As someone who lives out in those boonies in the middle of a forest, (groceries are a mere 100 mile round trip. I did that yesterday), the internet has had a funny journey here. We pretty much went from dialup to fiber, sometimes it’s good to be last. We’ve had fiber now for 6 or 7 years. While it’s only 2.4G, still fast enough for most people. But weather can make internet and electricity somewhat spotty as winds can blow trees over and the lights go out.
But we still very much behind on cell service. Due to the trees and and hills, towers can be far and few between. Many places have poor to no service. I can sometimes get a text message out in my yard, but making a phone call isn’t happening. And most places I forage or hunt in have no service at all. If I have a heart attack, ain’t no one dialing 911 for me unless they use the land line in the house. Weirdly enough there is one spot one the lake I live on that I can get 5G. It seems to be about a 200 yard circle.
What all of these swaive, 'fisticated, and urbane Ubanites will miss is the “quality of life” they are used to. “Fun things” like movies, concerts, plays, shopping, fine dining, are either miles and miles away or non-existent. Best we can do for you is Brodini being in town for a one Saturday afternoon comedy magic show in the summer. And for shopping, you can always use Amazon and wait a week or two for the shipping.
But I get to sit here this morning, breathing in the smoke from the Canadian forest fires, (we are not quite in the promised orange yet today), and drink my tea over looking a quiet lake and listen to the loon out in front of my house. I think it takes a special mind set to live like this. And most people don’t have it because they don’t know anything different.
Slower, more intentional, less frills, less impulsive, different kinds of worries, different kinds of joys.
I myself am this… really weird sort of person that more or less grew up quite close to that, but alsi loved tech from a young age, went to uni, went to work as a corpo…
And I saw that all this ‘high falutin’ fast life was fun, very engaging, very rewarding in novel ways… but also, just… not ultimately sustainable, not the way we do it in most of the US… too much debt, too much consumerism, too much greed.
“Too many men, too many people, causing too many problems… not much love to go around.”
So, now that … well basically the economy is totally collapsing… well I at least am adaptable, and know how to live lean, do the long term planning I can afford to.
I forget which Bond movie it was, but Desmond Llewelyn’s last line as Q:
It’s been 50 years or so since I read Thoreau. And honestly, it was a bit of a slog for a teen. Some of what I read I didn’t understand in the moment of my age. But I vividly remember being disappointed in the end that he packed up and went back to town and all things he thought he didn’t want. Why go back? But his words and view of the world did resonate with me and I still think about ol’ Dave now and then.
So come on over this afternoon. I need to pull the grey water pump out of my septic tank to replace the burnt out motor. At least it’s summer and not -10F. And tomorrow we can pull the left rear wheel off the big tractor and drop the fuel tank so I can replace the sender unit for the fuel gage. At least I don’t have fluid in the rear tires and the tank ain’t full of diesel.
These are the types of things most people from the big cities who think about the “idyllic” life tend to not understand are a part and parcel of this life style. If you think you would be fine with those kinds of days, then come out! This is the life for you. And honestly, we also need you.
I’d honestly love to join you, unfortunately, at the moment, I am crippled, doing PT everyday.
It is grueling but it is working… but yeah, at the moment, I couldn’t hack it, I’d just be a drain.
Another 3 or 6 months?
Maybe re-evaluate then.
Like I said, I am familiar with that kind of lifestyle, and… it seems much more appealing, and also rewarding.
…
I am… more or less doing the hermit thing, just in a shitty, but very cheap apartment, spending basically nothing, taking a sabbatical, just slowly building up savings and paying off debt…
Credit Karma tells me I have a better than average credit score for … my age group… which is basically horrifying, as I literally spent a year homeless following bring fucked up in an assault, got my identity and all ids and cards stolen, lost my job…
But somehow, I, really only not literally homeless for about the last 9 months…
Somehow I am doing financially better than average?
Either that’s CK lying, or the US is completely fucked, outside of billionaires.
That’s what I mean when I say… this whole way America does urban society just largely does not work, the economy is currently imploding into Great Depression 2.0, but this time, instead of Hoovervilles, we’re gonns have concentration camps for the homeless.
I just barely escaped the cutoff point on being in that statistic, but, if SSDI gets pared down… well then no actually, I didn’t.
Fun stuff to live in ‘interesting’ times.
…
EDIT: Well shit.
You are apparently in Minnesota, apologies for ‘stalking’ / browsing your entirely public comment history.
My plan for uh, not dying in the next decade actually has been to get to Minnesota as soon as my legs and back can actually handle it…
Lots of fresh water, not a deep red state, seems to be the … least likely to get completely fucked by the coming widespresd increase of climate disasters, also has a pretty reasonable CoL, as well as a reasonably stable and varied economic mix, half the country is doing a housing market nose dive, not MN, seems like it avoided a good deal of speculation.
I guess if you’ve got any general… relocation tips, some fairly quiet town or neighborhood for me to land in MN, maybe end of this year, maybe next year, I’d appreciate it.
Best I can say is if medical care is an important need for you, then you will need to look at the Minneapolis/St Paul metro area. Rural areas lack much of the health care you might need. As a retired medic that worked in rural areas, I’m not lying when I say if I were to have a heart attack at home, I’m probably very dead before help can arrive.
While Minnesota shows as a mostly blue state, that is because we have one large metropolitan area that dominates the rest of the state. And outside of that metro region, the rural 80% of the state skews from purple to red.
Otherwise, plan on long cold winters that can grind some people mentally and what to us is warm and very humid summers. We are an outdoors people that enjoy the 3 months of summer and spend as much of our time outdoors as possible. Preferably on a lake in a boat, we own a LOT of boats. Even in winter we find snowmobiling, skiing, and ice fishing as popular hobbies. We are all about the outdoors for sure.
As far as the denizens of the state go, we are Minnesota Nicetm to everyone, but as individuals we are mostly stoic and often wary of outsiders. And the farther you get from the cites, the more that becomes apparent. So it can be difficult to build friendships. You can live in a town for 20 years years and still be considered the “new people”. Or you can be accepted and welcomed immediately. YMMV for sure.
If you decide to move here, I wish you luck. As a whole, we are a good and helpful place to live. But there can be bumps on the road of life here also.
Best I can say is if medical care is an important need for you, then you will need to look at the Minneapolis/St Paul metro area. Rural areas lack much of the health care you might need. As a retired medic that worked in rural areas, I’m not lying when I say if I were to have a heart attack at home, I’m probably very dead before help can arrive.
Makes sense, I believe you.
My idea is to make the move after I am more mobile, more healed.
At the moment, I am doing PT at home, after getting some inital PT sessions and them giving me printed out worksheets.
No real point in paying for more visits when I just do exactly the same thing at the PT center, as what I do at home.
While Minnesota shows as a mostly blue state, that is because we have one large metropolitan area that dominates the rest of the state. And outside of that metro region, the rural 80% of the state skews from purple to red.
Yep, I’ve seen the county level voting maps, who runs city governments of Minneapolis, St Paul, Rochester, Winona, Duluth, St Cloud, Brainerd, Bemidji… and I’m originally from the Seattle area, pretty much exact same region political pattern.
Otherwise, plan on long cold winters that can grind some people mentally and what to us is warm and very humid summers. We are an outdoors people that enjoy the 3 months of summer and spend as much of our time outdoors as possible. Preferably on a lake in a boat, we own a LOT of boats. Even in winter we find snowmobiling, skiing, and ice fishing as popular hobbies. We are all about the outdoors for sure.
All sounds amazing to me, again, grew up in the PNW, lots and lotsa outdoorsy culture as well, particularly boating, hiking, hunting.
Though, our winters are nowhere near as harsh generally, but I know what a lot of actual snow is like, the Cascade foothills and towns often get around as much snow as what ya’ll just get generally, and I’ve spent a few winters in 3 to 6 feet of snow up there, know how to dress and drive in snow.
As far as the denizens of the state go, we are Minnesota Nicetm to everyone, but as individuals we are mostly stoic and often wary of outsiders. And the farther you get from the cites, the more that becomes apparent. So it can be difficult to build friendships. You can live in a town for 20 years years and still be considered the “new people”. Or you can be accepted and welcomed immediately. YMMV for sure.
And we have the ‘Seattle Freeze’ or ‘Seattle Chill’ over in western WA, basically the same thing.
Whole lotta Fins and Swedes and Norweigans seem to be the reason for that, were the first large groups of white people that settled in both MN and western WA, set the sort of cultural norms that largely still persist…
… and I already am that same way too, hahah.
…
Not to be too blunt, but geographically, Minnesota basically seems like western WA, but flat, with harsher winters, and a lack of salt water giving that lovely smell… that also corrodes everything metal more quickly.
Plus tornadoes.
Less volcanoes though, less earthquakes.
Roughly same amount of forest fire and smoke either in the area or coming down from Canada.
…
If you decide to move here, I wish you luck. As a whole, we are a good and helpful place to live. But there can be bumps on the road of life here also.
I appreciate it, and your rundown here.
Lets just say in terms of moving, all I’d really have to do is … find an apartment to move into, pack all my shit into a rental uhaul, and drive something like 3-6 hours east on I 90 / north on other highways.
I just have to get to the point where I can physically manage the packing all my shit into a uhaul part.
Well, and/or figure out just some kind of rental situation that’ll actually allow me to do a cross state lines, fairly long haul move, that doesn’t wipe me out financially.
As someone who lives out in those boonies in the middle of a forest, (groceries are a mere 100 mile round trip. I did that yesterday), the internet has had a funny journey here. We pretty much went from dialup to fiber, sometimes it’s good to be last. We’ve had fiber now for 6 or 7 years. While it’s only 2.4G, still fast enough for most people. But weather can make internet and electricity somewhat spotty as winds can blow trees over and the lights go out.
But we still very much behind on cell service. Due to the trees and and hills, towers can be far and few between. Many places have poor to no service. I can sometimes get a text message out in my yard, but making a phone call isn’t happening. And most places I forage or hunt in have no service at all. If I have a heart attack, ain’t no one dialing 911 for me unless they use the land line in the house. Weirdly enough there is one spot one the lake I live on that I can get 5G. It seems to be about a 200 yard circle.
What all of these swaive, 'fisticated, and urbane Ubanites will miss is the “quality of life” they are used to. “Fun things” like movies, concerts, plays, shopping, fine dining, are either miles and miles away or non-existent. Best we can do for you is Brodini being in town for a one Saturday afternoon comedy magic show in the summer. And for shopping, you can always use Amazon and wait a week or two for the shipping.
But I get to sit here this morning, breathing in the smoke from the Canadian forest fires, (we are not quite in the promised orange yet today), and drink my tea over looking a quiet lake and listen to the loon out in front of my house. I think it takes a special mind set to live like this. And most people don’t have it because they don’t know anything different.
Thoreau comes to mind.
Yep… its a different way of life.
Slower, more intentional, less frills, less impulsive, different kinds of worries, different kinds of joys.
I myself am this… really weird sort of person that more or less grew up quite close to that, but alsi loved tech from a young age, went to uni, went to work as a corpo…
And I saw that all this ‘high falutin’ fast life was fun, very engaging, very rewarding in novel ways… but also, just… not ultimately sustainable, not the way we do it in most of the US… too much debt, too much consumerism, too much greed.
“Too many men, too many people, causing too many problems… not much love to go around.”
So, now that … well basically the economy is totally collapsing… well I at least am adaptable, and know how to live lean, do the long term planning I can afford to.
I forget which Bond movie it was, but Desmond Llewelyn’s last line as Q:
Always have an escape plan.
It’s been 50 years or so since I read Thoreau. And honestly, it was a bit of a slog for a teen. Some of what I read I didn’t understand in the moment of my age. But I vividly remember being disappointed in the end that he packed up and went back to town and all things he thought he didn’t want. Why go back? But his words and view of the world did resonate with me and I still think about ol’ Dave now and then.
So come on over this afternoon. I need to pull the grey water pump out of my septic tank to replace the burnt out motor. At least it’s summer and not -10F. And tomorrow we can pull the left rear wheel off the big tractor and drop the fuel tank so I can replace the sender unit for the fuel gage. At least I don’t have fluid in the rear tires and the tank ain’t full of diesel.
These are the types of things most people from the big cities who think about the “idyllic” life tend to not understand are a part and parcel of this life style. If you think you would be fine with those kinds of days, then come out! This is the life for you. And honestly, we also need you.
I’d honestly love to join you, unfortunately, at the moment, I am crippled, doing PT everyday.
It is grueling but it is working… but yeah, at the moment, I couldn’t hack it, I’d just be a drain.
Another 3 or 6 months?
Maybe re-evaluate then.
Like I said, I am familiar with that kind of lifestyle, and… it seems much more appealing, and also rewarding.
…
I am… more or less doing the hermit thing, just in a shitty, but very cheap apartment, spending basically nothing, taking a sabbatical, just slowly building up savings and paying off debt…
Credit Karma tells me I have a better than average credit score for … my age group… which is basically horrifying, as I literally spent a year homeless following bring fucked up in an assault, got my identity and all ids and cards stolen, lost my job…
But somehow, I, really only not literally homeless for about the last 9 months…
Somehow I am doing financially better than average?
Either that’s CK lying, or the US is completely fucked, outside of billionaires.
That’s what I mean when I say… this whole way America does urban society just largely does not work, the economy is currently imploding into Great Depression 2.0, but this time, instead of Hoovervilles, we’re gonns have concentration camps for the homeless.
I just barely escaped the cutoff point on being in that statistic, but, if SSDI gets pared down… well then no actually, I didn’t.
Fun stuff to live in ‘interesting’ times.
…
EDIT: Well shit.
You are apparently in Minnesota, apologies for ‘stalking’ / browsing your entirely public comment history.
My plan for uh, not dying in the next decade actually has been to get to Minnesota as soon as my legs and back can actually handle it…
Lots of fresh water, not a deep red state, seems to be the … least likely to get completely fucked by the coming widespresd increase of climate disasters, also has a pretty reasonable CoL, as well as a reasonably stable and varied economic mix, half the country is doing a housing market nose dive, not MN, seems like it avoided a good deal of speculation.
I guess if you’ve got any general… relocation tips, some fairly quiet town or neighborhood for me to land in MN, maybe end of this year, maybe next year, I’d appreciate it.
Best I can say is if medical care is an important need for you, then you will need to look at the Minneapolis/St Paul metro area. Rural areas lack much of the health care you might need. As a retired medic that worked in rural areas, I’m not lying when I say if I were to have a heart attack at home, I’m probably very dead before help can arrive.
While Minnesota shows as a mostly blue state, that is because we have one large metropolitan area that dominates the rest of the state. And outside of that metro region, the rural 80% of the state skews from purple to red.
Otherwise, plan on long cold winters that can grind some people mentally and what to us is warm and very humid summers. We are an outdoors people that enjoy the 3 months of summer and spend as much of our time outdoors as possible. Preferably on a lake in a boat, we own a LOT of boats. Even in winter we find snowmobiling, skiing, and ice fishing as popular hobbies. We are all about the outdoors for sure.
As far as the denizens of the state go, we are Minnesota Nicetm to everyone, but as individuals we are mostly stoic and often wary of outsiders. And the farther you get from the cites, the more that becomes apparent. So it can be difficult to build friendships. You can live in a town for 20 years years and still be considered the “new people”. Or you can be accepted and welcomed immediately. YMMV for sure.
If you decide to move here, I wish you luck. As a whole, we are a good and helpful place to live. But there can be bumps on the road of life here also.
Makes sense, I believe you.
My idea is to make the move after I am more mobile, more healed.
At the moment, I am doing PT at home, after getting some inital PT sessions and them giving me printed out worksheets.
No real point in paying for more visits when I just do exactly the same thing at the PT center, as what I do at home.
Yep, I’ve seen the county level voting maps, who runs city governments of Minneapolis, St Paul, Rochester, Winona, Duluth, St Cloud, Brainerd, Bemidji… and I’m originally from the Seattle area, pretty much exact same region political pattern.
All sounds amazing to me, again, grew up in the PNW, lots and lotsa outdoorsy culture as well, particularly boating, hiking, hunting.
Though, our winters are nowhere near as harsh generally, but I know what a lot of actual snow is like, the Cascade foothills and towns often get around as much snow as what ya’ll just get generally, and I’ve spent a few winters in 3 to 6 feet of snow up there, know how to dress and drive in snow.
And we have the ‘Seattle Freeze’ or ‘Seattle Chill’ over in western WA, basically the same thing.
Whole lotta Fins and Swedes and Norweigans seem to be the reason for that, were the first large groups of white people that settled in both MN and western WA, set the sort of cultural norms that largely still persist…
… and I already am that same way too, hahah.
…
Not to be too blunt, but geographically, Minnesota basically seems like western WA, but flat, with harsher winters, and a lack of salt water giving that lovely smell… that also corrodes everything metal more quickly.
Plus tornadoes.
Less volcanoes though, less earthquakes.
Roughly same amount of forest fire and smoke either in the area or coming down from Canada.
…
I appreciate it, and your rundown here.
Lets just say in terms of moving, all I’d really have to do is … find an apartment to move into, pack all my shit into a rental uhaul, and drive something like 3-6 hours east on I 90 / north on other highways.
I just have to get to the point where I can physically manage the packing all my shit into a uhaul part.
Well, and/or figure out just some kind of rental situation that’ll actually allow me to do a cross state lines, fairly long haul move, that doesn’t wipe me out financially.