Living out here is a bit of a challenge. But it is not that hard. Mostly it is just different. We are still learning how to be off-the-gridders as best we can. And we have a lot to learn. That is why we garden, buy winches and putz about. We are at the beginning of the learning curve. I’d say we are still at the ‘juniors’ stage, not even sophomores yet. We’ll likely really be seniors (chronological) before we are really seniors (expertise). May not even get there. Ever.

I write about this because I have not seen much on making this kind of a lifestyle change from the convenient and comfortable to the harder and more physical. Urban to rural. Domestic to feral. Most people tend to move in the other direction, I suppose.

I do try to read anything I can get my hands on about homesteading or living ‘alternative’ (part of learning, isn’t it?) and I have to say, most of the off-grid authors I have read so far are dimwits. There was the book by some National Post editor that had her living on an island (with all the modcons) about 60 miles from her Toronto office. She had a hard time finding milk and making the ferry on time. Poor baby. Her biggest challenge: to get her boyfriend to do things for her while she was away writing the adventure novel of her life!

Nick somebody wrote a book about off-grid people and, unbelievably, didn’t understand the basic concept! He wrote about people who live in cardboard boxes and in their cars. He wrote about dope growers who filch juice from the power company and he wrote about house-sitters. How do these idiots get published?

Don’t get me wrong – there are some great stories out there about living feral but they are few and far between. Hell, even H.D. Thoreau only rented a cabin at Walden for 3 months!

The very best: Frontier House by PBS. A documentary.

But Chris Czajkowski writes about Nuk Tessli and is great! She’s cast from the same mold as Ann Mustoe and those other eccentric female Brits who suffer great hardships with only tea and a biscuit for comfort (preferably served under a tarp against a stone wall ruin in a rainstorm in some desolate out-of-the-way hell). But they at least write well and really do have great adventures.

Ian and Sally something did a series on traveling Canada like the old pioneers. They were great, too.

There was the guy who walked across the middle east during all the wars! The other loon who lived alone in the arctic and had to resort to eating mice. There were the two who chased after elk and lived amongst them. And the couple who did the same with wolves. And the maniac who tried to do that with Grizzlies! Now those people had adventures!

Some doofus contracting his new house out in Sayulita (near Puerto Vallarta) drove me nuts with his pathetic litany of challenges (where to find a really good cup of coffee, suffering awkward chairs in which to sit!). His was not an off-the-grid story – it was a lament by a spoiled brat!

But I read it and hate myself for doing so.

To be honest, we live closer to the spoiled brat author than we do the mouse-eaters and I doubt that we’ll ever try to get hardier than we are now. Which is OK with me. It’s tough enough going shopping in town. I can’t imagine having to forage with the elk and scavenge with the wolves. I have bad knees. Hard to kneel. Even harder to crawl at any speed. Lichen for lunch? Yuck!

I am telling you all this because this blog is about the real life adventures of two relatively soft individuals who couldn’t survive in the wilderness for two nights and, after three, wouldn’t want to. We have just the right amount of adventure, thank you very much. Don’t want more. I am looking for easier not harder.

Having said that, I can’t imagine what constitutes an adventure story anymore when people publish accounts of their problems with their new condo in the Bahamas or having to make-do without a dishwasher in the cabin they rented on the Gulf Islands. Puleez……..

In that regard, I have to agree with the editors in the old days of the newspapers: if it bleeds, it leads. Other than that, it is no big deal. Yesterday Sally cut her ankle. Blood. Ergo, yesterdays blog story.