Except in the 1516 novel by Sir Thomas
More, Utopia is said to be impossible. That is probably a
blessing--it would be terribly boring after a week or three. No
challenges. For each of us though, there is an ideal place--one
that embodies most of our wants and needs and fewest of our dislikes.
One that soothes us and excites us, makes us feel secure but gives us
energy for life's explorations. With clarification, focus, and
persistence we each can find the place that is ideal for us.
In our mind, we can create any world we choose.
Our finest achievements often begin with dreams. So dream. Daydream
or nightdream, but dream. Emerson said: "The ancestor of every action is a
thought." Thoreau expounded: "If one advances confidently in the direction
of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will
meet with a success unexpected in common hours." With a poet's
conciseness, Carl Sandburg cut right to it: "Nothing happens unless first a
dream."
One's imagined ideal place is often a blend of
dreams and chance: lingering memories of childhood camps, vacations, books or
movies, college or job experiences. I recently recalled an emotional
connection with place that I made in January of 1970. My grandmother had
died, and my brother and I were driving our "won't fly" parents and sister
nonstop from California to Wisconsin for the funeral.
As we sped through the Missouri Ozarks I found
myself increasingly captured by the scenery. And then I spotted a cabin on
a hill, just visible through the leafless trees, gray smoke twisting skyward
from a stone chimney. In only a few moments an indelible connection was
apparently made. Seven years later, after considering the entire 48
contiguous states and carefully researching many specific states, never
consciously remembering that cabin in the trees, I bought my ideal country
place--smack dab in the middle of the Ozarks.
A country home typically defines a house, a somewhat
controlled area around the house, and a larger, more natural, maybe wild area
expanding beyond--whether majestic mountains, undulating sands, shimmering waves
of grasses, or the quiet, cool green of forest. It is often more, the sum
of house, garden, and landscape plus the magical, mystical aura common to a
natural place. The whole can only be improved by working with instead of
against nature.
The ideal country home place provides necessities:
healthful air, water and soil, climate wherein we thrive, and those utilities
and services necessary to our chosen lifestyle. It provides space and
conditions for our buildings and our activities, including food production and
recreation and, increasingly, our commercial work. Located amidst chosen
natural beauty, the ideal home provides mental and psychological well-being and
it stimulates and nurtures our spiritual explorations. The ideal home
place inspires us to become more than we are. It elicits light, truth, and joy.
Location is paramount. The reason for the
cliche: "The three most important elements of value are location, location, and
location," is that almost anything about a place can be changed except its
location. Terrain can be graded, trees and shrubs cut down or planted, and
a house can be built, rebuilt, altered, razed, or moved. Only location and
the attendant climate are unchangeable.
r.