Life in the Country - Where is my Jeep when I really could use it?

After being inspired by my pal Dim's great success in purchasing a house, I thought to maybe share my experiences in the experiment that is sometimes called, "Returning to Nature or Living the Simple Life".

Some years ago, I bought a wee stone cottage in rural Ireland. Let's first get our definition of "rural" down so we get some perspective on this. This place is so rural, Google Earth doesn't really pick it up, it just gives some kind of relief map thing that looks like ones that we had in school where the Rocky Mountains looked like scars. This place is so rural that the road that runs in front of my cottage has grass growing in the middle of it. My driveway is about 1/4 of a mile up a cow path that is dirt and rocks (with a waterfall if it rains too much) and, cows! Go figure. How rural is this place Pog, you ask? This place is so rural that it is 8 miles to the nearest store (in off road conditions)...but only 2 miles to a really good Guinness. The killer thing about this is that when I lived in Boston and only needed a car to go the length of the Mass Pike to Framingham, I had a 4x4 Jeep Cherokee that was so high off the ground, I got nose bleeds. Now that I have no asphalt in my life anymore... I am driving a bottom heavy VW (see yesterday's post). The mud flaps are totally gone.

So here I am, in the middle of nowhere, enjoying my surroundings and not regretting a single minute, believe me, but my education about everything - animal, vegetable and mineral - was about to begin in earnest.

Next installment ... The Birds and the Bees ... and Spiders.