while I can see this as a passing thought or maybe a continuing emotion. . . . let me disabuse you in regard to these concerns.
my father was a scientist who jetted around the country inspecting and instructing laboratory managers for a major military-industrial-complex/mega corporate entity with interests in everything from raw materials to space technology, who maybe on five occasions took the boys out on some mountains to gather pine nuts. While his father had been a "dirt-poor farmer" with land but no cash, and had offered the farm to dad on easy terms, my mom had nixed the idea with some extremely uninhibited rant about how could we ever afford it when bobby needs shoes and danny needs pants, it didn't cure me.
when I was twenty five I tried to get dad to become partner/investor with me in buying a farm for $120,000. Twenty years later I bought a farm in the same area for $160,000 myself. While my dad had told me I wasn't a farmer, and was right, when I did it with my own money all of a sudden he decided maybe I wasn't a know-nothing after all, and even my brothers began to get concerned he'd leave some of his millions to me. When he died in 2000, the farm I would have bought for 120K was on the market for about what his estate was worth. . . . my place was a small outlier nobody could make a living from, but the one I had wanted had some excellent water rights and today is about forty times the productivity that my place is.
But, as far as rural life goes, it is the intent of our government/managers to run the stupid little people off the land and give it back to the wolves and buffalo, while the useful eaters toil under the urban castle governance staff's evil eyes. You can't touch the little creek and take a drink, or leave a footprint in the mud. If you want your kids to know anything about nature, you're gonna just hafta find a place to make yer stand.
