Good points, Paul.
We are figuring out that Debra Jean and I are probably not good candidates for being relocating members of the Free State Wyoming movement. That's what I've been trying to figure out, why I've been posting. Because the ideals intrigued me. A lot. Especially the fact that they are not just ideals, but ideals in action.
But it's probably not my correct personal course of action. I think the "return to the country" idea is in my blood, but I don't think it's in my hands and back. I have probably have too much of an aversion to a lot of manual labor to make it there. I do more physical work in a week than many computer-job city folk do: I do my own home repair, I carry heavy objects when I need to, I don't balk at a walk, but all of that combined probably takes up an hour or two of my day, and I like it like that. And I'm really attuned to conveniences of exurb life. Call it soft if you will, but it's me, and it's what I like.
My parents were farmers, their parents, etc, all the way back to Europe. My siblings and I were the first in our line to go to college, and even so, my two sisters (both older than me) did a few years at living off the land and off the grid, one in Vermont, one in West Virginia. As a kid, I absolutely LOVED the places they lived, and imagined living like that one day. Now both sisters have jobs-with-benefits, but both live on over ten acres that they own, but within an hour of a city (one in Upstate New York, one in Virginia.) I think that's the sort of situation where my wife and I would be most happy, and where we'll probably end up.
I think it's important to be honest with myself and not be swept up with a romantic ideal, when I'd work like a dude rancher and complain and starve once I'm there.
Even though I most likely won't be moving to Wyoming to live, I'll probably stick around on here and read, and maybe chime in to ask occasional questions, if that's OK. There's a lot to learn for me here, and I think that even if I'll never take the oath, I'd like to be sort of a "adjunct in-philosophical-agreement member (or maybe just call it "a friend", if there's any room for that.
Respectfully,
Michael W. Dean