rural.
“How’s it going living in the boonies?” is a question I get asked at least once a week now. We recently hit the six-month mark in our new home, so I thought it would be a good time to give a little insight into what life is like 20 minutes out of town.
Yes, it’s only a 20-minute drive from downtown. It takes longer to get from one side of the lake to the other, and about the same time to get to Manson where people often travel more than once per day. But when you throw in the fact that we live up a dirt road with no visible neighbors, have little-to-no cell service and use satellite internet, it might as well be a different world.
No lie, after we walked through this house, we spent the next FIVE HOURS talking through all the implications of living here before we decided to make an offer. It was exhausting. It was the only house we toured that made our hearts go pitter patter, but moving here meant a radical shift in lifestyle and it was important to make sure we had considered exactly what that meant for us. In the end, we concluded that whatever we had to “give up” was worth what we’d be getting in return. Here are a few things that make living EXTRA rural unique:
DISCONNECTED
Hands down, the thing we get asked about the most is our limited internet and cell service --- which makes sense considering how integrated both are into everyone’s daily lives. Plenty of people choose to live disconnected from the rest of the world, but there’s a good chance most of them are A) not millennials and B) don’t work from home like I do. Sparing you all the boring details, the short and dirty version is that we have rewound about 20 years in our connectivity to the outside world. I spend 10+ hours per week at local coffee shops and my friends and family without iPhones have likely been feeling neglected the last six months. The upside? When something takes three minutes to load, you have some time to consider how badly you need to see it.
ENTERTAINMENT
Nowadays, we say “Hey Google…” and then laugh like it’s the most hilarious joke we’ve heard all week. It’s incredible how quickly we have come to rely on Wi-Fi, and there’s nothing like living without it to understand exactly how much it affects our lives. It wasn’t that long ago that streaming music meant thumbing through my binder of CDs and pressing play on my pride and joy, my purple boombox. Now in order to stream music, we have to download playlists while we’re in town so we can play them offline. Did you know that some streaming platforms allow you to download media to watch offline, and others don’t? Sorry Hulu and Disney Plus (crying inside, I want to watch Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century SO BAD) until you add that functionality, our dollars are totally wasted on you. Want to watch your downloaded content on our beautiful big screen mounted on the wall? HA. These days you can often find us huddled around a Samsung Galaxy screen propped up on our coffee table, squinting as we attempt to read the subtitles on Terrace House. I’ve recently undertaken the task of alphabetizing our DVD collection, which has grown exponentially since our move. One of our neighbors donated two big boxes of DVDs when they moved a few months ago and that simple act of kindness made its way into the top 10 nicest things anyone has ever done for me.
THE NATIVES
I visited this valley for the first time about 6 years ago, even though I’ve lived 20 minutes away the majority of my life. There’s really not a reason to come out this far unless you know someone who lives here. But as soon as I did, I felt something. Anyone who’s spent time here can tell you that it possesses a certain magic, an undeniable peace that increases the further you drive down the valley. Even though we’re not very far from other households, when you’re at our place you can only see one little cabin far in the distance. It’s so comforting to know that help isn’t far if we need it, but we can still hot tub naked without worrying about making the neighbors blush.
The non-human natives are one of my favorite parts of living in the outskirts. In our second week here we got to watch a black bear yearling stumble around the lot in front of us, eating berries and lounging around until we spooked it when we got in closer to investigate. We had a ton of fun this summer researching all the new bugs that made their way onto our patio, mostly crazy-looking beetles and every flying thing you can think of. I’ve spent countless mornings watching droves of hummingbirds fight over our two feeders that we had to refill every other day through September, and I probably rescued at least 15 little green frogs from the dog’s water feeder. Winter has invited herds of deer and fluffy-coated coyotes. And even though I’m terrified of actually seeing a cougar, I found some old scat on our hill once and I liked the idea that such majestic, powerful beasts had stepped foot where I had. On the flip side, the mice and packrats have wreaked some havoc on our vehicles and I now fully understand the gravity of wasp mating season. Being so up close and personal with wildlife is most definitely not for everyone, but I adore sharing our backyard with so many critters.
FORGETTING THE MILK
Okay, I’m fully aware that anyone who lives in the city would probably roll their eyes at this (or at least be able to relate) but when you grow up living two blocks from the grocery store, being 20 minutes away from the nearest source of food is a significant lifestyle change. During our infamous five-hour deliberation, “forgetting the milk” is something my husband brought up as something to consider. Having lived a similar lifestyle growing up, he knew what it was like to get home from the grocery store and realize that you had forgotten to buy milk. That meant no mac and cheese for dinner that night, and forget having cereal for breakfast the next morning. Growing up I vividly remember getting home once to find our rental movie case empty, but the four minutes it took to get to the store and back to replace it just ended in a couple chuckles vs. a ruined evening. Now that the time to correct a mistake like that is 45 minutes, it’s less “funny story” and more “total devastation and going to bed early.” So far I’ve made emergency flour tortillas and mayonnaise from scratch (because fajitas and BLTs, duh) and we take extra-special care not to run out of coffee creamer or toilet paper.
QUIET
This is easily one of my favorite things about this house. It’s like, REALLY quiet. Right now I actually kind of miss the mid-summer buzz of crickets at night because without it, the silence can be deafening. Coming home to pure, peaceful silence is a straight-up privilege and one that I do not take for granted.
I swear I’m not just trying to sugarcoat the challenges of living rural. Every “negative” aspect of where we call home now requires more patience, awareness, and intention than before, which feels a lot more like growth than struggle. We had talked about returning to Jesse’s rural roots once we had a few kids and were on our second our third house, and never in a bazillion years did we expect to end up here right out of the gate. But as they say, the heart wants what it wants. Now that we’re here and settling into this new lifestyle, we can’t imagine living anywhere else. Our pups are living their best lives running free in our 20-acre backyard. Every day we turn on that familiar dirt road and take a deep breath as we approach our own personal slice of heaven. When you literally have to pinch yourself to make sure your life is real, I think that’s a pretty good sign that you’re on the right track.
