Skip to main content

The Sustainability of Rural Living


I logged 200 miles the other day. 200 miles. I one day. Multiply that by 20 (five days a week for four weeks), and you’ve got about 4000 miles at least that I’ve probably put on the company vehicles this summer as part of my internship. On the drive back to the office one evening I reflected on how far apart things are out here. It takes twenty minutes to get to the next town, thirty to the one after. The vehicles that populate the roads are mostly SUV’s, pick-up trucks, things that can tow a boat, a livestock trailer. They’ve all got their deer guard, some with a “Make America Great Again” sticker…few are compact and get anything better than 15 miles to the gallon.

It’s part of the culture out here to drive something robust, to serve all your towing needs. And as much as it pains me to be the smallest thing on the road (with my tiny Mazda 2, bike rack and all), it is in no way realistic for me to expect those around me to up and switch their vehicle of choice for a Prius because of how much gas it inefficiently combusts or spews noxious greenhouse gas emissions into the air. Doing so would be like asking the girl at the bakery I’m in to take all the American flags off the walls because it offends immigrants. People’s choice in their vehicle is just as much a point of pride as it is to be an American or Rural by Choice.

On return from Jewell County Fair


So what do you do? If you know that rural living necessarily requires significant mileage on a daily basis, and that you must have a certain amount of muscle to drag stuff behind you, how can you make the process less detrimental for the planet? Because believe me, I as much as the next guy am not going to complain about the process of driving around here being a hassle. In fact, traipsing across the countryside and enjoying the beautiful sunsets every evening it’s an impeccably smooth and relaxing journey (Kansas has some of the best roads in the country due to our awesome concrete mix). I’ve never quite enjoyed driving as much as I have this summer. But it still doesn’t solve the issue of contributing to a very dark and imminent problem known as global climate change.

Can we run cars on air? We’ve already tried transitioning to biofuel, and you see how well that’s worked out for us. What about smart carpooling? The whole smart car thing is soon to be ubiquitous, so we might as well embrace that. But there are a lot of times when I’m driving that I feel like I could be more productive if I didn’t actually have to drive. If I could just sit back, work on my projects for work, and enjoy the scenery, life would be just grand. Instead, I listen to podcasts like Plate of the Nation or audiobooks like Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain and contemplate my next steps forward in this food systems trajectory I am on.

After having mostly made the decision yesterday not to complete the dual MLA/MURP program at the University of Minnesota, I can’t stop thinking about what goals I have in life that I will and won’t accomplish through my degree program. A very wise professor told me a while back that there is no catch-all degree that will teach me everything I want to know. Even a handful of degrees will probably not offer me the skill set that I need to kick ass at life. But I’ve got a full ride in Minneapolis, so I’m going to take that and run. Free money is free money, and the network is, well, an awesome network.

Mostly I just keep thinking about the joys I will have from pursuing holistic medicine, agricultural escapades abroad, carpentry, graphic design and marketing, permaculture, and writing.

Today I realized I’m likely to become an entrepreneur very shortly after graduation. 

Waconda Lake with the farm gang!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How I stay grounded as a digital nomad and modern-day gypsy

I get a lot of questions about what it's like to not have a real permanent home. Not everyone is excited about having their entire life fit into two suitcases, but somehow, that's where I find myself now. Talking with a new friend the other day, I realized that the longest I lived in one place since moving away from Kansas back in 2018 was a year and a half...and even then, that included a three-month trip abroad. I've lived in cities with several million people, college towns, and tiny towns (e.g. Vergas, at pop. 350). And each experience has taught me a lot about myself and what I'm looking for in community. It's also forced me to come up with ways to stay grounded, despite all the change. For any of you out there that find yourselves in a similar, somewhat ungrounded state, here's what I have to offer: 1) Listen to music that reminds you of home 2) Make frequent phone calls to friends and family 3) Send random text messages and emails to people to tell them h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Learning to Dance Kizomba in Austin, Texas

It's been a while since I've posted here. I'll admit it's been hard to keep up with all the traveling I've been doing this summer, both for work and for plesure. I'll be dividing what I write accordingly between this blog for pleasure and my business blog with Mezclada. As I write this, I'm sitting in a plane on my wya to Lyon, France. Soemthign I could never have anticipated.  Today I want to take you back to July 20th-24th for the Neo Kizomba Festival in Austin, Texas. My first ever dance festival of its kind, and to be honest, my first rela formal introduction to kizomba, a dance with roots in Africa that was later popularized in the 80s in France.  Most readers at this point probably know that I'm a fan of dancing. So investing in a festival such as this one seemed like a natural next step to take my dancing to the next level. Little did I know that I would find myself dancing in the pool, awake until 1 a.m., and comforted by how much Spanish I hear...
Post a Comment
Read more

You have all the time in the world you need

Sometimes the most wonderful things can happen when your plans change. I've been writing about my travels in Costa Rica for the past several weeks as part of my 60-day financial fitness challenge through my business, Mezclada, and feel like the way that my mindset has shifted over the course of the past 50 days or so is quite remarkable. I was writing on the beach this morning, taking down all the notes of seeds that have been planted since I arrived in Santa Teresa at the beginning of January, and had one big takeaway that I felt was worth writing about here and publishing to share with others. It doesn't matter if you have $10,000 coming in every month if you can't take off at 4 p.m. to go use the sauna.  I say this because I've set a goal to earn 10K/mo. through Mezclada and my consulting work. But I realized that where I'm living, the people I'm surrounded by, and the activities I get to engage in on a daily basis are worth that much if not more. I'd mu...
Post a Comment
Read more