Fire Frustrations

During those colder months of the year I get frequent reminders of the challenges we face by living the way we do here in the woods: a simplified, frugal way of life. Of course, there are overwhelming rewards that come from the way we live, and I've written several times about them. Simply being able to live in this environment and live close to the land is enough of a blessing to make all the struggles worthwhile.

What do I mean in this posting by the frustrations, challenges, and struggles of our lifestyle? It has mostly to do with all the labor that is required... the monotony and drudgery of menial tasks, the forgoing of certain luxuries, the loneliness of not being able to share your experiences with others doing similar things, etc.

An example came to mind on a cold evening lately, as I was engaged in heating the outdoor tub for our twice-weekly hot soak. To accomplish this bath, I feed an underwater aluminum wood stove chunks of wood for nearly two hours, until the water temperature reaches—and then hopefully hovers for a couple of hours—at about 102^o F (about 40^o C). A degree or two above 102 and the water threatens to cook you. A degree or two lower and you can't relax—you feel chilled, especially on a cold winter's night. The temperature must be narrowly controlled.

There are several variables that I need to account for, in reaching that narrow temperature window: the initial temperature of the water, the outdoor air temperature, the quality of the wood, how well I stack the logs in the stove, and how attentive I am during the heating process. I have over two decades of experience of preparing our hot tubs, so I now balance these variables far better than I did many years ago, but the challenge remains. Poor quality wood will cause the heating process to seem endless—especially if my attention wanders. Rather than enter the healing waters at 7 pm, say, it's going on 8 before the bath is ready. I can become very impatient and grumpy during that extra hour.

I can't help at these times but think about those folks who have a modern, high-tech hot tub and the convenience it brings them. For them the tub sits waiting—held continually at exactly the perfect temperature—for them to jump into at a moment's impulse. No gathering and splitting of wood; no lengthy feeding of a stove; no concern for the air temperature—just jump in and enjoy. Luxury is waiting at the touch of a button.

Of course, such a hot tub experience is completely contradictory to the way we live. Their kind of luxury is definitely not frugal, but calls for a significant and ongoing monetary expense. But such a convenience also comes with other costs. To acquire a labor-saving high-tech hot tub, for example, I may gain control and quick accessibility over my bathing process, but I also lose another kind of control, because I do not have enough self-sufficiency or the freedom to be as fully in charge of my experience. In that situation, I would not understand nor would I be capable of maintaining that modern hot tub. If something went wrong, I'd be forced to call in an expert who would charge me a steep fee to get it working again. Those initial and ongoing repair costs simply do not fit with a frugal lifestyle.

There are times when I become frustrated with the time, effort, and complexity that this simple lifestyle calls for. It can be very inconvenient. And I confess that sometimes I daydream about things being easier, but I never second guess or doubt the advantages of the way we live. I just sometimes get irritated that the wood I'm burning tonight is of poor quality and dammit!, I was hoping to sink into those healing waters an hour ago! But hey, what's my hurry? Do I have some fancy social function to go to?

Practicing Plainness

When I moved out to the country 33 years ago, walking away from an urban, comfortable lifestyle, it was to seek a simpler, plainer existence. I have struggled ever since to articulate what defines my type of life, or even to describe in objective terms the nature of my simple practice. The term “simple living” is a very subjective one. One person's simple is another's sumptuous. One person's prosperity is another's privation.

In addition, the practice of trying to live plainly is an endless learning process. Just as a rich person never can fully say that he's arrived (there's always more money to be made), one who tries to live simply also never finishes the task. There's always more simplicity to learn. While the former way of life yields to endless greed, the latter faces an interminable process of self-examination, as well as an ongoing discovery of some deeper truths about the appropriate way to live plainly.

I have come upon several role models—who are my heroes—over the years, who have pointed the way for me; people who have championed the values of an unadorned lifestyle, such as Jesus, Gandhi, Socrates, the Buddha, Catholic Worker members, etc. What they have taught me is that a life of simplicity is also a moral life. But again, morality is a relative thing. One person's morality is another mendaciousness. One person's vice is another's virtue.

I recently read an essay in Aeon Magazine by Emrys Westacott, a professor of philosophy at Alfred University in New York, titled “Why the Simple Life is Not Just Beautiful, It's Necessary.” Westacott equates the good life with the simple life, which is an expression of morality. He makes the point that in earlier times a simple life was most often the only choice for many people. They did not have the option to live acquisitively. Our ancestors moreover considered simplicity to be a moral virtue.

In contrast, we moderns have access to many things: many luxuries that our ancestors could not have dreamed of. Our culture honors relentless growth; it literally drowns out simplicity. And simplicity is often considered boring. I clearly remember former city acquaintances being baffled by my leaving the comfortable city life to go live in the country. They thought that I was opting for an existence of humdrum, when, in fact, I have discovered a level of fascination that I had only dreamed of.

Westacott writes that many people today are feeling a backlash against our acquisitive culture, and are turning toward the plain life in response. Many of them do not succeed, however, because they have become brainwashed by society's values and can't really come to believe in simplicity. While we might condemn the extravagance we see in our society, we still seem to subliminally admire it. When I made my move to the country three decades ago, I was mindful of the number of hippies who “moved back to the land,” only to return to an urban environment a couple of years later, when things got either too tough or too austere for them.

Westacott points out that it's also interesting that our precarious economic system is forcing many people into a frugal existence—against their will. The upshot is that some of them are subsequently discovering that the meager life can just happen to be a virtuous life. Those who are involuntarily thrust into a life of simplicity are more likely to view having lots of money as immoral, rather than admiring and aspiring to be wealthy. It seems as if once a person gets a taste of frugality, it can transform them.

Westacott makes another argument: there is a growing need for simplicity today; we must stop trashing our environment. He says that simple lifestyles could help correct the destructive course that society is on.

We seem to be living in a time that is bringing unprecedented changes to our world. If humans continue on the path we're currently following, numerous catastrophes await. Westacott writes that we may be headed toward a crisis that will force us to live simply. Whether we choose the moral path of simplicity or not, it may soon be our only alternative.

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 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…