# How did you find a place to settle



## marmar (Jul 29, 2018)

I'm currently on the road and in search of a better place to live, so to say. I've parked my van in NYC past couple of years and got sick of that. Cruising around the states now trying to find a place I could see myself living. So my question to folks that travelled and then found that one place. What criteria were you using when picking a town, state, land to settle in? I feel currently really lost and have no idea where and how to stay. I don't have any offers of housing or a job in prospect, which would make that choice easier to make. So I'm going throu cities, towns and states trying to imagine myself living there, like getting a room and a job. Just having a hard time liking it anywhere. 
So how did you end up living where you are living now? If nothing came up, you didnt have a parents house or any other opportunity and you wanted to find a place to live where did you go and how did it work out?


----------



## Rhubarb Dwyer (Jul 29, 2018)

Shit, homie. That all depends on what you need and how you wanna be. Get out and get a feel for different places. When you're ready to hunker down, you'll have options at that point. 
Or, some place might strike a good chord and you create a new home base.
We can't tell you where you need to be. Go find it, yo!


----------



## marmar (Jul 29, 2018)

Snorting Nitrons said:


> Shit, homie. That all depends on what you need and how you wanna be. Get out and get a feel for different places. When you're ready to hunker down, you'll have options at that point.
> Or, some place might strike a good chord and you create a new home base.
> We can't tell you where you need to be. Go find it, yo!


 Yeah that's what I'm doing. I'm not really asking for an advice. I wanna hear others stories that's about it.


----------



## roughdraft (Jul 29, 2018)

it's a good question really, first obvious point - the more you explore the better idea you can get..not to be understated!

My contribution is: a rather dull factor that you must absolutely consider is the willpower to compromise and settle against yr own desires (to an extent, a la wanderlust/impulse)

like for me, and i am surely not alone, i enjoy many types of places but the only big thing i know -- i mainly enjoy places where there is at least a moderate amount of rain. so i could never see myself settling in the desert just visiting. but would it be a city? a town of 500? 10 000? 30 000? would i sooner settle in Seattle or Forks? oh but why the USA? could go up to Victoria, down to Valdivia - there are many details but never forget it is ultimately you and only you that will prevent or allow the settling.


----------



## peacefulmonokai (Jul 30, 2018)

Settling, in the sense of establishing "roots and all that", depends on where you came from, and what your family ties are. If you came from a broken family, like many here, you will likely be looking for a long time. My advice: pick an area where your skills can be of use - this is most often near urban cores. And establish relationships with people. Meet the right people, and they might "adopt" you. I came from a fucked up background, but soon found myself "adopted" by this big Italian family in NY. I met more and more folks, and felt somewhat at home for once. I had to say goodbye when my wanderlust kicked in. Settling, like the other posters stated, is about where you feel comfortable at. Climate. Economy. Politics. Regional and cultural differences. I say, try them all out, and see what you like.


----------



## Hillbilly Castro (Jul 31, 2018)

Well, think about climate change and peak oil and regional survival prospects for the worst case scenario for each. You'll want lots of water, low population density, a long hard winter to scare off city folks fleeing their homes, lots of game, and decent soil. Solid gun rights, and a good look at cops to citizens ratios and total annual traffic ticket collections, as well as zoning being lax, are all metrics for state and local governments with a commitment to personal freedom.

can't type because I am on mobile


----------



## schmutz (Aug 4, 2018)

I was actually headed to Iowa and my kids told me they wanted to stay here in Omaha. It's ended up being a pretty ideal spot for us...it's multicultural with good music and art scenes.' It's decent size city that has good schools, museums etc. It isn't hard to get around on public transportation. We can get out of the city into the country when we need to get away. And so far it has been affordable....


That being said, the weather sucks and every winter and every summer I swear it's time to move on.


----------



## marmar (Aug 10, 2018)

Well I thought I update my case here haha, Im staying in Taos New Mexico for a year. Will see how it goes. So far I really like the landscape, high desert surrounded by mountains with green forests with shitton of edible plants and blm forests where you can camp for free, that's what I've being doing. Planning on getting a job for winter season at this ski resort here. The town has many cool peoples and travellers pass by quite frequently. So far I haven't being lonely in two weeks we are here lol, always meeting somebody cool to hang out with and when I'm tired of socializing with folks in the deaert I go to the mountain forest to camp. A lot of people bought cheap land around here in the desert and live off grid I'm not talking about yuppie earthship place, there is a whole village of off gridders, trailers, buses, squatters former travelers and godknowsformerwhats who live there, it's kinda like the slabs people bought their 1/4 acre each and inhabit it full time, and it's cool cuz it's something I was actually looking for all over the country. So staying out here for now.


----------



## QU1DAM (Aug 23, 2018)

We thought we couldnt do anything in a southern latitude after trying to live in Las Vegas...

What is the weather like in New Mexico? We had an old friend of mine offer us to work as her care giver, we would jsut have to rent our own place and work for her then she may let us move in. Princess can have siezures if its too hot or theres not enough places for easy access to shade / cool water.


----------



## marmar (Aug 23, 2018)

Forest Faeries said:


> We thought we couldnt do anything in a southern latitude after trying to live in Las Vegas...
> 
> What is the weather like in New Mexico? We had an old friend of mine offer us to work as her care giver, we would jsut have to rent our own place and work for her then she may let us move in. Princess can have siezures if its too hot or theres not enough places for easy access to shade / cool water.


Depends where in NM. North is high desert and mountains, I haven't being here in winter yet, but it's cold and there ski resorts around. Right now it's hot in the desert and cold in the mountains, it's crazy but you drive 15 min up the hill and it's totally different land scape and wether too. 
I found this article to be describing the mesa pretty well. I personally love it, and want to but my own 1/4 acre here soon. Yea it's desert but I do like that there are a lot of people around, so sort of a community. But community is what you make it, so. More like minded cool people moving in would be nice. I mean folk that want to build and create not just drink in their trailer n shoot guns and then trash the place and disappear.
https://www.news.com.au/travel/insi...o/news-story/eddd12153644f8d084722f26a9bb4d26


----------



## Dahloaf223 (Jan 23, 2019)

Have you seem any good Earthships? Im not sold on the indoor garden. what's the point. I would want a greenhouse attached but outside, Ive seen it done in Nor Cal. I'm on the AZ side off hwy 40 by Concho. Ive heard all kinds of stories about murderers, skinwalkers, theives, ufos, our here but take it with a grain of salt. I went to Santa Fe, hiking the mountains got a similar vibe, but I met a lot really friendly people. I have a small 10×10 cabin i built, its technically not a residence, but flies under the radar until i have a rv/trailer set up. also want to head to alaska and get an alaskan saw mill set up, maybe prospect.


----------



## ElonMusksButtcheeks (Jan 27, 2019)

I decided to stay where I’m at for a little while because of job prospects, things to do like shows and art and environmentally and socially progressive politics. 
Being a queer environmentalist..
Still plan on moving though. I want to live in the country with the most protective environmental legislature in the world.


----------



## salxtina (Feb 3, 2019)

This is an interesting thread/question to me. I never got as "fully" into traveler lifestyle as many here, (so far!) but I have been houseless on and off at times, and after I left my home state, the next handful of places I lived didn't really "take," not even as bases to return to between travels.

What I did was farm-hop, WWOOF for a while, hitchhiked back across the country, up & down the eastern US for a while, get confident that I could live outside without money in different towns, and picked up various day labor... Now, some places I was an obvious outsider in more insular or marginalized cultures and couldn't synch up with them enough to feel I was getting any social 'return' from my energy. And one place I tried to participate in, well, not the mainstream society, but cultural scenes that were not explicitly political, and got hit with a_ whole lot _more bigotry and exploitive behavior and far less people with any critique of it, which is frustrating when wanting to feel I can connect with people outside smaller radical/political settings. And some places I passed by and caught glimpses of people and projects that called to me but I just couldn't get a foothold...

So I wound up where I am by chance, and was able to do life stuff here that I'd tried and failed to do elsewhere. I care about being places long enough to learn the landscape, about the animal migrations, what medicinal plants grow there. I want to both develop better outdoor-living skills & "marketable" work skills, and I've picked up some construction/remodeling/woodworking experience here that I hope can also carry over into mutual aid / autonomous infrastructure settings. (I'm also not complaining about just doing kitchen work in a warm building when winter set in...) Producing things for direct human use, not for market-exchanges! To some degree I can already do that, in both more organized and ad-hoc community networks. To be stable enough to *modulate* my interactions with people, to engage or withdraw as is harm-reducing in the moment - saw enough need for this in spaces where people were all _trying _to look out for each other and defend their people from [mining companies, police brutality, drug pushers, whatever], but nobody had enough resources between them to get any space from each other.

Like my goal above all, back in the day of getting the hell out of high school and my hometown, was to make a life with people who _wouldn't encourage me to be a sociopath,_ and/or enable more abuse against me, as the Combine wants us to do. But, right, "getting the knife out of my back" is not a hobby, I just wasn't really far-enough up my own hierarchy of needs to have other interests. It's been hard to make my way to places in life where I *can* think beyond that.

So - preferably I can take care of myself, with money or without, well enough not to create _needless _emergencies for other precarious people. Ideally I could earn enough income to provide for emergency relief for fellow travelers, but there are other ways to get better at that besides having money. So - can I find enough people in a given place who share my goals/ethics, enough that I can run things by them when I'm trying to get *other* stuff done with people who are all over the political spectrum?

Beyond that - proximity to the ocean and/or clean bodies of fresh water.


----------



## Deleted member 24029 (Feb 3, 2019)

@salxtina When you wrote "...not to create needless emergencies for other precarious people", I thought: That's a whole mission statement in itself...


----------



## salxtina (Feb 3, 2019)

True... Emergencies are inevitable, interdependence is inevitable, hence just an emphasis on the 'needless' part...


----------



## Deleted member 14481 (Mar 22, 2019)

I got to MN, with the plan to keep going west. I got a cavity, and signed up for healthcare - so I decided to hang out. I saw a lot of people were hiring, so I thought "why not get a summer job?" IT started getting cold so "either find a place or buy a bus ticket." Found a place. That was 4 years ago.


----------

