During the past seven years more people left cities for rural areas than ever before in North America. Yet the mention of country living to most of us usually conjures up images of dirt roads, working farms and white-bread towns and villages.

    How can you live there? ask some of my city friends. Well, Lawrence Scanlan tells you how in Heading Home: On Starting a New Life in a Country Place (Doubleday, 1996).

    Scanlan's book is part journey, part philosophy and part practical. It is also highly personal. We follow his development from city slicker to village dweller (he now lives in Camden East, Ontario, in a century home).

    Scanlan (BA'72), a former managing editor at Harrowsmith magazine, says it was his days at a Kingston newspaper (and long nights trying to fall asleep) that made him decide he'd had it with city living. Soon after, he and his wife pulled up stakes and headed for the country.

    "When you live in the country you have a strong sense of the change of seasons and landscape," he says. "That's why I structured the book around 12 chapters.

    "In the city you can duck the weather and landscape. In the country you can't. There's a lot of research to show that nature is a good way to mitigate stress."

    Although he grew up in the city, as a boy Scanlan spent a lot of time visiting his grandfather's farm. "My story is about coming back to a home I knew as a child. I needed to live in a place that shut down, a village," he says.

    Despite the lure of the country, Scanlan's book isn't all roses. "The pure rural sensibility has been modified. I wanted to dispel some of the illusions about living in a small place."