Why did I leave the metropolis for the village

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Not even imagine what would have happened to us if we had stayed in the city - it meant so much and changed our impulse to rebuild everything anew.

We look at family photographs of those years with a smile and remember the first steps and tests on the village soil. Say what you like, our brother, a city dweller, is firmly on the brake … He sips fresh milk and frowns: a cow smell! Shop, from packages - it's white and wet and nothing else. And next time he will go for a swim in the river, and - on you! - mud, algae, tadpoles swim in the water. Ugh … Urgently to Egypt, to the hotel pools with a tiled bottom and gentle water of bright blue color. The problem is that with chemicals, but clean and civilized.

Admiring the delights of the landscape, of course, is better without leaving the car. Because if you open the glass a little, we'll swarm gadflies. “Grass to the Waist” is all the more a solid thriller. As you think, what is in it, in this grass …

And we and our children, of course, have gone through this on our own experience: May beetles, mice, nettles, the neighbor's dog is insolent, mosquito bites, the scythe does not mow, it is far to the store, the stove smokes and does not light up. Robinson's life on a desert island is difficult and full of vicissitudes …

However, our young family was actively growing and the responsible parental consciousness demanded to give them all the best, the most correct and the most environmentally friendly. We spent the warm half of the year in our country house, and for the winter we returned to St. Petersburg.

Three years of such a nomadic life have passed, and we began to notice that we are waiting for sending to the village like the nightingale of summer, while autumn and the return journey to the city are psychologically harder and harder. The cramped conditions of the apartment, the slushy climate, the crowded transport, constant childhood illnesses - there is no need to talk a lot about the inconveniences known to the average inhabitant of a metropolis, and especially to those burdened with a family. “Low ceilings and narrow walls squeeze the soul and mind,” as Dostoevsky wrote, also a resident of St. Petersburg.

Like a boy who drags on for a long time before jumping from a high bank into the water for the first time, crouches, shakes his arms and then, closing his eyes, flies headlong downward - plop! - so my wife and I one day decided to take a walk - was not! - moving and wintering in the village. It turned out not so bad. Our first winter was harsher than usual, but the house was warm and cozy. The children enjoyed the snow and sledding, at that time I switched to remote work long ago - journalism, editing, etc. The wife, as a young scientist, candidate and associate professor in permanent pregnancy and nursing leave, actively educated herself through the Internet.

The career was not particularly attractive, because in the previous time I was whoever I was and what I did not do. There are a lot of interesting things in the world, organizing is a matter of self-discipline, and acting as a squirrel in an office wheel and at the same time feeling needed and busy, in my personal opinion and taste of a thirty-five-year-old non-youth with experience, was not necessary.

Was it difficult at first? Oh, difficult. The priest, from whom we asked for blessings, looked at us doubtfully: “Can you hold out? Over the summer in the village, the shirt on the body from the sweat of workmen. " But we did not undertake plowing of large territories and acquired the first livestock only later. We did not intend to transform into peasants at all, but continued to live completely urban interests. Even the number on the car was not changed for a long time, keeping the proud "78" as a banner.

The problems were, rather, different: psychological compatibility, the difference in the rhythms of the capital with the hinterland. Well, the skills and abilities were also lacking, of course. Those who left the countryside for the cities in the first generation yearn for their places. Visiting his small homeland, he experiences a surge of strength and a feeling of freedom, does not breathe in the air of the fields, listens sweetly to the talk of local residents, happily takes on work familiar from childhood. We grew up on asphalt, breathed gasoline exhaust and, as usual, did not hold a hammer in our hands.

Local residents, mostly elderly people, were greeted with caution. A local resident - what does he want? First of all, he needs to understand who you are and what you are doing here, and to break it down into categories familiar to him. Moving from the capital to the outback, frankly speaking, is not the most frequent case in our time. If from here to the capital, it would be understandable …

We made sure that it is more convenient and easier to take care of children in the countryside than in the city. Children in the village:

a) they never get bored (they just don't know about the difference between ordinary life and entertainment), b) love nature, c) read a lot, d) listen to audiobooks, e) do not tolerate pop, chanson and rap, f) play mothers and daughters, relay races, snow fortresses and other human games, g) glue, cut, draw and build, h) they sing military songs and know the heroes of the Great Patriotic War better than their parents, i) stage theatrical performances and shoot them on video, j) make music, k) speak the correct Russian language, m) study well and independently as an external student.

Fortunately, in the era of the Internet and DVD, the village has ceased to be a place separated from culture and knowledge.

Read also: 10 observations of an American farmer in Russia

You can ask the question: "What about communication, leisure?" - and you will be right. Communication and variety of entertainment our family lacked and is not enough. They were lacking in St. Petersburg, where friendly youth campaigns somehow got confused, falling into a streak of everyday and personal problems; communication in the countryside is also lacking. Disunity is the scourge of our world and I, frankly, do not know what to do against it.

At the same time, judge for yourself, what amusements, when you have the weather on your hands, is less small? Life involuntarily rebuilt itself and flowed according to the principle “my home is my fortress”. And rightly so, this is wonderful! There should be more families in the life of a modern person, not less. It is useful for dependent people to start relying only on themselves.

The so-called problems of family relationships - from boredom, they are easily resolved where they are passionate about a common cause. Therefore, family radicalism is great! Home undertakings forever! If you want to be happy, be happy. Arrange any pleasures you want in your home circle, and do not deny yourself anything. O-le-ole-ole!..

So, little by little, our socialized urban dwellers' thoughts began to tune in to an informal alternative “wave”. Here you, the reader, where do you think of directing the excess of creative energy and household imagination? Surely, buy a new furnishings for the nursery, change the windows to plastic ones, or, as a last resort, plan to move to a new address. In any case, it will be: expensive, not with your own hands and within the framework of a strict "table of ranks" of urban improvement. In the village, on your personal farm, you can: dig a pond, cut platbands, try to plant the most unusual plants, set up your own playground, bring water into the house, etc. At the same time, no one will ever say about your pond: "sucks", platbands, and in the absence of great skill, will look great.

A country estate is a great designer, and you are your own master, boss and user in it. At first, it's scary to think about becoming a stove-maker. But no, at the end of the heating season, different ideas are already stirring in my head and haunted: what and where in the masonry of the stove should be improved and developed. There is not enough living space - it doesn't matter, add an extension to the house. It is not too difficult to expand by fifteen square meters: time, desire and seventy thousand rubles in addition (in other words, up to five thousand per "square"). For comparison, in the city an increase in one extra room will require: a) a headache, b) a hypertensive crisis, c) dozens of scandals with relatives and, finally, d) the long-awaited debt yoke won in a difficult struggle for many years.

In the village, if I may say so, “mentality” is finally changing so much that on her birthday, instead of some elegant thing or household equipment, she asks for a garden cart, and the children dream of feeding chickens with rabbits more than anything else. A “vacation” with a trip somewhere under the palm trees looks absurd: “Well, where are we going, and why? But what about our dear household and flower beds?"

It is the turn of agricultural themed communities and delight, almost childish, from various cunning diggers, planters, weeds, feeders, drinkers and mowers. Moreover, now a new system of permaculture is included, which does not require hard work. You have animals, it seems sad to go to the store for potatoes, only those from the garden are recognized as cucumbers. You begin to feel that the city has let you go, it is somewhere far, far away. You and your family become people of the earth. Whether you will be offered a career, whether the topic of education, medicine and other convenient "options" of civilization will become acute - all emerging issues will be resolved "in the process", in the order of receipt. The main thing is that you understand that the experiment was a success. In the village you are reborn, here is your place, and from here comes the umbilical cord that attaches you to the universe.

Andrey Rogozyansky

See also: From city to country: a completely new life