The thought of living in a rural area in central Europe without having to tolerate farming chemicals practically everywhere, in massive quantities, sounds more or less utopistic, or ???
Up here in the north we need to use radically less insectisides and pesticides, because the winter keeps the insect populations and diseases a bit in order.
But the real curse is the change in farming methods, everybody uses this RoundUp-type chemical nowadays to avoid moving the soil in the autumn. It should be banned worldwide, immediately. We're losing birds, bees and other insects.

sharke

Starise
Not familiar with France Zo. I don't know if you can get away from it. I live in the middle of a whole bunch of fertile farmland in a very small place that probably isn't considered a town but they did name it. A bank, a small store.
 
Guess what just happened? They put a small development (new houses) right over the hill. Luckily I'm up the hill and my back yard still faces farmland. Also fortunate the development isn't very big, maybe 15 houses. Still things seem to grow slowly. In 20 more years (or less) there will be a WalMart here.
 
Hard to escape pollution. World weather patterns and all. The Fukashima nuclear leak. Pacific fish anyone? When they spread manure here it can get pretty wicked. If they didn't do it the crops wouldnt be so nice. Only lasts a week or two. But Man.Pew.
Cancer stats show it's everywhere. The only immunity is not to eat or drink anything....oh and don't go out.

I think the thing we have to remember is that despite the pollution and nastiness and cancer this and cancer that, we're still living lives which on average are twice as long as they were 200 years ago. Life expectancy just keeps going up. 

 
Tough to outlive Methuselah. Who knows? Maybe. 
 
Anyways. Interesting views of South France and Canada. I read a fair amount. Some of it is worth reading. In one view  cities were never the intended way for humans to live. They were supposed to spread out over larger areas in smaller, more sustainable groups.
 
I don't think they will ever go away though.

Reminds me of an experiment they did in the 70's with a lot of mice.
The mice were okay doing their rodent thing.
A replica was built to scale of a section of New York City with high rise apartments and moved the mice in.
All sort of aggressive and perverted behavior quickly started to develop.
Davey Crockett said that when he could see the smoke from a neighbor's chimney, it was time to move on.

I like this quote John ...

Zo,
 
One element in surviving modern civilization is missing.
 
It is intense. It is painful. It is not a lot of fun. It goes against everything you have been taught.
 
Fasting for toxin elimination. Can give you rationale down to biochem support if you want, but this is where the rubber meets the road.
Our bodies are a toxic waste dump of crap we have ingested or breathed in. Cumulative over a lifetime. We are poisoned. Half life of DDT would take us 5000 years to eliminate if all exposure was to stop. Just an example.
 
My crazy childhood in the 1950's. We got off from school and ran to the shoe stores so we could play with the X-Ray machines that showed how your feet would fit in shoes. Our equivalent of a video game to wiggle your toes and watch your bones. Then if it was on the correct day of the week, the DDT truck would be out to spray everything. Beautiful white opaque clouds of poisons. Goal was to ride our bikes through the clouds and try not to collide with each other.
 
Purification of our structure as much as we can eliminate, is most efficiently achieved by periodic fasting. Can elaborate if anyone is remotely interested. Reinforce that this is the ultimate regimen to clean out and extend life, but not a whole lot of fun.
 
John

True ...

I would love to move to the mountains but I am not the type of person who can be isolated like that.  I must, must, must be around lots of people.
 
I think, growing up in New York City like I did, makes it hard for me to be in small towns.  Even where I live now - a city of 60/70 thousand..   feels like a small town.
 
The smallest town I was ever in, had a population of 7.   It is in South Dakota - I forget the name of the town
 
 
Edit =
 
I've also been to Yeehaw Junction.   Nope, I wouldn't want to live there
https://en.wikipedia.org/...ehaw_Junction,_Florida

I spent 22 years in So. Cal with all those people and not until we started doing ski vacations to the local mountain did we realize we didn't like the hustle bustle of city life. My wife is a So cal native.
 
We just went down to Denver to do some official business after not venturing out of our mountain area all winter. Wow what a full frontal assault of humanity! - Gotta get back to the woods. I'm a jumpy type A personality who after being surprised by little more then moose, hate cars seemingly coming from all directions. My reactions are slowing as I age so that may exasperate the situation. I presume after some time I would get back in the groove. But it is so quiet and peaceful right now as I type this........ what was that!

Sleeping in the mountains just makes me remember I have tinnitus :(

Linear Phase
I would love to move to the mountains but I am not the type of person who can be isolated like that.  I must, must, must be around lots of people.
 
I think, growing up in New York City like I did, makes it hard for me to be in small towns.  Even where I live now - a city of 60/70 thousand..   feels like a small town.
 
The smallest town I was ever in, had a population of 7.   It is in South Dakota - I forget the name of the town
 
 
Edit =
 
I've also been to Yeehaw Junction.   Nope, I wouldn't want to live there
https://en.wikipedia.org/...ehaw_Junction,_Florida

Take the middle path in everything you do.