Category — SPIRIT

Powers: "more time doing nothing"

William Powers, author of “Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid & Beyond the American Dream,” did an interview recently with Mother Nature Network.

Here are some extracts:

“There’s no instruction manual for living in a 12-by-12-foot cabin.  It was strange to be at the heart of the world’s richest country and living with no electricity.  There was this sense of nature pressing in around me. At first I felt quite alone out there, but soon I began to think, wow, there is another way.

While I was out there, I got rid of the car and rode a $26 bike. (more…)

A gentle life

Angela Long is a poet and writer who has lived off the grid for the past three years. Visit her blog.

“I wrote Notes from Off the Grid here, last summer, in the cabin where I’m sitting right now. We live in an area of Naikoon Provincial Park that’s off-the-grid. There aren’t many of us here–about a dozen others officially off-grid. We’re not an intentional community–just a bunch of people who ended up out here (some have been here since the 70s), who like this lifestyle (and living in a forest along a magnificent beach). There’s a wind turbine on the property where I live that provides enough power to fuel my laptop, internet connection, and a few other low-voltage luxuries.”

Notes from Off the Grid

i.) The road

First there’s a sign:

Proceed with Caution: Narrow, Winding Road. (more…)

Couple

In a post TEOTWAWKI or SHTF world, having a loving partner will make live much more enjoyable as well as safer. You know the old saying, many hands make light work, it’s very true, and having someone that you can completely trust with your life just may be what saves your life. Having someone at the homestead most of the time makes the homestead a more secure place, while one of you is out hunting or doing what needs to be done, the other can be at home, taking care of things there and being security. You can also take care of the other if one of you gets sick or hurt. (more…)

John Wells lives in a shack he has grandly titled the Southwest Texas Alternative Energy And Sustainable Living Field Laboratory.

When I visited he told me he had wanted to leave his glitzy fashion photographer world behind, a world of “mounting debt and an overwhelming feeling of being trapped in the life you have chosen.” He was looking for a simple life but a comfortable one

Juliet Schor - mapping a new kind of lifestyle

Many, including writer Juliet Schor,question the underlying assumptions of the consumerist mentality. She has just written a new book about it – Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth.
Once most Americans could meet basic biological needs, spending took on a heightened social meaning. Spending has become a social phenomenon, consumerism now builds on our fear of failure. That fear has costs. Schor’s question: Is the high cost of all the stuff we’re accumulating worth the escalating costs to our families, communities and the planet? (more…)

World of Wildcraft

Why would a successful American physician choose to live in a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot cabin without running water or electricity? (more…)