Both our homestead and lifestyle
are unconventional and differ markedly from the average American domicile
standard. Our house is underground and we live in a low-cost manner; in that we
pump water by hand, use an outdoor composting privy, grow much of our food, and
exist on a fraction of electricity, compared to “normal” consumption. To our urban
friends, we are a curiosity—either
just too strange to comprehend or maybe fun to visit from time to time, but just
to look at what we are doing and to see if we are still managing to keep it up.
To our rural neighbors, however,
we are less a curiosity than a sensible-living couple. Yet we are the newbies:
the immigrant couple (even though we’ve lived
here for 28 years) who live in a prudent way (as they do); but we still seem a
little weird to them. They can understand our mode of living better than our
urban friends can, because it is closer to their modest-to-low-income
existence. Many of them never graduated high school and they all struggle to get
by, although they manage to get along quite well. Yet our style of living still
is a bit of a stretch for them; because, if they had more money, they would live more like our urban friends.
Since they’ve had to learn how to get along
quite fine on limited resources, however, they can better understand what we
have chosen as a way to live.
Now and then we are visited by a
neighbor who very much appreciates the life we’ve carved out, and even values what we have done to create this
low-cost way we live. Charlie is an example of one of these folks. He
periodically comes by, specifically to savor our house and lifestyle. He is a
simple, minimally-educated, hard-working guy. He is a contractor who’s in business for himself. He’s an honest guy who appreciates the value of
constructing things with one’s hands
and enjoys his own simple way of life, which avoids becoming hooked into
mortgages, big credit card balances, and other mainstream activities.
Charlie somehow stumbled upon us
and how we live, several years ago. He has taken to dropping by unannounced
every now and then, to take another look at our digs and tell us about his
dream of carving out a similar way of living, if he can just get a little money
set aside first. He has many questions about how we did things—being a practical, hands-on guy who can appreciate
the simplicity of it. He rattles on about his dream house and where he’d like to build it: someplace way out in the
boonies, so government officials would not even know he existed. He’d install solar power, use novel building
techniques, live self-sufficiently, and be sure that neighbors were far enough
away that they couldn’t be seen
or heard.
To us, Charlie’s dream seems destined to remain just a wee bit out
of his reach. For nearly a decade now he has dropped by, always describing to
us his latest plan, which appears no closer now than when we first met him. But
he can dream, can’t he?
Over the years he has discovered
many alternative building schemes, which he eagerly describes to us. Upon each
visit, the scheme gets updated by a new and more exciting method that he’s recently
discovered. It appears to me that his grasp of these alternative building
techniques is often not very deep; he is always enthused about the
possibilities, but seems rather thin on the practicalities of them.
Some of them I have read about
and realize that his understanding needs a lot more development before he could
ever implement it. Some of the building concepts he describes I have never
heard about; but as he explains them, my prior experience and technical
background finds me doubting that it is a reasonable way to build in this area.
Maybe that idea works okay in a tropical environment, Charlie, but I’m not so sure it makes sense in this temperate
zone we live in. Or: that’s a
neat-sounding concept, Charlie, but have you thought about how it’s going to be to actually live in that kind of house?
These are thoughts that remain
in my mind…I never express them out loud to
him. His bubbling visit is not the time or place to throw a little cold water on
his hot ideas. He’s not
telling me about his plans, in order to get a critique of them. He doesn’t need a lesson on why his latest idea might be a
problem from a heat transfer perspective or a structural engineering
standpoint. He simply needs to excitedly share his dream. He needs to sit in a
chair, cradle his cup of coffee, look around him at things we have done, and
jabber about his own unique ideas of his castle in the air. Besides, he is too
energized about his visions to be able to listen to what practicalities I might
have to offer at the moment. He rattles on, hardly aware of any comments on his
plans that I might suggest.
More on Charlie’s visit
next time…
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