"Seriously, look at all these folks beautiful hair! Am I the only one that dreams of just dropping everything and moving to a forest and living off the land and selling goods the 'old fashioned' way... you know, actually selling things you physically make? Maybe I just need to move out of New Jersey. Anyway, thank you for sharing this story with us folks stuck in cyber-world tending to our keyboards, twiddling our fingers on plastic buttons, growing roots out of our posteriors."
A reader comments on the NYT article, "Taking to the Woods With Maine’s ‘Tree Tippers’/Generations of Mainers have made a living working seasonal, nature-based jobs. Harvesting the balsam used to make wreaths is one of them."
The old hippie dream is always there, waiting for revival — replete with hair... long beautiful hair.
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And what a beautiful dream it is…so long as it stays a dream. Acting on it would be a disaster for most people.
Growing back hair: Nutrition is the key. Take your vitamins (biotin) and cut out the alcohol.
To reduce stress: Eliminate all social media from your life (discipline here), socialize face-to-face with people you like, and take your minerals (magnesium).
Hippie lifestyle not required.
My hair is longer today than it ever was back then. I recently went in for a trim, and the hairdresser cut off over 6 inches. Pissed me off to NO END. No more hairdressers for me...I will cut my own.
I live with the dream constantly. It has never left me. At least I did finally make the move (with my wife) to leave the large metro areas we both inhabited for most of our lives. But my 'small' coastal Florida town is now booming. And I find myself looking around the country again...for something smaller. More peaceful.
I'm keying in on a new place. It's just a thought at this point. We'll see how life moves forward. Never too old to become the new stranger in town.
"I'm keying in on a new place. It's just a thought at this point. We'll see how life moves forward. Never too old to become the new stranger in town."
We have the same idea here at Meadhouse. It's very hard to pick a place, though. A problem I have is that I want good architecture. For our house and for this city/town/village. It has to be a real and beautiful place — walkable and interesting from the location of the house — and surrounded by beautiful natural areas. The standard to beat is our Madison neighborhood. So there must be some kind of water — lakes, etc. I can't picture how to get to a better place.
@Ann. Look at Warren County, Pa. The county seat, the city of Warren, has extraordinary architecture, a rich history, low crime, and is surrounded by nature, including the Allegheny National Forest. Housing remains affordable.
Ah, the charming rural life as seen from the urban glare. All those apple-cheeked, wind-tousled pictures of health. Their rustic apparel and cheerful exuberance of a life lived in nature. Their strong-limbed children and broad-hipped women, their hearty full-throated men.
Sing-ho.
We too have considered finding a different location but have been unable to pull the trigger. Some of it is personal. We just know our way around our suburb and downtown Philly ( a 45 minute train ride). I’ve had my hair cut by the same person for 20 years and been served by the same bartender for the same period. May sound silly but things like that are important to me. Though my friends here started to die a few years ago and sometimes, when I walk around, I see ghosts. Not literally. Mentally.
Some of it is climate. We have 4 distinct seasons. Fall starts in mid October. Spring starts in mid April. Moving south means a hot September and moving north means a cold May. I have locations we consider on my weather app and check them regularly. Can’t find that sweet spot yet.
Then there is the current 3.7% mortgage that we would be trading into a 7% mortgage. Yikes.
I told my wife that we will be buried in our backyard.
Ann wrote, "We have the same idea here at Meadhouse."
Why? In what way(s) do you want the new place to be different? Or do you just want a place that is new to you so you can explore? New experiences? New people/friends? New house?
Serious questions.
We have the same idea here at Meadhouse. It's very hard to pick a place, though.
Yah I recall your commentariat tried to assist. Your list of demands is very long...and perhaps unobtainable in one place...and you don't want two places if I recall..
Good luck...
You know what's less stressful?
Delivering Amazon packages instead of giving rides to people.
Ann...that's a difficult standard. I'm looking for a coastal town (Pacific coastal). The problems for me are obvious. The left coast is tax heavy, home costs are ridiculous, and the people are crazy. I have some insane idea that I can find a small Oregon coast or California coastal town that is not crazy, tax heavy, and expensive. A town that exists in a vacuum. Of course that won't happen.
So my other search looks northward...to the Western Carolina mountain area. It's beautiful. Some wonderful small towns up there. The natural world, with the Blue Mountains and lakes galore, is just gorgeous. The people are great. And though some areas are getting hit with population and price increases, others are still very nice.
This morning I just read of yet another five thousand home development being approved in our area. It's growing beyond the town we thought we moved to. Not sure how this ends. I love the town we moved to. I just don't like what it's trying to become.
Cowsills… now that’s a sad story…
One wonders what it is about Madison that would make Althouse consider leaving it? I loved the place but left in 1975 because I was unable to make a living there.
My wife’s mother refused to move from her home in Philadelphia “because all my friends are here.” Then her friends moved to Florida or passed away and the closest living people she knew were her daughter, grandkids, and I living four hours away in the suburbs of DC. And then she still wouldn’t move anyway.
Ahh, The Cowsills - that marvelous family group that inspired the Partridge Family. I see they have a new album (9/22), Rhythm of the World - title track.
Carl Reiner gave them the song Hair, because he thought it would be a great joke to have this all American family perform this counter-cultural track. And it became a huge hit.
Move away from a blue oasis and say goodbye to quality medical care, art and culture, ethnic and healthy food options, young people, etc. The ever graying and dumbing down of rural America mirrors the demographic and economic collapse of Putin's Russia.
The Scoodic peninsula in Maine is an exception, which is why it attracts Whole Earth Catalog hair farmers and artisans. Go inland and you quickly start hearing dueling banjos.
I snicker at urban dwellers who think they want to move to the countryside. All your hard-won survival skills (never make eye contact!) are useless out here. Do you own a high-powered rifle? Would you know what to fo if a hungry black bear was trying to break into your kitchen? Are you aware that those bushy-tailed “rats” are called squirrels and you don’t need to call an exterminator on them? Plus that giant rat on your lawn is called a woodchuck and it’s harmless? You’d better learn what it means to be neighborly because that guy down the road drives the snowplow and you do not want to get in his face over his Trump sign in the yard.
Let the pseudohippies try doing that up in the Allegash country of Maine. Marshy land with soil only good for growing potatoes and trees that don't exceed 30 feet in height. Not to mention the 200+ inches of snowfall.
I feel like letting my freak flag fly!
My wife and I have lived in the same house in a rural/suburban area for 27 years. In that time, there has been a lot of growth. One year, our county was the fastest growing zone in the country. The last two years, we have been traveling, an looking for a place to escape, before things get bad. We have yet to find anywhere better. We are spoiled, as we have acreage here, few neighbors, yet are close to a medium sized city (Richmond, VA), and the weather is rarely oppressive.
Move away from a blue oasis and say goodbye to quality medical care,
Not necessarily. My new PCP is much better than my old one in the DC metro area. Some very good doctors also appreciate the countryside. My new cardiologist is affiliated with the University of West Virginia medical school and he’s the best cardiologist I’ve ever had.
art and culture,
Shenandoah University, right up the road, has an outstanding School of Music and presents a fine program of visiting artists. Their “Cosi Fan Tutti” was not like what you’d hear at the Washington Opera. but the seats were better than what you’d get in the Kennedy Center and cost hundreds of dollars less.
ethnic and healthy food options,
The food, mostly locally grown, is delicious, but you have us on the fine dining, that’s a fact.
young people, etc.
There’s plenty of young people out here. Whether a snob like you would be willing to associate with a guy who didn’t go to college (except perhaps Lord Fairfax CC) and has dirt under his fingernails from working construction or in the RubberMaid factory up in Winchester remains to be seen.
“and the hairdresser cut off over 6 inches…”
Howard would kill to find his missing 6 inches, poor slob. When he mentioned his growing boredom with “same old, same old”, his last girlfriend told him if he had more than 2inches of johnson, he’d find new pussy with her.
h/t Richard Pryor
“blue oasis”… where they’ll be left drinking their own urine and eating shitcakes before their dream is realized.
Regarding Howard's "blue oasis" some people's Blue Heaven is other people's hell. Everyone has their own version of heaven and hell.
Regarding Howard's "blue oasis" some people's Blue Heaven is other people's hell. Everyone has their own version of heaven and hell.
Niche economies.
It was funnier when it was called "Green Acres."
Before he died my father's dream was to retire to a small gentleman's "farm". Too few acres to make a living. But enough for a few animals and a few row crops. Enough to keep him busy at something he loved.
But he was raised on a farm. He knew the costs and efforts involved. *me too, which is why it is NOT my dream.)
These dreamers of the return to the land types are hilarious.
If you think you can live on your "artisanal" efforts, fill up a closet with your wares then try to find a market for them. You'll find hundreds with the same dream. Most with more skills (often hard earned) than you. The few successful ones more talent.
Move away from a blue oasis and say goodbye to quality medical care...ethnic and healthy food options
Medical care is very broken to begin with but you should be tailoring your care to your ailment- advice from having lived in the blue oasis of Boston for decades, a place full so called 'world class' hospitals. If you need surgery or treatment and you're allowed to shop around the big blue cities are great. If you're looking for a competent PCP you're fucked. If you have heart failure or pancreatic cancer the big hospitals are just gonna want to monkey with you and chances are your doctor is going to be a young asian lady with no personality and a penchant for just doing stuff even if it doesn't help. Worst case is a whiny Grenada trained clinician who blindly follows protocol and wishes he'd gone to law school...
Charleston, Jackson Hole...very foodie places
Would you know what to fo if a hungry black bear was trying to break into your kitchen?
I belong to a golf course community near Lake Tahoe on the Nevada side that's become a haven for rich California refugees. There's black bears and mountain lions wandering though on occasion. Now the black bears are no big deal to me but when on'es been spotted the panic what runs through the community is a but humorous.
One of my neighbors hikes in the morning and always wears a belt of bells and a hooded sweatshirt so you can't see his face. He stares at the ground as he walks. I expect he'll be the first to get eaten...
"The old hippy dream is always there." Indeed: shorturl.at/cPS19
'The old hippie dream is always there, waiting for revival — replete with hair... long beautiful hair.'
And weed.
Don't forget the weed...
Heather Heying via Substack quoting Jeanette Winterson... wrote so beautifully some years ago2, do many things seasonally. She, living in wooded England, gives her city guests who arrive in Winter, who remind her of captive hamsters running endlessly on a wheel, “food with darkness sealed in it: deep red venison stewed in claret, carp from the bottom of the river, root vegetables grown in rich black earth….Eating seasonally is not a green fad; it is [a] way of connecting the body to what is really happening out there. We are seasonal creatures – the over-ride button is scarcely 100 years old. Give the body back its seasons and the mind is saner.”
“I believe in pleasure,” she continues, “but not the same pleasure all the time. Seasonal pleasure prevents boredom and cynicism.”
Let us embrace the world we were born to, not run from it always with our constructions, our technology, our—oh what hubris in our words—our fixes and our corrections. Embrace the changes of the seasons, and of the moon, and of day into night, and night into day. Be reminded of how much more there is under the sun, and the moon, than we have yet imagined.
Temujin: north North Georgia, from White County to Rabin County. Lots of water, sometimes snow, mountains, woods. I miss Florida, miss the smell of orange tree wood at night, the Manatees eating lettuce in our back yard on the Little Manatee River that opened to the bay, the happy mockery of the dolphins at dusk. Miss it bad.
Don't miss the flood insurance.
Ann, let's be honest. That is not just beautiful hair on the tree farmer in the NYT article. At the risk of sounding both sexist-y and Equus-e, I can't decide which one is hotter: him or his horse.
Of course the Times laments the "plight" of illegal immigrants hired by big companies to take away the hot guy's livelihood while romanticizing his livelihood. They wouldn't recognize irony if it was a wet fish slapped repeatedly across their collective face.
“ Why? In what way(s) do you want the new place to be different? Or do you just want a place that is new to you so you can explore? New experiences? New people/friends? New house?”
Key concerns:
1. Prefer a smaller house and may need one as we age.
2. Prefer lower property tax
3. Fear that the city will adopt impractical policies
Generations of Mainers have made a living working seasonal, nature-based jobs.
It's strange that NYT considers this headline-worthy. They read more and more like the Babylon Bee every day.
The new world, the Blue State World, the Western World, can be about as dysfunctional and about as hostile or unaccommodating to outsiders and marginals as the worlds they replaced. They define those unwelcome outsiders differently. The hostility can be cold and passive rather than emotional and active. The dysfunctionality is accompanied with more paperwork and rigmarole.
I loved the clear-as-a-bell sound of The Cowsills.
Similarly, the Hollies or 60's Buck Owens, for example, had that treble dialed way up. Those records would leap out at you from an AM car radio or jukebox. Early Beatles records like Please Please Me were produced like that. Great stuff.
Howard, what a racist pig you are. I lived for months at a time in Clayton, where Burt Reynolds screwed up James Dickey's book, Deliverance. I briefly knew the "dueling banjos" guy when he was an older businessman. He's not criminal, not mentally handicapped, and quite a bit more articulate than you sound.
Also, he can't play the banjo.
The land is beautiful; the people are decent and generous, and downstream in my neck of the more exurb woods, I have sweet farmer neighbors from India who team up with the fresh pork rind guy to sell okra and tomatoes on the weekends in the gas station parking lot and share curries with them. Across the street, the Mexican/Meat & Three is thriving.
In radically Blue Atlanta, both my neighbors were shot to death at different times, and my doctors up here are as excellent as those downtown and also from the same schools: I just don't have to wait for hours in the waiting rooms or watch my purse so nobody steals it. Or fear the parking deck.
Enjoy your urban hellscape and hated-filled little mind.
'I belong to a golf course community near Lake Tahoe on the Nevada side that's become a haven for rich California refugees.'
Sounds good to me.
I may be one of those refugees in the near-ish future...
Well Tina, we were glad we left Cherokee County in the dust before our kids reached puberty given the drug alcohol STD and teen pregnancy epidemic that plagued the millennials in that evangelical haven. In the early 90's, it was an open secret that all the political leaders in Canton were Klan members. I forgot. What did you people call MARTA?
Most of these"seasonal work" Mainers do that work because there is scant opportunity to do anything else. Not sure they need a bunch of proto-hippies messing things up worse. Plus, the fact that your only shopping option is the Dollar Store is enough to make a NYT dreamer recoil in horror.
If you ever break a leg badly, I mean really badly, you'll be glad you live in a Rocky Mountain ski town. Best orthopedic surgeons anywhere, and I'm sure you can imagine why. Of course, if you weren't in that ski town you might not have broken your leg in the first place.
'In the early 90's, it was an open secret that all the political leaders in Canton were Klan members.'
And democrats all...
I recently had my gall bladder removed in a North Georgia, Union County hospital. I think I received first class excellent care. My wife, a retired MD, agrees. I have had other procedures done in a big city surgical center, and found it very impersonal and intimidating. I was treated like a part on an assembly line. I like the rural hospital better.
Ann Althouse says "3. Fear that the city will adopt impractical policies"
That started decades ago when Paul Soglin announced his run for mayor in the nude. Then there was the chaos of the Scott Walker protests.
Colorado is going to a similar woke hell now - too bad since it has some of the best weather + all the cultural, food and outdoors opportunities one could desire. Minimal bugs and mostly bright blue sky, snow melts in hours (or at worst a day or 2), no floods, hurricanes or earthquakes, few tornados, can play golf at some point every month.
But run by the rich liberals and abetted by an incompetent republican party. Law permits abortion up to birth (or maybe beyond) and the dominance of the Denver metro drives every other liberal fantasy (Boulder protects prarie dogs and doesn't recognize ownership of pets).
I said I visited Clayton, not lived in or near Canton, Howard. Frankly, your hometown has always been a screwed-up place, though I know several decent people there addressing its problems. Apparently you lacked the courage to try to make it better. Most of my 20 years were spent in southeast Atlanta, working to make life for everyone safer and families stronger and employment more accessible in overwhelmingly black communities. I didn't run away. I did more pro-bono public service in any week than you've probably done in your life. And I still give a damn about every endangered man, woman, and child of any race. You are just a small-minded racist.
And, Howard, I mostly called MARTA my only form of transportation. I bet you've never even taken it. So keep your racist assumptions to yourself.
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