What's the appeal of living out in the middle of nowhere?
away from everything else?
Does everyone really want to do that?
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My mother wants my family to move to the middle of nowhere. I don’t like the idea because, yes, you are away from everything. But she seems to like the idea of not having any neighbors. I don’t wanna live in the city where it’s crazy busy and loud, but the middle of nowhere would really suck.
Does everyone want to do that? No – that would also defeat the purpose…because then the middle of nowhere would be totally somewhere once everyone moved there. ;-)
For me, the appeal is that, in the middle of nowhere – there’s no one around….
its peaceful and you don’t get harassed as much
I am looking at land right now for that express purpose!
Dark skies with millions of stars, no neighborhood noise, free wood for the woodburning stove, deer, turkey, ... walking around.
You can go to the city in 30 minutes if you want city life and fancy restaurants.
And ya’ kin shoot sqwerrill fer lunch ev’ry day. Dagnabbit.
Silence except for the sounds of nature. Fresher air to breathe. Peace.
No -everyone doesn’t want to do that. Some do and some don’t.
I have it nearly perfect. I live six miles outside of a city of 7500. I live on a town road with the nearest neighbor about 1500 feet away. Yesterday I was putting up bird feeders for winter. Chickadees were sitting in the tree about 3 feet away waiting impatiently for me to finish, chirping away. After I finished with the feeders, I heard the footsteps of deer in the woods. I went over and listened, and that was the only sound I could hear. Last night, I was outside around 8 pm. The moon was full and so bright I didn’t need a flashlight to see. As it gets into winter the Big Dipper will be almost over my house and so bright and clear, I think with the moonlight and the stars, I could almost read. I have foxes, coyotes, opossums, rabbits, deer, and other animals visiting me on a regular basis. Want me to go on?
you can pee off the back porch.
@zen_ Can you live in the middle of nowhere b’aretz?
I do live out in the middle of nowhere. I have abso-fucking-lutely no idea what the appeal is.
I live right in the middle of nowhere and I love it! I live on a road that has only seven reidences on the entire road and two of those are unoccupied. I can’t see my closest neighbor, I have German Shepherds and they get to free roam, there is an abundance of wildlife that visits every day and, most important for me, the human visitors are few and far between and are usually invited. The neighbors all look out for each other and react quickly if something seems out of place. I could go on and on. The question for me would be why anyone wouldn’t want to live out in the middle of nowhere. :~)
Less pollution. Quietness (most people are probably deaf to the sounds of most city/town noises, but once in the open you’ll notice the difference!). Less people to annoy you. Probably less chances of being affected by crime too.
Out there, no one can hear you scream….........Mwwwwwaaahhhh!!
The idea of walking around the front yard naked with a shotgun is my idea of a good time.
i’m not sure if you mean middle of nowhere in the sense that i used to ask about some of the kids i went to school with. they lived about 10 minutes from me, which was about 10 minutes from town, but in the middle of the woods with nothing around them. that’s not really the middle of nowhere though.
ever driven through nevada? there are people who live there, in a town of about 50 people, and there is no city, town, anything for 150 miles in each direction. now that, i cannot imagine why someone would want to do. but while driving past these places this summer, my boyfriend and i were trying to figure this out, and we came to the conclusion that these people must just want to get away from it all. and that really isn’t that hard to imagine.
No, everyone definitely does not. I think that kind of thing is romanticized a lot because of the peacefulness and space, but it isn’t necessarily a realistic option for a lot of people. Aside from it taking a long time to get to stores, what about hospitals? It’s never a good idea to be that far away from a hospital…
I’m on 5 acres in a very rural setting yet only 20 minutes to 2 major hubs.
Peace, safety, nature, wildlife, no crime, see through curtains, naked wandering and no obnoxious neighbors. I love it, that’s why I have lived this way for the last 18 years. lol
@NaturallyMe The noise thing is something that’s hard to describe to anyone who hasn’t lived in a city and then moved out to the country. I lived in an apartment in a city for 7 or 8 years then moved to the country and got to know the quiet. Then we went to Philadelphia to visit relatives and I thought I was going insane. The noise is unreal.
@Coloma It’s almost spooky how quiet it gets. :)
@Adirondackwannabe
Yes, and it is fun to get that scary, shivery feeling when you walk outside in the dark and hear things crashing through the bushes. hahaha
@Adirondackwannabe i KNOW! My dad has a farm in the Karoo (basically partly desert area miles away from anything, used for sheep farming and many buck roaming around), so you hear nothing at all, just silence, and it really is something to treasure!
There is gets so dark at night time that you literally can’t see your hand in front of your face, and there’s just pitch blackness outside the windows – it IS scary, for me, who’s scared of the dark, hehe.
I loved where we used to live. You couldn’t see any neighbors at all but if you walked for five minutes you’d see a house or two. The dogs got to run and chase deer and rabbits. I could watch the sunset and the fireworks off the raised deck (second floor deck). Only thing you could hear were cows in the mornings if you were outside and the loud, scary HISS (some would say sneeze but it isn’t that) of deer when they’d run off. Oh; sometimes you could hear the “pop” of someone hitting a golf ball. It was really fun riding the golfcart to the mailbox.
Now that it’s for sale and we’ve moved it has already been broken into.
@Coloma @NaturallyMeThat reminds of the time I went out at night to throw some stuff on the compost heap. It was pretty dark but I was enjoying the quiet and didn’t turn on my flashlight. I threw the compost and there was this enormous snort. Scared the crap out of me. I turned on the light and this deer is looking back at me. Must have been sniffing around the compost and neither of us knew the other was there.
@Adirondackwannabe
LOL
Yes, I have had a similar experience with a deer sneezing in the bushes, scared the crap outta me. haha
Most recently the other night I heard the huffing and growling of a mountain lion below my deck late at night, it was definitley not happy, maybe a run in with the evil coyote gang that ate my cat last week. grrrrr
The silence…. can you hear it?
@partyparty It’s a little hard to describe. What you hear are sounds from a great distance away. A pack of coyotes might be yipping miles away, but you can hear them in the distance or something is walking in the woods in winter and you can hear the crunch of their feet on the snow. Road noises are probably the only annoying part.
@Adirondackwannabe LOL, i would have had a mini heart attack and ran as fast as i can only run when i’m trying to run away from something in the dark, or spiders unexpectedly dangling in front of my face.
@NaturallyMe I may have levitated off the ground a little, but I had a pretty good idea what it was. There are some pretty loud sounds you come across in nature, like a ruffed grouse taking off right next to you, but after you hear them a few times you recognize them pretty quickly. :)
The appeal for me is no people… no people = no hassle = me being very happy…of course my friends can visit any time they so choose, but the general public!! Get orrff moy lannnd!!!!
:-/
I hear it’s for the nature.
@Coloma it seems like you stay up late each night and often venture outside after dark. Would you not feel a little safer staying indoors late at night?
I want that every Monday morning when I awaken to hear the garbage truck’s stop-and-go roar down our street and two neighboring streets, and accompanying clatter, followed by the intermittent wheeze of air brakes of the recycle collection truck, all of which takes more than an hour, intermingled with steady freeway noise from about ¼ of a mile away, and recurring airport noise from 2½ miles away, not to mention neighbors’ comings and goings, the endless yard and house renovation work of a close neighbor who seems to have a power tool fetish, and, inexplicably, sirens from the nearby fire station just about every morning, often at 7:30 a.m. Who is doing what in our neighborhood every morning at 7:30 that requires calling out the fire engines?
Yet—we stay. It is not like that all the time; Monday morning is the worst of it. We own the house with no mortgage. And we are a few minutes away from hospitals, police and fire services, freeways, shopping areas, and several kinds of transportation. Blessedly, we are also less than an hour from some of the most beautiful coastal and wooded areas of Northern California, as well as less than an hour from one of the world’s great destination cities.
It’s a tradeoff we make. People give different weights to different factors.
Less polution! Healthier gardens! Peace and quiet! No pesky neighbors! Room to have your own animals/farm! Room for said animals to RUN FREE LIKE THEY SHOULD. Just a few more off the top of my head.
@Aesthetic_Mess…and this question is pretty cool…so stop degrading yourself and feel the lurve! ;-) x
@Aster
I’m usually not out after the animal bedtime routine around 8:30 or 9 pm, but, it doesn’t have to be late, anything can show up at any time. lol
Mailman is only person you ever have to deal with.
My mailbox is a block from my house.
Yep, and another advantage, you just throw all of your old fruits and veggies into the woods.
Just came back down my driveway from pitching a huge bowl of melon rinds and various funky veggies across the road into the deep end of the forest.
So u don’t have trash collection, Coloma? Where’s your mailbox?
@Aster
I have trash pick up too, just no green waste pickup. lol
My mailbox is about a ¼ mile from my house.
You can do what I did. Get a cabin up in the mountains away from everyone and go up there when you want the solitude. It is wonderful up there. You can almost hear the snow fall and often the flakes are so big and beautiful to watch as they glide down. It is so quiet up there and peaceful. I love to go and meditate and enjoy peace and quiet that you find nowhere else. There are many animals that visit as well and if you place a salt lick down then they come by often. We have moose and deer here that come by. When I get tired of that I can go down in the city to my home and enjoy having neighbors.
I love the idea of running away from this insane world. No one near you and feeling free. I got to be honest I long for the feeling of freedom.
This article about a Japanese man living by himself in the evacuated zones (after the earthquake affected the nuclear power plant) for some reason really captures my imagination. He really cares about the land, and the abandoned animals.
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