Friday, March 8, 2013

A Visit From Charlie—Part 1



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 curiosityeither 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 weve 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 theyve 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 weve 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 whos in business for himself. Hes an honest guy who appreciates the value of constructing things with ones 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 thingsbeing a practical, hands-on guy who can appreciate the simplicity of it. He rattles on about his dream house and where hed like to build it: someplace way out in the boonies, so government officials would not even know he existed. Hed install solar power, use novel building techniques, live self-sufficiently, and be sure that neighbors were far enough away that they couldnt be seen or heard.

To us, Charlies 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, cant 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 hes 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 Im not so sure it makes sense in this temperate zone we live in. Or: thats a neat-sounding concept, Charlie, but have you thought about how its 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. Hes not telling me about his plans, in order to get a critique of them. He doesnt 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 Charlies visit next time

No comments: