I’ve written about MEN before but it was over a year ago and so I thought I’d touch on it again. It touched on me so much, it’s only fair.

For some reason I was thinking ‘back to the land’ at the time I tapped into MEN and their forums. I know that feeling started in 1999 when Sal and I and the kids went on a long driving vacation that included a jump overseas to Europe. We were gone over four months. When I came back, I was more than just reluctant to get back on the merry-go-round and race with more rats, I was actually beginning the first unconscious steps of getting off for good. Just didn’t know it. It was a confusing time.

I just remember being interested in going to salvage yards for no legitimate or even discernible reason except growing curiosity about what I might find there. The fact that my darling wife would come along with me, shaking her head and mumbling about early onset dementia just proves her patience and devotion (or her early onset dementia).

But I did remember that the last time I had thought in this ‘hippy’ way, I had read ‘Mother’ and, tho I eventually dropped it for Yuppy Today, I never forgot it.

So, I Googled it, found it and entered their forums.

MEN has gone ‘mainstream’, of course, since the 70’s when I last read it. Ads for Ford tractors, John Deere and alternative energy products are large and glossy and fill most of the pages. The articles are all ‘organic’ or ‘buy-this’ oriented. They went Maddison Avenue to survive but there was still a lot of ‘basic’ information in there if you looked. And Mother had archives. There was real wealth in those records.

The forums at MEN used to be great! They did some kind of design makeover around 2005 and it took too long, people left and it never caught on again with the ‘crowd’ after that. But, for me, it was a wealth of characters and a virtual living library of knowledge before that. I became a ‘regular’ on the ‘Open’ forum (discussing anything) and a frequent asker-of-questions on the more technically oriented ‘rooms’.

These people were incredibly knowledgeable. As a group. One guy might know everything you could throw at him about electricity (DavisonO) and another may know all the homesteading ‘basics’ (Sarah/Majere at the OOM Librum). They all had areas of expertise but, of course, they couldn’t be experts in everything. So we needed each other.

Well, they didn’t need me so much. I was a ‘newbie’ for a long time.

The exception to the rule of specialization was Majere. He was the patriarch of an OOM enclave in Virginia. He knew everything. In fact, you can purchase OOM wisdom from their Librum on DVDs!

This group of Amish-types were eccentric in the extreme (“Now you can come visit anytime but we have to meet in town first because folks out here shoot first and ask questions after. It just isn’t safe to drop in on anyone out these parts!”)

The magic of the forums was, of course, the various people, their circumstances, their dreams, their experiences and their opinions. We had neo-con-NRA-type ranchers and ex-soldiers, Acid-dropping freaks and neér-do-wells who still loosely pursued old hippy dreams. We had single moms wanting to be ‘in a little house on the prairie with Little Joe’ and reclusive, isolationists whose participation in the forums was likely their only contact with society.

We even had some regular Canadians!

And we had the urban-cum-homesteader dreamer in all regions of the continent who wanted to ‘learn’ how to get off-the-grid and reclaim themselves. I related to them all.

But I eventually became ‘close’ to the group of (Old Order Mennonites) OOMs, SteveS, DavidsonO, Practicalman45, the Big Lebowski and a number of others bringing our online ‘regular’ community to about 20. We shared a lot, personal and otherwise.

It was strange how close we all became. I eventually met P-45 when passing through Oregon one winter and the virtual friendship was confirmed in real life. And I have little doubt that that would the case for all of them.

In the end (a five year period), I was likely the one who ‘moved’ the most – major urban couch potato to feral wood-butcher reintegrating with a more natural way of life miles from civilization. Seems that was a bigger leap than most took during that time. But, of course, timing is everything and some may have made the leap since then.

In fact, the OOMs are the furthest ‘out there’. But they always have been. They are a bloody marvel, really. And Steve has been a Georgia hill-billy for decades. P-45 has been a strong isolationist for probably as long. But, if you are measuring where someone was in the year 2000 and where they are today, Sally and I have likely made the greatest changes.

Or, better put: if we haven’t been the longest-of-leapers, there haven’t been many from the old forum to measure against.

Mind you, there is my old friend, Bill……………..