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The main purpose of this article is to highlight the life of rural communities in the Cantal moutain range towards the end of the Middle Ages. These communities were little institutionalized, but they were highly self-assertive, and highly cohesive due to their exploitation of the commons. From the thirteenth century on, a business-oriented pastoralism developped in the area. We will analyze how this very specific and localized economic system influenced the social and economic life of rural communities and how family and community structures were prompted to reorganize through these evolutions and the land restructurations of the Lower Middle Ages. The idea of living will be studied in its broadest meaning, that is to say not in the material sense, but as a relationship to the world and to the very specific space considered here, that of mountain denizens whose lives followed the rythm of summer pastures.