shoot his guns at all hours, using the pretext of "I'm shooting skunks"?

stop being so darned lazy, because lazy people can't live this way?

defend your new-found freedom

put up with all this and more?

Then, you may be a candidate to live in a rural or remote area!

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