Don't look at us, join us!
Suddenly, when we watched movies, we no longer yearned to live in a gray sixteenth floor to the 'How I met your mother' , but have lunch in the middle of nature in a 'Out of Africa' plan. Ah, friends, she gave us. He entered us and gradually gnawed at the urbanite in us: It was the syndrome of 'I leave everything'.
And we left him, and we almost tiptoed back to the field after having achieved living so centrally in the city that we jumped off the balcony and were in our favorite bar , in the health center and in a department store, all at the same time. It happened to ** Sabina Urraca ** , writer , to Max and Susagna , founders of the traveling community ** Families on Route **, and even to this one who writes .
And you, do you notice? Is it happening to you too? Do you close your eyes and you see yourself far away from the madding crowd but you still don't know whether to take the step or not? Then this article is for you. This is how it really is to live in the countryside:
Susagna, Max and his two children enjoying it in the natural environment
1. LIVING IN THE COUNTRYSIDE DOESN'T HAVE TO MEAN GOING SUPER FAR AWAY...OR IT DOES
your new life you do not necessarily have to be several hours away from the city : I, for example, live just 45 minutes by car from the center of the capital, while Sabina is far from civilization: "I think my house is as close to the countryside as it can be, perhaps closely followed in the "being very country" category by a hermit cave high on a mountain . I'm just saying that to get there you have to leave the car at the top of the valley and walk down for half an hour along wild boar paths. People ask me for my address or the name of my town, and I no longer know how to explain to them that I have no street or town . I live in the middle of the mountain. The postman does not arrive here, and You can only find my house if you are guided by someone who knows the way. I have several neighbors nearby, all quite particular people who have decided to live with few things and feeding from their own gardens," she says. The thing is: you choose how much you want to miss out on!
two. YOU WILL NEED THE CAR FOR EVERYTHING
Even to go buy bread. If you have taken seriously that of living in nature, the most normal thing is that your house is far enough away that you don't want to think about walking (unless you have no choice but to carry everything on your shoulder, as Sabina does). However, even this has advantages: " Here we park next to the house , when in the city we could take between half an hour and an hour at least to find a spot ", clarify the founders of Familias en Ruta.
3. YOU WILL SPEND A LOT LESS ON NONSENSE
Of course you will take walks on your land, and even around, but You are no longer going to live "on the street", if on the street it means terraces with friends or shop windows with your partner. The best? You will spend much less money , at least in consuming things "to distract you", because you will not be exposed to them. Namely, the pasta that goes in canes (which inevitably turn into dinners) and in that t-shirt you just saw and suddenly you can't live without is going to decrease noticeably , to the point of almost turning you into a strange capitalist spawn: "I have been living in the valley for almost four months, going to the nearest town once a week, without moving or going back to Madrid or any other city. Now I have gone out for the first time to a book festival in Bilbao, and it seemed to me that the Christmas shopping theme was a bit over the top. Having to carry everything you buy during half an hour walk through the woods , the objects take much more value. It scared me a little to see people carrying all those bags Sabina says.
4. YOU WILL FORGET ABOUT THE NOISES...
At least, of the unpleasant ones: "In the field we hear silence, the chirping of birds, to the cows woman , the mechanical saw when cutting the firewood... In the city, the sirens, the cars and motorcycles and the works let us rest ", Susagna and Max comment. However, with this silence we must make an aside. Do you remember the last time you didn't hear ANYTHING? Probably not, so it may take some getting used to. It happened to Sabina, who at first she couldn't sleep because she heard even the slightest creaking in the house (not counting the coming and going of the wild boars) . However, she now finds her wonderful: "Silence is something that has enchanted me, and I'm a little scared to go back to the city and not be able to adapt back to the madding crowd," she tells us.
Is the house in the country... or is the country in the house?
5. ...AND SMELLS WILL TAKE ON A NEW MEANING FOR YOU
"In the village you smell grass, fire, manure, and in the city, to smoke, candy, perfume", summarize Susagna and Max, who confess, in fact, that one of the things they like least about living in the countryside is "the smell of purines, which, luckily, is rare" . Sabina also experienced an olfactory shock when she breathed again in the city after four months without leaving her retreat: "The first day everything smelled strange and bad to me: the perfumes of the people, the smoke from the cars, the smell of food coming from the bars... I got scared, because I thought I had become intolerant of the city , but it was over in a couple of hours.
6. YOU WILL HAVE A MUCH CLOSER RELATIONSHIP WITH ANIMALS...
In four months in the field I have seen more animals than in my entire life in the city: rabbits, snakes, eagles, mice (but pretty ones) and even badgers have crossed my path, not to mention the cows and horses that I meet when I go for a walk or the goats that pass my door daily (and that constitute for a newcomer to the green a spectacle as or more amazing than the shepherd himself). The same thing happens to Sabina: " Animals fascinate me. I have a neighbor who I have helped raise two orphaned foals . I have already seen several wild boars (I hear them almost every night) and once I saw a fox. I believe that the encounter with the fox , with whom I was looking into my eyes for a while, was one of the great moments of my life ", she explains to us.
7. ...AND YOUR PETS WILL HAVE FUN LIKE NEVER
My three cats have never been happier (or prettier) than running around the field at will. In fact, one of them had anxiety and the other a mistrust that prevented him from even sleeping peacefully... and his problems have practically disappeared since we got here! Of course, they are so, so happy that I have had to get mice, birds and even tadpoles out of their clutches... And not always alive...
8. YOU WILL OVERCOME THE OVERWHELM OF NOT BEING ABLE TO MISS ANYTHING
"The best is the tranquility and the possibility of getting up every day, walking through a wonderful environment and knowing that we do not need much to live with quality and well-being ", admit Susagna and Max. In fact, being in the field, the FoMO (Fear of Missing Out, or Fear of Missing Something), that syndrome so XXI century that attacks us when we think that we could be doing something better than what we are doing in fact, it practically disappears. Now, even though you see on Twitter that your friends are going to a super interesting theatrical premiere Instead of lying in front of the fireplace like you, you won't feel restless. Total, even if you wanted to join the plan, you weren't going to arrive on time or kidding...
If when you open the window you see this, about missing a few beers, it's like you care less...
9. NO, YOU ARE NOT GOING TO FOCUS ANYMORE
"The quality of life improves a lot in some ways, that's clear. You have better color, you eat better, you sleep better (...) Although there is something that I have discovered, and it is that stress is not something that radically changes from the countryside to the city : if you have to do many things, your level of demand and your burden can be exactly the same in one place as in another. Calm is something that is inside "explains Sabina. In fact, she still does not know how the experiment of retiring to the Alpujarras of Granada to put together her book is going to turn out:" I thought I was going to write a lot being here, that nothing was going to throw me off center, and the truth is that in the field there are also a thousand distractions that can confuse you. The will is necessary everywhere. Actually, I haven't finished my book yet, so I will be able to know if the balance has been really positive when it is delivered to the publisher and published", she confesses.
10. YOUR CHILDREN WILL HAVE A WONDERFUL CHILDHOOD
In the case of Susagna and Max, it was precisely the birth of their first daughter which made them take the step to retire from Barcelona: "We were looking for a place where we could live as a family, quieter, closer to nature, a place where our daughter could discover the world with confidence ; where children could grow up with greater freedom of movement; where the playground wasn't an island and negotiating the roads wasn't the daily challenge." Now that they have two children, they appreciate the fact that these they can go out and play alone and without any fear , as well as the very special school they have found: "We were looking for a school for our two children located in a mountain environment and in Garrotxa (Girona) we found it. The rural public center has a family atmosphere, mixed age groups , great involvement of parents and a wonderful natural environment".
eleven. YOU WILL DO THINGS YOU NEVER THOUGHT YOU WOULD
Paradoxically, being in the field makes you -at least at first- feel totally ignorant . Is that plant poisonous? When are almonds harvested? Should I be scared if I find a snake? And that in the best of cases, because if you decide to take the experience to the limit like Sabina, in addition to asking yourself, you will have to do many things that you have never done before, and that you probably don't want to repeat in your life: "My house is beautiful, a very nice restored old farmhouse, but I don't have a shower or running water inside. The tap is outside, so I bathe heating water in a giant pot and using buckets and basins. The toilet is in a small stone construction a few meters from the house ".
"Until now I find it funny to live like this, I like this medieval life of bathing in front of the fire in the fireplace, but sometimes I dream that I take a hot shower. The shower, that magical water that falls from the ceiling, what an everyday good that you don't appreciate until you see yourself soaking in a tin pail ...", relates this rural heroine. But there is more!: "You have to organize yourself to have firewood, hot water and food. If you forget something on the weekly trip to town, you know that you have to wait another week to buy it. But to me it compensates me make these efforts", she tells us. However, this does not have to be your case: I live a ten-minute drive from three supermarkets , and I have a bathroom (and that my house has neither number nor street, they can't even agree on what the area is called!)
The countryside gives children a high
12. YOUR NEIGHBORS WILL BECOME VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE TO YOU
"The best thing is to live surrounded by so much beauty, and by beauty I mean the nature that surrounds me and the people who live near me , people with whom, as we all live a little isolated, I immediately established very close relationships and family Sabina illustrates us. Susagna and Max also boast of the good situation with his neighbors , although in his case there are not many. However, what I really like is the opposite: they don't know me here, so I don't have to go waving in the street every two by three or be presentable to anyone. And that, friends, I call it FREEDOM.
13. YOU WILL OVERCOME YOUR FEARS
Above all, the most atavistic, such as to be alone in an uninhabited place or stand firm in the dark of night ( without streetlights, the night landscape looks different ) . "The fear that gave me almost everything at first was a bummer: the forest at night, the boars, being alone in such an old house, night storms... Everything around me reminded me of horror movies. There was a time when I slept badly and any noise scared me . Later, that stage passed, and suddenly, walking at night through the mountains seems to me the most natural ", Sabina tells us, once again triumphant in the face of the rigors of rural life. "It has made me feel very good to overcome the fears I had at the beginning. I believe that it has given me a lot of peace ".
14. SOMETIMES, YOU WILL MISS THE CITY, AND YOUR FRIENDS
Being in the thick of it is also cool, especially for the cultural offer , as Sabina, Susagna and Max agree (this category also includes PARTY , Sure) . However, this longing for noise and brotherly love it is solved making regular visits to the center : "To the small city that we have close we go at least once a week to buy, walk, stay with friends or go to some activity, and to the capital every month or two months, depending on the desire, meetings or training we have", the bloggers tell us. The best thing is that these visits they become true expeditions, and charge more value once you do them only once in a while. Also, believe it or not, allow you to spend more time with your friends or family , because many times you will decide stay to sleep with them to take advantage of more the weather in the city. Or they will spend the weekend at your house like who goes on an excursion !
Is it scary? Yes. Is it cool? Also
fifteen. REMEMBER: GOING TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRYSIDE CAN BE WHAT YOU WANT IT TO BE
retire in nature not a good idea if you work in the city , Sabina reminds us (spending hours in the car every day can destroy even the most obvious country benefits ) . It is also not advisable to enroll in an adventure as extreme as yours unless "you like life a bit austere, don't be afraid of animals, and seek intense experiences ", as she herself recommends. However, she remembers that all this is in your hands: you can choose between going very far or quite close, have hot water or not, live in a town or very far away: the change will be smaller the fewer the things that separate your current house from the one you will have in rural areas.
That is to say, with a more or less fixed Internet, a toilet inside the home and a good shower, things should not differ too much from your life as you know it, except that you will not be so close to the center and that you will be even more handsome to breathe, sleep well and waste time lying in the sun. "We would recommend to each person and family that they try to follow their dreams, and if one of them is to go live in the country, at least try it ", Susagna and Max concede. " We only have one life, and we have to enjoy it in the place we would like to be , and if it is not where we are, we have to look for opportunities, create them, invent them and carry them out. Maybe later we will realize that we were already happy where we were , but to return to the same place feeling different, we may have to walk and do some new route, even if it's circular ".
The field can be whatever you want it to be, even a hipster set to rock it on Instagram
*This report was published on December 30, 2015 and updated on September 14, 2017 with video.