When the pandemic hit last year, escaping the city felt hugely appealing. I could become a hickster! Then my family and I went to stay in the eerie wilds
I may be a homosexual but, let me be very clear, I am not a homosexual who camps. Like a lot of people, I experimented with camping in my youth but eventually realised it wasn’t my thing. Still, a few years ago, I found myself camping in New York State’s Catskill mountains for a friend’s birthday. Due to some logistical errors (I forgot to take a sleeping bag) and an incontinent dog called Audrey (long story), it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I did, however, fall in love with a cute little Catskills hamlet called Livingston Manor that we drove through on the way home. “Maybe we should leave New York City and move up here?” I said to my partner. “We could grow vegetables and breathe fresh air! Hicksters are the new hipsters, apparently. We could be hicksters!”
We did not become hicksters. We forgot all about our alternative Catskills existence as soon as we got home. But when the pandemic hit, the fantasy of country living returned with a vengeance. Of course, we were far from the only people cooped up in a tiny urban apartment dreaming of more space. Rural house prices went bonkers as stir-crazy New Yorkers snapped up homes upstate; living a “simple” life in the country rapidly became unaffordable. So we stayed in our one-bedroom city apartment and stewed.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2WolPAr
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