A village, a fiefdom, a lordship…
Imagine you had your own little valley, your own dale or glen, with a central and symmetrical lord’s manor, replete with all the rooms and structures you need for a life of freedom and activity or serenity. Several bedrooms, including a central master bedroom, tended to by a small staff of maids and a head butler. Fireplaces in each, and a king sized bed with a dark wood canopy and silky ethereal veil in your bedroom. A stable outside for pleasant horse riding, a walled stone gardens for tea parties and afternoon lounging, a fenced paddock for sports and athletics. A dining room with a grand, heavy table fit for more than a dozen family, friends, and guests, with glass windows overlooking the rolling fields of your manor and territory, perhaps extending over a river and into rolling hills and the horizon. A large stone fireplace adorns some room gathered with furniture and appliances, where everyone naturally gathers for entertainment, relaxation, and the evening after the day. A library dressed with mahogany book shelves and all manner of books, collections going back three centuries, and plenty of trinkets, sundries, and treasures lining open shelves and walls. Another room with a heavy stained oak desk, where one can be themselves utterly and write, create, paint, and more. A bathhouse room with a soaking tub you can float sprawled out in, a tiled shower, a sauna, and a grooming table. Stone, tile, marble, cedar wood, and earthen colors decorate this true and complete sanctuary away from the world and tis burdens, thoughts, stresses…
A few houses encircle a village center, perhaps a nice fountain and small park area. These are your villagers, your peasants whom work the land, help you, and produce income for your fief and the community.
A nearby lake offers plentiful fishing for several people every year, as well as freshwater for boiling and a variety of miscellaneous materials like lakeweed and driftwood.
Wells and a natural spring provide the sweetest and purest shining water endlessly and permanently.
A general store, a bakery, a small library and bookstore, all the essential amenities and reliquaries congregated in the village center…
Perhaps rather than a village you rule over, it is a community of serenity and stillness… Where everyone cooperates and appreciates, where life is naught but life and its beauty and tranquility.
Wild berries line the streams and trodden paths, the natural walkways and forest edges. Wild herbs of oregano, thyme, sage, dill, mint, and all manner and even more are prolific in the fields, gathered fresh for cooking and sold in nearby villages, or bartered in the marketplace at the large stone trading hub city.
Plenty of forestry and an old growth wood dots your land. This provides endless lumber for building and repairs, and timber for profit income. Game animals like deer run rampant, and a bounty of mushrooms both culinary and medicinal endow the forest floor and rock formations.
Isolated and protected from the rest of the world by large rolling hills and mountains on several sides, a naturally perfect place hidden from the rest of the world, cradled by large rock formations as if a mythical place from legend.
An old grand orchard and permaculture gardens dot the surrounding landscape, and wide open fields of golden wheat and grains flutter in the wind, with sheep and cows grazing in natural pastures with grass blades flowing with the breeze…
Hard cheeses, apple ciders and wines, fruit preserves and smoked jerkies, storehouses filled with all manner of foods, and cellars filled with all manner of ferments and containers. The cornucopia of every harvest season, and the artisan artistry year round…
Community festivals and parties, feasts and nights spent together… Perhaps amongst the village lads and lasses, a childhood friend you marry like in the oldest of fantasies and romances, destined since birth in this mythical, isolated place…
There is no work, only play, freedom, and fun, which nature and life and the universe provides; Milk is plentiful, and fruit is free, the fish swim endlessly and the honey bees provide effortlessly. Wouldn’t it be relaxing and fulfilling, to gather your own berries and mushrooms whenever, and be gifted cheeses, juices, and honey from your neighbor.
A sanctuary from the world, a complete world hidden away… A replete and self-sufficient world, community, that will survive in peace and comfort no matter what happens in the outside world… Free to accumulate and recuperate, to dream and imagine, create and construct… peace, prosperity, power.
You could put your phone down, turn your computer off, and take a break from the news at any time you wanted, for as long as you wanted, even forever… Watching the sunrise over a glistening crystalline-surface lake, watching the sun set over rocky hills, swimming under sunlight, dreaming under moonlight… Walking the forest floor in the rainy spring, looking for mushrooms and listening to the flowing streams… Swimming the warm lake surface and diving for mussels in the summer… Picking crisp dewy apples and contemplating the beauty of nature in atuumn… Listening to the howling wind and looking over the pristine snow capped mountaisn, the peace of existnece in winter… The heights of nature and the depths of imagination…
Harmony, serenity, tranquility.
Abundance, permanence, sustenance.
Haven, hamlet, home…
Stronghold, sanctuary, sanctum…
Imagine…
Apex of Men 