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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> Also, see earlier posts. Humans, being what we are, don't just shuffle
> off. That's my plan too, but human plans so often go into the toilet.

Or as Burns put it:

"The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men Gang aft agley"



I remember some fifteen years or so ago when an unenlighteed relative (by 
marriage) asked Denise "Well, have you gotten tired of playing Ms Farm Wife 
yet?" 
 And see your recent similar question.

There is an underlying misgiving that living like this takes a steel nerve 
and iron will and if ever that is weakened in the slightest by time or 
circumstance, we'd bolt off the the 'burbs in a flash.  But it's a mistaken 
misgiving.

The same is true of your speculation that someone resolved to resolve their 
life out decently and reasonably and make sure it is no burden to themselves 
and others is, says I, ill likely to reconsider and flinch in the end.

My fondest hope is to be found dead with the hoe in my hand or slumped over 
the workbench.  

Did you ever see the the flick "Outlaw Josie Wales"?  When Clint Eastwood 
rides out to meet the Indians they ask him why he came.  He said to die.  He 
said 
his piece and then added that since he was there to die, there was iron in 
his works of death, so they could know there was also iron in his words of 
life.

Just reverse that.   I have turned my face to this remote mountainside for a 
very long time and wrested a decent living, a 'right livelihood', from the 
wilderness.  I've met devastating problems.  I've watched crows and deer dig 
up 
my gardens, bears destroy my hives, and fire sweep across the place.  I've 
carried groceries, laundry, and children on my back (all at the same time) up 
this 
mountainside when the road was impassible.  I heaped up a house out of the 
very stones and timbers of the place and got enough acreage into production 
with 
a shovel.

There's iron in my words of life.

There's iron in my words of death.   </HTML>