I was passing through a neighboring town and seeing the lush, green rolling hills and the blushing blueberry fields and the pale green lichens and fern after fern and while my first thought was my god, what a place to live!, my second thought was how many other animals on this earth look around at their habitat and think the very same, and how sweet that is. my old dog used to sit halfway down our hill and close her eyes. she was listening to the wind pass through, the stream go by, the seasons come in and go out without a sound. I’ll bet the birds and the crickets and the caterpillars do the very same.
Actually, I love that cottagecore has given Gen Z a word for "I want to have a big garden and cook my own food and keep chickens" that isn't casually invoking colonialism and manifest destiny. I get so goddamned uncomfortable every time someone refers to their urban hobby farm as a "homestead" and I'm glad to finally see it being replaced with other terms. I will buy a million books about how to live a cottagecore lifestyle if it will convince publishers to stop marketing the "homesteader" lifestyle and will get white city dwellers to stop unironically self-identifying as colonizers.