Here's something to think about. My sister was talking tonight at dinner about a plan she and her fiancee have been formulating: To purchase undeveloped land, build a yurt (of a slightly more permanent and modern variety than the ones used by steppe people), sink a well, set up solar panels, etc. and essentially live sustainably and cheaply.. I've been looking into it, and while it would take a lot of work, especially initially, and startup costs would be a bit more than her estimate ($20000 on top of the price of the land), it's entirely doable.

Got me thinking about where I'd want to put down roots. Now, I've built sheds. I've built several decks, garden structures, even raised a barn once, but I'll be the first to tell you the limits of my abilities. What I'm about to suggest would not be without several years of practice and preparation, and would take years of hard labor beyond the start of it to accomplish. Hell, in all honesty, I'll probably never get on it. This is not about ability. We're all fatter, or skinnier, or weaker, or less knowledgable than we'd like. God knows we're all poorer. This is about dreams. This is about fantasy. This is about how you'd like to live if you were who you'd want to be. So let imaginations fly! Money's no object in dreams.

If I had my druthers, I would head out someplace far from "civilization", perhaps western Montana or the like. I've been there, and I fell in love with it, and I hear they've got miniscule property taxes. Beautiful country. I'd build a little house, nothing big, just something to keep the weather out and my belongings in. I'd keep a garden/small farm setup, to grow food and most importantly tobacco if I can that far north. I'd want to keep goats and chickens, for milk, eggs, and meat, the latter to be supplemented by hunting and fishing. I'd also have a still, of course. That wouldn't be too big of a stretch. I already know gardening and some construction, and I understand the basics of distilling whiskey, even if my parents shut me down when I wanted to build a still on our property so I can't support the theory with practice.

If I really want to let myself go, and acknowledging that for practical concerns this would be the single most difficult thing to abstain from, I'd step away from electricity. I don't need electronics (No offense to y'all, but it'd be good riddance to the internet as a whole), especially with the amount of work necessary to sustain my land, but heating would be difficult and they get some mighty rough winters up there. That said, people made due with woodstoves in the past and I'd like to think I could do the same. Cooking and washing would be harder without electricity, certainly, but again, I could make due.

I recognize that in this is, of course, not going to be a common or particularly popular dream lifestyle on an internet forum, but that's why I'm asking: If you had no physical limitations or monetary problems to keep you from it, what would be your dream living situation? Describe your vision.