Who lives in a rural area?

But then again, I pick up a copy of Country Life and start to feel my hair do that "Tory Wife" curl.

1) the sense of space, the boundless horizon
2) the privacy, not having neighbours nearby, being able to walk for miles without seeing another human
3) the quiet... well, not the quiet but the birdsong, the wind in trees, frogs at dusk
4) the smell of freshly cut hay during harvest season
5) apples, fresh from the tree
6) sitting by the pond on a hot summer day, under the shadow of the trees when there's no breeze anywhere

Things I don't miss:

1) the isolation
2) scary redneck hunters making me afeared for my life during deer season
3) local schools for local people, their minds as narrow as their fields are wide
4) culture = violin string in a belljar
5) car culture as necessity

So things I miss...

7) horses and dogs

ie, it's a housing estate, but at night i'm kept awake by the sounds of sheep bleating in the fields

(no, literally)

Luckily upstate NY was cattle country (dairy specifically). As was the particularly bit of Wiltshire I used to spend time in. Cows are quieter than sheep generally, and since their voices are deeper, I think the mooooos are quite soothing.

My parents still live out in the boonies off a gravel road in the middle of the woods. They live so far out that they can't get cable television.

I'd also like to add that being the only minority family around for almost my entire childhood gave me a very... interesting experience growing up, in terms of both experiencing where the threshold of acceptable levels of minority families in a white area lies (oftentimes people were fine with my family but if any other black people showed up, "nigger"s would fly through the air like birds in the springtime) and the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't curse of the "oreo" in American culture (I often felt that many of the white kids accepted me as "the token black kid" and were fine as long as I played my role, which probably played a big role into why I actively started seeking out goth and industrial music as opposed to listening to a lot of R&B and hip-hop; conversely, other black kids I would encounter would ofetn shun me for "acting white" and having white friends, as if I was supposed to bus myself up to St. Paul after track practice and roam the streets looking for black kids to befriend or something). I'm sure that this type of thing can happen to you if you live in a city but the fact that even getting into town was a huge 20-minute production (let alone driving up to the Cities) magnified the negative effect the location of my parents' house on my upbringing in my mind.

Oh, is he near Uig? Uig is *such* a stereotypical little Highland harbour-side village - it's really lovely driving there and looking down on the harbour from the road into the village.

Hell yes. 3 miles up the (extremely windy) road. Uig has a great microbrewery though, cracking porridge oat ale.

I grew up in a rural area .. It was rural for about 5 years, and then started to become suburban... Now it's full-on suburban. Sad to see.

Now I live in the city, where I can get pizza whenever I want. I can get television channels over the antenna with pretty good reception. There's an orange glow that hangs over my town at all times, but I don't mind it that much anymore. It's nice to fall asleep at night hearing the hum of the interstate and the train horns wailing from three miles away.

otm and AWESOME