If you’ve been looking at my photos on the blog, you’ve probably noticed that there is a lot of water in the background. There are some photo shoots at the beach too. That’s because we live on an island! And if you want to get back to nature, what better place to live? My home here even inspired the name of my blog, Fae Cottage.
Living on an island is not as cozy and lovely as it sounds. Well, sometimes it is, but other times we sit in a long ferry line of tourists to get home after a day of shopping. When we first moved here, the alarm rang at 4:30 in the morning so my husband could commute to his job in the city. (But thanks to two years of lock downs, he now just commutes to his office in the basement.)
Getting Back to Nature Right at Home
But other times it is so lovely, quiet, and peaceful, I wouldn’t want to live any place else. When I see people writing about how to get back to nature, I don’t have to read on. I already live in the middle of a forest. How much more back to nature can you get than that?
We never intended to move to an island. Our friends lived here though, and sometimes I would think as we were leaving to return to the city, “Wouldn’t it be nice to just live here?” They always say, be careful what you wish for…
Then one day when we’d had enough of sharing a driveway with not so nice neighbors, our friend from the island just happen to email us that there was a piece of property near them for sale. They thought we should look at.
So on Saturday, we drove up. The property they had seen wasn’t right at all, and neither was the next one, or the next one we looked at. But before we drove back to the ferry, we decided to look at one last place. We drove down a gravelly, winding, dead-end road. And before we even got out of the car I said to my husband, “This is it!”
The salal and the huckleberry were so thick, our real estate agent fell down several times showing us the property. My husband turned to me and said, “Are you sure you want to get this back to nature?”
I looked around. “Do you see any neighbor’s houses?”
“No,” he said.
“Then yes, I really do want to get this back to nature.” And actually, we have lovely neighbors here. We just don’t see much of them.
Not Everything is a Sign
I learned this the hard way. Sometimes things you think are signs, like our friend emailing us that day, are just a coincidence. But we have been happy here for almost 15 years. Also, we’re lucky to have amazing old growth forest state parks nearby. I love taking long walks there with my dog year round
We’re islanders now, who talk about how to avoid the longest ferry backups when going over to the mainland, and look forward to the end of tourist season so we can have our quaint village to ourselves again. The other day I saw a bumper sticker that said, “Slow down, this ain’t the mainland!”
These are the things I love about Living on an Island
- I never worry whether I’ve forgotten and left the car or house unlocked.
- Even though we have the best neighbors now, we can’t see any other houses from our property
- The beach is just a 15 minutes drive away.
- We hike trails and visit parks several times a week.
- It’s so quiet and the air is really clean
- People are truly nice here.
When I’m outside in my backyard, I have no neighbors looking over the fence to see what I’m doing. It’s weird to me now how noisy people in the suburbs are. And neighborhood gossip! Just, no.
I love the privacy of living in the forest. It would be hard to go back to a normal suburban neighborhood without feeling like I’m in a fish bowl. And even though I write a blog, I love being also to share only what I choose about my life. No one stops by my house unexpectedly either, which is nice.
For some more reasons it’s great to live in the country, check out 14 Reasons Country Folks Live Better
And These are the Things I Don’t Love
- We often sit in long ferry lines.
- Everything costs more, especially gas.
- Not much to do. We have one small movie theater in the village that gets movies a couple of months after they are released.
- The schools are not the greatest, and it seems like the best teachers leave for more pay elsewhere.
Mostly it’s the ferry lines. They keep me from going to the mainland very often. It’ hard to get home again when people from the city are headed out to get “back to nature” near my backyard! But when I’m in the city, the drivers are so crazy! I can’t wait to get home again. I think I prefer ferry lines to freeway backups.
You’re Happiest Where You Make up Your Mind to Be
My mother used to say something like that to me when I would beg her to let me change schools. I hated it then, but I’ve come to realize she was right. Even though there are things that I miss about living in the city, such as:
- I loved buying a latte and browsing the magazines on a rainy afternoon at Barnes and Noble.
- Shopping for craft and sewing supplies at the fabric store.
- Dining at a nice restaurant for lunch I haven’t been to before.
- I miss Indian food.
- Going anywhere without making it an all day trip.
We do think about moving somewhere else, and someday we might move far from here. But for now, I’m happy getting back to nature here in my own forest, and knowing that I can go to the beach if I want to.
It’s just 15 minutes away.