I dream of getting a huge piece of property, 1000+ acres, more or less square, with a small lake right in the middle, mountains on one edge of the property, the ocean touching the other edge. Subdivide that property into, oh, 8 or 10 parcels, pie-chart shaped, everyone gets lakefront property, some people have mountains at the other side, some people get the ocean. Build a community there, with a community covenant and with exquisite interconnections, both physical and electronic. Some people would get a runway right on their property, everyone would have access to the airstrip area - maybe reserve space for a hangar for each parcel, and the parcel owners themselves get to decide whether they want hangars. Paths for bicyles, mopeds and motorcycles, a different path for walkers. Lots of space. At least once a year we have a BIG party together down at the lake.

Imagine that place with a central business park, where many of us worked together during the day. Could be cool.

Why? Mark expresses some of our various sentiments:

I have several reasons for wanting to move away from the rat race. I want to: be more frugal; have quieter and more spacious surroundings; feel safe walking in our neighborhood at night; be able to work at home. I don't want to give up TOO much of what I like about living here: friends, climate, geography, and culture. But clearly, some compromise is going to be necessary.

Here are some resources that have helped me in thinking about (and searching for) rural living.

First, I have collected some articles from misc.rural about the subject of making the move from the city to the country. I've also saved articles from alt.applachian about three Appalachian college towns. The collected messages are in mail format so you can use your mailer to browse them.

If you want to drool over country real estate and get an idea of what home prices are like across the country, get the United National Real Estate catalog. It comes out four times a year, costs $4.95, and contains 240 pages of listings with pictures. I bought one at Bookshop Santa Cruz, but you can subscribe by calling 1-800-999-1020.

There are some good books in your local library. Two of the better ones I've found are:

• Finding and Buying Your Place in the Country, by Les Scher. Good advice (from a rural lawyer) about avoiding disastrous mistakes in rural real estate. Real Goods sells this book, but I've seen it bookstores too.
• Country Bound!, by Marilyn and Tom Ross. Presents both good and bad points of rural living, so you can decide whether it's right for you. Lots of pointers to other resources.