Lost and Found In Nature

I lived without utility supplied electricity, water, or sanitation for over a decade. Was it all romance, extensive fanfare, and free living? Not a chance. It was time consuming, high maintenance work requiring constant presence. Living off grid means you are a chief maintenance person, head of parts, repairs and the main author and chief responder in the complaints department. Monitor and adjust you must, the deep-cycle batteries, the climate control for electronic inverter, the daily rodent entry attempts, and many, many more things.

I nevertheless had a golden experience, feeling almost like I was a part of a new renaissance. The metaphors for life in general wrought in the constant struggle were akin to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Ripe for the ages – climate change, species loss, bio-regionalism, permaculture – my noble and yet extremely humbling experience ‘off gridding’ thumped me in the nogggin more than a few times enough to impart some key insights.

1. Divvy up. If you’re on your own, you have no choice of being your own hero 24-7. But if you’re with a family or in a group living setup, being a Jill (or Jack) of All Trades is by far the worst approach.  Our houses and the world needs fewer Die Hard Heros, and more collaborative, group-powered successes.
2. Know when to plug in/consume power. Just because we can use power, or in our era, engaging in smart phones, or laptops, don’t do it. Off grid, when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, one does laundry, uses the computer, and/or has a few lights on. When it’s cloudy and calm, we power down. It becomes time to write in a journal, bask in silence, or chop some wood. In either life style, mindlessly switching into power usage mode not only costs electricity, but our inefficiency from either employing ‘nose to the grind stone’ or ‘distraction mode mentality’ costs us our own personal energy reserves, robbing us from our core brilliance.
3. Positive charges vs. energy sinks.  Off the grid, things with motors or those that create heat, like toasters, are major energy hogs that can drain a daily electricity budget in a few minutes. What or whom empowers you? What drains you? When we’re present to the subtleties of energy in our bodies, we notice what tasks, or people drain us or give us energy.
4. Lovingly adopt appropriate technology. If you can do it by hand, do it by hand. High tech items that may appear to save time, money and energy often have hidden costs to the individual, the family, and the environment. Many appliances used by Mennonites or the Amish include hand cranks, foot petals or other contraptions that don’t use electricity and rarely break down. Buying a gadget for every aspect of life enslaves us to driving, electrical consumption, landfills, and loss of free exercise!
5. Know your daily life cycle. If a battery is used up early in the day, at best you are trickle charging until nightfall. This means the battery just becomes a conduit for energy transfer instead of a vessel for storage. This is sub-optimal at best. If you have to extend yourself when you feel empty, ensure there is a full recharge waiting for you in the form of rest or an energy gaining event.
6. Make your trips count. Buy your life needs as though you are on a remote island; you can’t just hop in the car and go and buy another ‘one.’ Short, repetitive trips in a car hurt our bodies (excessive sitting), add stress, and are far more polluting to the atmosphere than longer, planned ones. The same is true for the small tasks in our work day. They eat away at us, leaving the big and important tasks incomplete or starving for more quality attention.
7. Hold, plan and be your own system. When you live off the grid, it’s call an ‘independent home’ because it is self reliant. The minute you stop ‘feeling your system’ and knowing it intimately, and if it happens to break down you are problem solving in the dark. If you fail to hold, plan and be the ultimate you for your family members, irreplaceable missed opportunities amass, loved ones feel less connected to you and seek other friends or devices to meet their attachment needs.
8. Managing human waste as a daily recipe for life. Off the grid, managing waste is put into our own hands. Composting toilets must be coddled with clear presence and awareness or decomposition is hampered and there’s a nasty mess to contend with, costing much time. What would we do with the extra billions of dollars saved if we all made the choice to stop sending toxins, excessive paper waste, and loads of lint (biggest problem of all) down our drains every day?  We would surely bask and play in a rejuvenated environment.
9. Water wisdom cultivates more aqua for all. Living off the grid slams home the notion that water is to be treasured, conserved and kept pollution free. After collecting rainwater, I used to hang a 1 gal blag water bag in the sun and then use it for showers in two consecutive days. If you’ve slipped into complacency, remember how difficult water is to cleanse, desalinize and purify? Try going on a highly reduced water budget for a day or two to remember the gift of Earth’s life blood. Like a food fast helps us really value food, absence of anything reunites us with gratitude.
10. Let conservation become second nature. Turn a light on, turn it off. Lather in between runs of showering water. Turn your heat down at night, draw shades at the appropriate times when it’s hot out. This isn’t to train you in thinking in lack mentality; the world is indeed abundant. However, conservation alone can meet our energy needs without drilling for any more oil, building any more nuclear plants, or erecting any more mega wind turbines, or fields of solar panels.