“Has it been hard living in such a small town,” I asked.
He looked out over his land as if there was something in the distance drawing his gaze. There was a quizzical expression that seemed to be contemplation, tugging at the corners of his eyes. Then he looked back at me and I could see the beginning of a sly smile forming underneath the thick bristle of his reddish-brown mustache.
“No, no not all,” he answered quietly. “I feel like I’m living in a fairytale.”
So much in life boils down to one thing: shifting your perspective.
The back story (I recommend you read Alternative Lifestyles – Part I first. Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you. Go do it now. I know you have the time. *wink*) in the previous post of the recent wedding I attended in Vermont, has deeper themes worth exploring than just my cousin who was married. Although he was the focal point, there is another family story attached to the location in East Dorset that is just as important to the overall theme of alternative lifestyles. I will refer to this new cousin as C2 and my recently hitched cousin as C1.
While C1 was the journeyman, living his life in many different locales and making countless new introductions and friendships, C2 was quietly doing the opposite: setting roots in the small Vermont countryside and becoming a pillar of a local community.
C2 like C1 took out loans to go to an expensive private college that might not have been the most pragmatic choice at the time. And like C1, he also didn’t step into the corporate America workforce straight out of school, but rather took some time to explore new cities stretching from the East to West coast and find his next chapter in life. Eventually he decided to move back home with his parents in Boston and settle in the East Coast where he had attended college.
Recently married and with a new baby in tow, finding a stable job became the priority for him to support his family. And just like C1, all the family whispers were beginning: what was he going to do with his life? Now he has a child to take care of and he’s living back at home? He needs to be more responsible and put his family first.
With not many options at his disposal (maybe regretting that freshly minted English degree a little as well), he was shooting out resumes in all directions hoping to get a little nibble from anywhere. Finally, he did get a bite and landed an English teaching position at a private middle school located in the small and off the beaten path town of East Dorset, Vermont. (And I’ll preface that C2 was not a country boy, he had been born and raised in major cities. So the first impression from family and friends was, you don’t want to go there. That style of life isn’t for you. You’ll hate it.)
But in lieu of all the push back and to his credit, he drove out to the town for a site visit and decided to stay.
When going against the grain, less can be more.
Friends and family didn’t give him long before he’d be looking for his next job to move his family out of there. But it didn’t happen. Instead, little rumors began to emerge that he was looking at buying a plot of land. This must be a joke, they mused. He could barely support his family, how was he going to buy property?
But, as fate would have it, he was in the process of purchasing 5 acres of pristine Vermont countryside. For every piece of land, there is a story behind it. And this 5-acre lot proved no exception to that rule.
Apparently, there had been a house on the lot that had burned down, severely devaluing the acreage so that no one would buy it. There was still an old barn on the property and utility hook-ups. C2 had no money to build a house on the lot. To be dead honest, he had no money even to purchase the land. But he is intelligent and resourceful. In his mind, the barn could be outfitted to make do as a home and there were state programs and grants for a first-time homebuyer with a severely deflated income.
Everyone told him not to do it. How stupid can you be? You can barely support your family on a Vermont schoolteacher’s salary and you’re going to buy a plot of land that doesn’t even have a house on it? What the hell are you going to do in a Vermont winter?
But when we have a vision, when we can see something so clearly regardless of the risk, we will not be dismayed. There is no argument that can sway us from the path of our dreams. So through grants, state programs and creative financing, C2 found himself the proud owner of 5 acres of land with an old run-down barn on it.
He got to work right away and was able to repair the barn to basic living conditions before the first winter. After one year, C1 moved onto the property to build a yurt and help C2 further his progress more quickly. They worked together restlessly retrofitting the barn, clearing land, planting a garden and raising chickens to begin the journey of a self-sustaining homestead.
And now two full years later, here I am in East Dorset, to witness C1 being married on C2’s property – that 5-acre lot with a burned down house and run-down barn that nobody wanted to buy. I can’t express how excited and proud I am to see these two men, living the alternative lifestyles of their choosing on their own terms, realizing dreams and achieving their visions before my very eyes. It inspires and motivates me to stick to my own goals of buying my freedom and designing the life of my choosing, on my terms.
Like C2’s homestead, pursuing FI is not a widely accepted goal and to build an alternative lifestyle in this day and age, takes sacrifice and discipline. You will be cast out, criticized and written off by many. But if you have the vision. If you can stretch your sites and glimpse a little farther down the road, you’ll see the others out there as well.
Dream chasers I call them.
C2 now has a full family, three little girls and a beautiful resourceful wife. I know he has a low income as a teacher in Vermont, but he couldn’t be happier. There is little stress and endless possibilities for what he can do with the land. And don’t get me wrong, there is plenty hardship to go around. This is no place for the faint of heart. But life has a different meaning out here. It’s simpler, more honest.
All the naysayers have changed their tune and act like they had supported him from the start.
But that’s okay. They had to.
Because…
Who wouldn’t want to live in a fairytale?
-Q-FI
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