Could You have Survived 18 Century Life ?

[so lucky]

Well, you know, back then, they didn't bathe every day, probably not even at all during the winter. And they wore the same clothes for a looong time before laundering. So some of those chores that we take without complaint today wouldn't have been very frequent then. They didn't wash their hair very often, so electric hair dryers and curling irons weren't needed.
I often think I could have lived in the 18th century. I feel a real affinity for life in a cabin, use of a well and an out house, cooking on a wood stove. I remember my mom and her sisters canning during the hot summer time without the benefit of air conditioning. I guess there were window fans. People left their windows open a lot. I guess the mosquitos didn't go for dirty people as much as they do clean sweet smelling skin. Or they just put up with them. And the fleas. And the head lice. And the body lice. And the rats. And the spiders.
On second thought, I think I feel a real affinity for the 21st century.

 

[Kassaundra]

Oh I didn't even think about the outhouses and the trek through the cold, hot, wet, snow, ice to get to them!!!!!! But I think my feelings were covered in the whole running water thing! and the aversion to cold thing!

 

[Jared77]

I've gone backpacking all over the US for 2-3 weeks at a time, and stayed at a handful of rustic hunting camps where the biggest luxury was a cast iron stove with a nice flat surface for heating water instead of a just to heat the cabin.

I love getting away, getting a little sweaty, dirty, and just being. Seeing so many stars, going to bed with a faint trace of woodsmoke still on you.

Something about being there, no clocks, no internet, no cell phones. Split some wood to make a fire, let it burn down to get a good bed of coals to cook over and eating simply but as if by magic it's some of the best tasting food you've had in quite a while.

I love it. No it's not easy but when I can get away it's great.

 

[Kassaundra]

I love hiking (read walking slowly w/ a camera) through the woods EXACTLY ............................................................... 1/2 a day, so I can "hike" back out and sleep in a soft bug free bed, take a hot shower, and use the facilities w/o a leaf or stick.

 

[Nyboy]

When I get away I want room service. Only way I could have made it in 18 century would be born in to a Aristocrat family. The European Nobility knew how to live in the old world.

 

[Nyboy]

My sister and her husband love to go camping. They have a trailer size of greyhound bus, that's like a mini house.

 

[Kassaundra]

My sister and her husband love to go camping. They have a trailer size of greyhound bus, that's like a mini house.

That is the ONLY way I would willingly "camp"

 

[Jared77]

We carried everything on our backs. We unrolled & recollection TP to save space kind of trips. Take 2 pair of underwear. You wear 1 and rinse the other out to dry as your walking to the next site. Averaged 9-14 miles a day depending on the terrain.

VERY different perspective of this country from that angle. Saw some utterly amazing things too. Grizzlies less than 10ft from us, snowball fights in June at the top of a mountain pass. Streams so cold they would take your breathe away when you touched the water. Elk, eagles, hearing wolves at night......just amazing.

Did the Cascades, Grand Tetons, Isle Royal, Glacier, Yosemite, to name a few. Have also done a few canoe trips like that where you packed everything and instead of walking we used canoes. Paddle to our site, camp for the night, then back to the canoes to go further downstream.

Those were great times.

 

[Kassaundra]

If you EVER see me posting from somewhere you can make snowballs in June, call the FBI for real b/c I have been kidnapped and being held against my will!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I'd presumably have to count it as "in spirit" as well; since my dad became type 1 diabetic long before I was born, if we lived in the 18th century, I would never have even been conceived.

Like NYboy to make it back then, I'd have had to be born into the Nobility. The main problem of course being that, as someone of Jewish heritage, the ranks of the nobility would be closed to me in most of 18th century Europe (the de Roshchild's are really more of the exception than the rule, and even they didn't become barons until 1822)

Without that impediment maybe I would have made a decent Compte or Marquis in France around the time of Louis XVI. I can think of worse fates than spending my days in a flurry of parties and fine dining at Versailles (of course the main problem would of course be that I would find myself smack dab in the middle of the French Revolution in a few years, and on the side you did NOT want to be on.)

Where else. Maybe England (the kind of macro botany I'm good at was still rather new then, so I'd probably have an easy time of it) Moorish Spain? (lot's of academia there too, and a pretty good time and place to be a Jew.) Heck, if I want to go back far enough I might have liked to live in Samarkand before the Mongols showed up.