When the sun sets on Charlie Larson’s cabin, he does not flip a light
switch- his cabin doesn’t have electricity. It takes several moments
longer to reach for his kerosene lamp, strike a match, and adjust the
burning mantle to shed a dull light on the walls of the single-room
cabin. A curl of smoke rolls inside the chimney of the lamp before the
heat makes the fuel burn clean.
Living by lantern light – the nearest power line nearly three miles
away – can be one person’s vision of paradise while another’s
anxiety-provoking nightmare. No TV? No microwave? No Internet? Nobody
lives like that anymore, right?
In a 2006 USA Today interview1, Home Power magazine’s
publisher, Richard Perez, estimated that approximately 180,000 people
live off the grid in the United States. A number that’s no doubt grown
in the seven years since the article. Intervening years of doomsday
predictions drove people into bunkers and the “do-it-yourself” and
“green” movements turned people on to lifestyles of self-sustainability.
Living off the grid refers
to a household’s self-sustainable power. A dwelling that does not rely
on electrical power transmission from the national grid system. In other
words, these are properties dotted with distinct features like wind
turbines, solar panels, micro hydro installations (water power), and/or
the burning of any number of fuels to generate electricity, heat, or
light. As for the use of televisions, microwaves and computers- that
depends who you ask.
For John and Victoria Jungwirth, living off the grid does not mean living without all modern
conveniences. They don’t use a microwave but they do occasionally turn
on their small television- powered by their home’s solar panels.
Victoria uses a computer at the food co-op where she drives 30 miles to
work two days each week, but they do not have Internet at home. Her mail
order medicinal botanicals business does things the old-fashioned way: no website, just a hand-written catalogue and a post office box.
Their home is about as far removed from “the grid” as one can imagine
in 21st century America. For 25 years the Jungwirths have lived on 80
pristine acres of remote wilderness in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. They
build birch bark canoes, make maple syrup every spring, and harvest wild
plants for sale and trade. They make blankets, boots, and coats from
the tanned hides of animals they hunt. An existence heavily influenced
by the local Native Ojibwa culture and John’s long-held dream of living
off the land.
Next-door neighbors by Northern Michigan standards, Charlie Larson
lives approximately three miles from the Jungwirths. That’s three miles
direct by snowmobile, when the rough gravel roads are made impassable by
winter storms. With no towns for miles, no mail delivery, and only a
handful of year-round residents, snow plowing is not a top priority on
this distant stretch of terrain. Snowmobiles, 4-wheel drive vehicles and
snowshoes, on the other hand, are essential for survival.
For the past 26 years, Larson has not just survived on his
idyllic plot of land, he has relished every day. “The time hasn’t been
long enough,” Larson typed to me, his letters carefully crafted on a
manual typewriter, complete with white correction tape. “Days fly by, so
do weeks and months, and now the years are doing the same.”
Conducting our interview by mail, I wrote back, “What inspired you to
move so far into the wilderness?” I waited weeks for his reply. “When I
was in junior high, my great uncle and my grandfather took me to stay
at a camp which is down to my East about 4 miles or so,” he wrote.
“After staying there that night I always wanted to live out in the
woods. Just getting up in the morning and smelling all the clean fresh
air was enough to hook me. Everything was so sweet and fresh smelling,
and you could detect the different odors throughout the day and into the
evening. All different, telling you the time of day or night. No rush
to get things done, but things do get done. You enjoy doing them and at a
slower pace but satisfying one.”
That savoring but productive pace has given Larson the time to build
by hand his cabin, a 50 ft x 50 ft garden, a barn for several cherished
goats, a sugar shack for his annual maple syrup production, and a view
overlooking a pond that one could scarcely describe with words in a
letter.
As I talked sustainability philosophy with
Jungwirth, by cell phone from my condo smack dab in the middle of
Chicago, and as I exchanged letters with Larson, typed out on our very
different keyboards, I wondered about the other side of living off the grid. Questions the rest of us surely
wonder about such an existence: What about money? What if you get sick
and need a doctor? Don’t you get lonely? What will happen when you’re
older? Questions of resilience.
“It keeps my brain healthy.
It’s a paradise,” Jungwirth responded, when asked about the
psychological impact of living off the grid. “It’s nice to be alone and
have time to think, but when you don’t have many people around you do
relish people.” For living so far from mainstream communities, the
Jungwirths are far from sheltered or isolated. Theysocialize with many friends in local communities and with other families who are also off-gridders.
While raising their two children they participated in community events
and regularly traveled to London, England- Victoria’s country of origin.
“My kids are now 27 and 29. Now they are like their peers, but growing up they naturally had animosity toward their parents. One of my sons did experience bouts of Seasonal Affective Disorder growing
up, but it was helped by getting outside into the sun and getting
exercise. They may have initially felt deprived but now they appreciate
it and realize there’s not many places left to live in the wild,”
Jungwirth explained. “Now, my eldest son has a goal of living in the
woods.”
As for medical care and insurance, Jungwirth hasn’t required hospital
care since they moved off the grid in 1988. The family does have a
friend who is a doctor in a nearby town in case they need sutures, and
Victoria prepares homemade healing salves. “We’re experts with
infections and skin abrasions, tinctures for colds. When you don’t have
insurance, you really pay attention, “ John explained. “Connecting to
others is real insurance.”
The Jungwirths have a modest income, but they also have far fewer
needs than what most households are accustomed to. “It’s so much easier
to lower our outcome than raise our income,” John said. By working one
week per month for the past 30 years, he explained, he’s made enough
money to buy his free time for the rest of the month. With very few
needs that his family cannot produce themselves or obtain by swapping
products and services with friends, there are few financial obligations.
“Everything’s paid for so we can save now and have anything we want-
which isn’t much because we make everything.” A point in life that
Jungwirth calls “pure sustainable sanity.” Making a living out of
day-to-day living.
Larson, long retired from any sort of formal job, similarly has fewer
wants and needs than the average American family. He travels to the
nearest town on Thursday each week to pick up his mail and purchase a
small amount of groceries for the week ahead. He spends a couple hours
with his family and in the afternoon makes the hour-long drive back down
the rough gravel road. Back to his cabin where he tends to an unlikely
collection of exotic cactus, weaves tapestry from homespun fiber on a
homemade frame loom, and grinds grain for his breakfast.
The address for Larson’s cabin is not listed in any phonebook. You
won’t find the Jungwirth’s 20 square-foot cabin pictured on Google Maps.
And with regard to the private and serene paradise they’ve each created
– by co-existing in the wilderness with the utmost respect for their natural environment –
that’s just how they’d like to keep it. Not disclosing their location,
but happy to tell their stories and all the possibilities they contain
for the rest of us if we’re willing to listen with open minds. “My
Ojibwa teachers taught me to see my language with new eyes,” Jungwirth
told me. “You can have this [story] from me, but you have to pass it
on.”
http://themindunleashed.org/2014/01/making-living-living-grid-wilderness.html
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