Coming back from vacation in northern Vermont a few weeks ago, my husband and I fantasized about buying a piece of land up there and building a cottage off the grid. The land would have to be in some utopian mountaintop location that is simultaneously extremely remote and near a community of people with skills we don’t have. The cottage would have geothermal or solar power, a productive well, a large vegetable garden, a hen house, and somehow, we don’t know how, a cloak of invisibility. Short of that, there would be a key to the deadbolt that we’d one day give to our daughter when we’re very old and say, “Go there. If things get really bad, just go there. It’s yours.” Read more…