Day: May 17, 2026💾

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Twelve Years Until Age 55

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I was thinking this morning, I am age 43 this year. In less then 12 years, I will be age 55. Assuming I stick with my state employment for next 12 years, I will be eligible for retirement at 55 though to get the full retirement at that age, I’ll need to work a few more years to get 30 years in with the state. Seemed like only a few years ago that number was much more significant.

At the same time, I keep looking at the various cabins and properties that come for sale in rural areas. Truth is simple hunting cabins, off-grid properties and land in rural area is still very affordable if you don’t want all the frills of modern suburban house. And with the markets so strong, it seems like it would be a fairly simple cash transaction, and there are still years to grow before I reach 55 or whatever the year I toss my hat in at the state.

Thematic Map: Percentage of Green Cars

Long Run Gap

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Interstate 80 follows a narrow gap along the Long Run in Centre County, Penna.

Map: High Falls Reservior
Map: Severence Hill Trail

A rural Pleasant Valley Sunday 🏡 🐐

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‘Rows of house that all the same, and no one seems to care.” – The Monkies, A Pleasant Valley Sunday.

I want to believe at one level that most rural people live in cabins and homesteads where they are for a large part self sufficient. But I’ve come to realize the more a study the countryside, look at what houses are out there on the market and how people actually live – that’s more of an exception then reality.

Most rural people are essentially just suburbanites with long commutes. Indeed, much of rural population lives in hamlets and villages, not remote farmsteads with goats, hogs and cattle – and gardens that feed themselves most of the year. Most rural people who have burn barrels where legal essentially produce and use them for trash like weekly suburban garbage hauling. Most have high speed internet and big televisions. Most rural houses are heated with oil or propane, with perfect climate control year round. Most rural houses are grid-tied with the only practical limitation on energy consumed being how much the rural homeowner wants to pay.

It’s not to say there ain’t homesteaders or off-gridders out there, especially on the back roads. There are places in the hills and hollows were people are a lot more self-sufficient. But my idea that rural living is profoundly different then the typical suburban life is as much a fantasy as a reality. I equate the odd ball, with how things are in my imagination. There are some real backwoods dairymen and DIYs but most have Apple iPhone and modern technology. It’s only the exceptional that do it differently.