I used to live in Australia for a few years. It used to be the case that children living on remote farms in the outback would complete school over ham radio. I think they do it differently now. They have flying doctors to get people who lived in the outback to hospital.
What’s life like for people living in similarly remote parts of US?
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In the mid-90s one of my classes was done with one-way video and we would communicate to the teacher with these walkie-talkie devices. It was a language class and we learned to say “wait a minute” in that language so we could look up the answers. We could see her, but she couldn’t see us.
Life Below Zero is a reality series that follows different families in various parts of Alaska. As with any reality series they edit for dramatic effect and storytelling, but you still get a glimpse of daily life from foraging to repairing equipment. Disney+ has it.
Most of Alaska is inaccessible by road. You’d need to fly to reach some towns and villages and an aircraft with pontoons to reach places in the hinterlands. We have similar extremely remote places in the US, but I doubt school lessons were ever taught over ham radio. I’ve never heard of anyone flying doctors in. In the US, they’d fly the patient to the doctors since that’s where their medical equipment and devices are. On the helicopter or airplane, they’d most likely have EMTs or equivalent.
there are more remote areas of the country than rural Wisconsin, but it’s pretty wide open out here in some parts of our state. lots of ag.
the school buses go far out onto county roads and have to stop at each student’s home individually. sometimes you see parents driving their kids to the end of their property in ATVs. a lot of school districts in these rural areas have kids coming in from multiple towns bc there aren’t enough students to justify towns having their own schools.
local hospitals here have smaller clinics that are located out in rural areas, but sometimes people have to travel to see a specialist. there are small fire departments with ambulances, but in a big emergency nearby towns will contribute resources. or you will occasionally see a med flight via helicopter. they lift people up into the helicopter and fly them to a hospital.
Living in small, farm-town America (so say, towns under 20,000) still has enough people and businesses around that you can go about your business as usual. The difference is you just usually have to drive, or may have to drive 10-15 minutes instead of walking or driving just a couple minutes.
From what I know visiting Michigan’s Upper Peninsula multiple times a year my whole life, where many/most towns have UNDER 5,000 people…many under 1,000…
* Despite social conservatism and politics, many often have to push political differences or judgements aside, because in these kinds of towns, everyone relies on each other, or there may be just one person who provides a service for the whole area. Rather than a snow-blowing company for example, a town just has their “guy” who does it for everyone, and they may hire 1 or 2 people, pay under the table (or they just volunteer) to do it for everyone. It can be actually risky to get on peoples’ bad side, because that might lead to losing an essential and potentially cheap/free service.
* Along with the last point, one person often serves multiple roles within a town. A teacher might be THE gym teacher, THE football coach, THE track coach, THE summer youth program coordinator, and THE organizer for an annual festival.
* Everyone has a gun. Many people in these areas work outside frequently, and very close to “very” wild nature (defense from predatory animals), or they are farmers (protecting their crops).
* Everyone knows everyone’s business.
* Going shopping is a day trip, and everyone in the household may go if available. They may be driving 15 minutes, or 45 minutes to an hour to go to a really good store just to get their essential needs. Because of this, these often turn into days where you spend the day out in that area, or get ice cream or go out to eat before/after shopping.
* Socializing is usually common and chill. There’s hard partying at nights and on weekends of course, but a lot of what you also see is people just pulling chairs up in a drive-way, garage, or deck, sitting in a circle with a beer and just bull-shitting (casual conversation about whatever) for hours on end…if you’ve seen the show Letterkenney…just like they do in the show.
* News can seem funny if you live in busier places. If there’s something like a murder or a drug bust, it’s MAJOR front-line news that occupies the town for weeks or months. I have family who are police officers in these kind of areas, and they still go on about “the murder,” that happened in their town years ago like it was the best concert or music festival you’ve ever been. Since news is often scarce, you see a lot of things get a lot of attention that you wouldn’t expect to: Little league baseball highlights, someone hosting a bake sale, a local citizen training to do a marathon, etc. My great grandpa was once in the news and on the front page of the town’s newspaper for getting a 29-point hand in a game of cribbage at a bar (it’s the highest hand you can have, and it’s ludicrously rare).
* It’s not uncommon to have drinking related deaths on an annual basis. Whether people are bored and drink too much and die, alcoholics die from liver failure, or drunk driving deaths…sometimes there’s just not a lot to do, and medical services are too expensive or too far to get help in time. Living in such remote places means you may have to drive 20-30 minutes just to go to a good bar for the night, and you can forget about available public or private transport services…if you wanna go out in drink, you pretty much have to drive or plan ahead in advance to get a DD. My dad grew up in the Upper Peninsula and said it was a guarantee every year of high school that between his and the two nearest schools, at least three students would die from an alcohol related incident.
* Things often move on “island time,” meaning plans and socializing isn’t very structured or elaborate. Sometimes businesses just close early or open later because the owners feel like it. Sometimes they open earlier or stay open later just because the owners feel like it. Sometimes if a business employee has an emergency or important errand that cannot wait, the store will close temporarily. When it comes to socializing, sometimes people just stroll or drive to peoples’ places to see if they’re home or outside, and if they are, an impromptu multi-hour party or “chilling” session ensues (pending that the person/place they go to isn’t busy). When I’m up there at my family’s place, it’s not at all uncommon for people to just show up seeing if we want to chill, and they often have a beer in their hand, and a small cooler just in case.
I live in Las Vegas. In the same school district is the town of Searchlight, population under 500. It’s not super remote, but it’s not very close to anywhere. It has a school for middle and elementary age kids. Last I heard, they had 2 teachers for very few kids. High school kids got bussed 45 minutes to Boulder City, which was the nearest place big enough to support a high school. If they were much more remote, they’d probably have 3 teachers and do some sort of online school so that the high school kids weren’t limited to subjects the one teacher could teach.
I don’t know how other places handle it.
You might like the book *Well Out to Sea: Year-Round on Matinicus Island*, which is a non-fiction book by a woman who lives on a very remote island off the coast of Maine. The year-round population is something like 70 people, and there is a 2+ hour ferry to the mainland that runs once a month in the off-season (in the summer, it runs 4 times/month).
Not sure how other places handle it, but at least the part of the Navajo Reservation I lived near, families had two choices for schooling: boarding school or being bussed into town every day, potentially a 3-hour ride each way. If you can get satellite internet, you could do online school. This was about 10 years ago; I’m sure online school is a more popular option now. I’m not sure what they did during COVID since I don’t live there anymore.
If someone had a medical emergency, they’d have to be flown by helicopter to the nearest hospital. Depending where exactly they were and what exactly was wrong, it could be a couple hundred miles away.
I went to high school with some people from a remote area in Central Idaho. They were home schooled for elementary school and junior high. For high school, they boarded with other families in town near a high school. For medical emergencies, they could phone for help and a small medical plane or helicopter with flight nurses would go pick them up and take them to a city hospital.
Navajo Indian reservation has areas with no electricity or running water… like stepping back in time 200 years, but I wouldn’t advise touring through
My step-dad used to live in a town of less than 300 people in central Montana so kinda similar to the outback in terms of how remote it was. They had a really small school cause public school is compulsary but it was zoned for hundreds of miles and there might only be like 3 kids per graduating class. My stepdad was a teacher (and a bus driver, and a coach) for this school and it’s like, everybody did multiple jobs. And yes, you have a satellite phone to call emergency services since there’s no cell phone reception and major medical emergencies required an air lift. They had two bars in “town” tho, and one of those bars had a nice map of where everyone lived in case you got too wasted to drive yourself home (which is saying a lot since there was only one paved road so people regularly drove drunk).
I live in the Alaskan bush working at a National Park!
We are off the road system. You must fly in to get here. You can’t get around without a plane or a boat.
Groceries are difficult and expensive. There is no store. We typically order our dry goods from Target or Amazon because they don’t charge shipping. It’s good to plan those out at least 4 weeks in advance. Shipping times are slow. We can pay a grocery expeditor to bring us fresh food but it’s very costly. That will take ~3-4 days.
As a result of all that and how productive it is here, there’s a huge subsistence culture. Many of us rely on gardens, fishing, and hunting for fresh food. I made a delicious wild rhubarb crisp a few days ago and am gathering fireweed for fireweed jelly today.
There’s a local pre-school to 12th grade school. A “graduating class” is usually one or two people. I recently had an 18 year old confide in me that the most difficult thing for him is that he wants to be able to date people but “everyone here is related to me.” Poor guy.
Our village runs off a generator and solar panels during the summer. A massive fuel plane ships in gas every two weeks or so.
I do have Internet at home but no phone service outside of home.
We have a small clinic, but a big emergency would require a medical evacuation to Anchorage.
That’s the basics but I’m always happy to answer more questions about it.
im from Appalachia in East TN; there are a bunch of areas up in the mountains and cave systems around here that are completely remote, no signal or reception, little industry. a lot of poverty bc of little to no jobs. a lot of people live off the grid out here too.
there was a man that was wanted by the FBI and he evaded them for a while hiding away in the mountains bc they’re that remote. it wasn’t until he came out to Murphy NC that they apprehended him.
the ways of life can be harsh and a lot of other American’s frown at us appalachians and call us hillbillies or whatever but that’s not fair to say tho. most of the ppl here are some of the most welcoming and sweetest and would give u the little bit that they have.
im proud to be a Appalachian.