Just A Thought About Our Yesterday and Tomorrow

Ruthanne

Ruthanne

Caregiver
Location
Midwest
I'm not sure where this thread goes so I'll just see.

Have you thought of what life was like back in the 1800's and how free so many things were? Walking through a meadow, swimming in a stream, jumping over a puddle, looking at a starry sky, singing a little tune...

I realize so much has made America what it is today but it seems to me there were much better things for all of us to look forward to back then than what there is today with so much now intruding on our peace of mind.

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Well tbh , We were free like that even in the 60's... we were what they would call Feral children today... but we did all those things... we'd picnic in the meadows just us children with a bottle of water we'd brought from home, and a Jam sandwich... we'd run and hike up chalk mountains.. we'd swing over the streams on home made ropes.... we'd cycle for hours ....

..and you wanna know something ?... we all can still do that today where I live..(y):love:

it's all free.., the meadows , the woodlands, the mountains... free!...and we all still make use of them even now in my 60's, I'm forever there as you all know by my photos...

the kids might not be able to feel as free as we did when we were little and need parents to go with them nowadays due to the weirdos that inhabit our earth .... but the freedom is still all there and I'm lucky to have it all around me...

This is all within minutes of my house....


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So many more can be seen in the ''photos from your neighbourhood'' on the photo forum on here...
 
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hollydolly said:
Well tbh , We were free like that even in the 60's... we were what they would call Feral children today... but we did all those things... we'd picnic in the meadows just us children with a bottle of water we'd brought from home, and a Jam sandwich... we'd run and hike up chalk mountains.. we'd swing over the streams on home made ropes.... we'd cycle for hours ....

..and you wanna know something ?... we all can still do that today.
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Go for it Holly!
 

Aunt Bea said:
IMO we are the only thing that has changed.

We spend too much of our time worrying about what might happen instead of living our lives.
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Quite so, Aunt Bea, it's why I don't bother with newspapers. Journalists always dramatise, shock headlines sells newspapers.
TV news can also have the ability to depress, so I don't much bother with that either. If I thought that I had the ability to change things I would have entered politics.
 
Life on Earth has always been a violent adventure activity, with pockets of love, kindness and honor.

Now with that being said, it is very different nowadays. Instant exposure to the worst humans ever because of the television and the internet.

I intend to fill my brain with gratitude, and mindfulness with every morning that I awake. I will be spending many hours in the woods as soon as the insect season slows down. There is closeness to God and simple beauty there.
 
Lawrence Nobs said:
Life on Earth has always been a violent adventure activity, with pockets of love, kindness and honor.

Now with that being said, it is very different nowadays. Instant exposure to the worst humans ever because of the television and the internet.

I intend to fill my brain with gratitude, and mindfulness with every morning that I awake. I will be spending many hours in the woods as soon as the insect season slows down. There is closeness to God and simple beauty there.
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That's why i retired to a small rural town, we have a gew acres and beautiful views, especially to the east, and state and national parks hiking trails even shorter drive than when we lived in Wyoming. Tho will probably wait a year after they reopen to go, let the stir crazy crazy city dwellers enjoy them, i've got land enough to roam right here.
Mosquito season already easing here as the nights dropping into low 40s (and one 38F night) won't be long before a will need the eoodstove going.
 
feywon said:
That's why i retired to a small rural town, we have a gew acres and beautiful views, especially to the east, and state and national parks hiking trails even shorter drive than when we lived in Wyoming. Tho will probably wait a year after they reopen to go, let the stir crazy crazy city dwellers enjoy them, i've got land enough to roam right here.
Mosquito season already easing here as the nights dropping into low 40s (and one 38F night) won't be long before a will need the eoodstove going.
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Sounds beautiful. I tried to move to the Missouri Ozarks last month. I support an adult autistic daughter, and I just could not make that move this soon. It would be so heavenly to view huge sunsets nearly every evening, and be mere footsteps to the chorus of morning birds in the forest.
 
Lawrence Nobs said:
Sounds beautiful. I tried to move to the Missouri Ozarks last month. I support an adult autistic daughter, and I just could not make that move this soon. It would be so heavenly to view huge sunsets nearly every evening, and be mere footsteps to the chorus of morning birds in the forest.
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When we moved here in spring of 2012, we went outside that night exhausted as both daughter and i were, and when i spotted the Milky Way in all its glory i wept. I had not, since early childhood been able to see it that well without driving way out of town due to light pollution in cities. When it hit me that i would now be able to see it many nights a year just by stepping out in my own yard, the joy and gratitude just leaked out my eyes.
 
When we moved to the country, my collie and I used to go outside and look at the stars every night. We'd lie on the ground. Sometimes the stars looked like they were sparkling in the leafless trees. We also had tons of lightning bugs -- I hadn't seen one since I was a child. My kids had never seen one. We had woods to walk in, hilly pastures to roll down, wild turkeys and their babies to watch, and many other animals I had never seen except in pictures. My husband lives in that house now, but he could not care less about nature. It is a great place to live for a woman and her dog, though -- lots to learn, lots to explore, lots to see.
 
WheatenLover said:
When we moved to the country, my collie and I used to go outside and look at the stars every night. We'd lie on the ground. Sometimes the stars looked like they were sparkling in the leafless trees. We also had tons of lightning bugs -- I hadn't seen one since I was a child. My kids had never seen one. We had woods to walk in, hilly pastures to roll down, wild turkeys and their babies to watch, and many other animals I had never seen except in pictures. My husband lives in that house now, but he could not care less about nature. It is a great place to live for a woman and her dog, though -- lots to learn, lots to explore, lots to see.
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I love the picture you painted.
 
Like my parents told me, "Kids today don't know what they are missing out on." I feel the same way about today's youths. They will never experience some of the best times a kid could ever have and back then, you didn't need a lot f money or technology to have a boatload of fun.
 
oldman said:
Like my parents told me, "Kids today don't know what they are missing out on." I feel the same way about today's youths. They will never experience some of the best times a kid could ever have and back then, you didn't need a lot f money or technology to have a boatload of fun.
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I know the perfect example of that:
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This lady remembers the fun of the swings from when she was a child.
There is a clue as to why this is such an appealing picture.
Look down in the very left hand corner, what's that on the ground?

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There you go she has to use Michael to support her.
Michael?
Michael Caine, of course.
 
1800's? Free? Life expectancy in the late 50's to early 60's. Cooked and heated with wood, coal... certainly not electricity or natural gas. No indoor plumbing. If you lived too far off the grid, marauding criminals or warring Natives might find you defenseless. Shopping for groceries, etc... get harness on the horse, hook it to the buckboard, and make a days trip to town.
We moved into our first home with indoor plumbing in 1952. Until then, we had an outdoor toilet and a "thunder bucket" you used at night or if it was storming. Baths on Saturday night... only. Kids in first followed by Mom. Dad last because he was the dirtiest from farm work all week. Two stoves in the kitchen. One wood. The other fuel oil. The fuel oil stove stunk up the entire house. The wood stove took quite a while to stoke a fire and control the heat.
There are plenty of places, today, where one can live and still enjoy the outdoors. We can sit on our back deck and watch the beautiful sunsets. We can sit out front and watch the dawning light. We can take long walks due to living in a quite safe community. We can walk to Kroger's and other shopping. We are less than a mile away from hospital, doctor's office, all kinds of medical professionals. I enjoy the "freedom" of living close to conveniences.
Grew up on a farm and couldn't wait to leave it, moving to "civilization"..... :>)
 
I have thought about what it was like back in the 1800's, the 1830's to be exact. I was writing a story about someone who lived in my area during that time period and had to research facts. It was a hard time to live in. The man who owned the property I lived on, had been paid to cut a road that is 11 miles through the thick forest and was given 50 acres of land in return. It was a rough road and the settlement that was eventually built there traveled it by foot, by horse, by oxen including wagons. I explored much of the forest around my house and the remains of a whole community were hidden away there. My house was all that was left in the location. I ended up doing a lot of research on the history of my house and the surrounding area. Life was not easy, even for the children.
 
Ruthanne said:
Have you thought of what life was like back in the 1800's and how free so many things were? Walking through a meadow, swimming in a stream, jumping over a puddle, looking at a starry sky, singing a little tune...

I realize so much has made America what it is today but it seems to me there were much better things for all of us to look forward to back then than what there is today with so much now intruding on our peace of mind.
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Thanks for this, and yes I do think about it a lot. It is easy to focus on the good things about the past. In the US anyway things like wide open spaces, plenty of game and fish and so on.

However I am not sure I would want to go there. For example without modern sanitation and medicine life was shorter and less healthy than today. In fact I suspect most of the folks on this forum would not still be alive at our ages. And there were some bad things we tend not to like to think about, people were much poorer, slavery or lack of civil rights etc...

I'd sure be interested in getting to visit the past, but think I am probably lucky to be living today.
 
My current house was built around 1830-40 and looking at parish records, the village was pretty well self-sufficient. The houses had a good size garden to allow vegetables and fruit to be grown - maybe keep chickens or a pig for food. The village had two schools, a church, blacksmith, store, inn etc.. now it has none of these. It is however safe to go walking, have a picnic etc..

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I don't know where the water supply came from, but I expect that there was a village pump somewhere. Quite a few of the local farmhouses still have their own wells and sewage treatment facilities. Heating was probably by peat fire, the peat being dug locally. This area of the village was called 'fishtown' - nothing to do with fish, but a corruption of the Gaelic for 'town by the moss burn (where the peat was dug)'.
 

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