I’ve written a bit about alternative energy and, put succinctly, getting and having it is fairly simple, fairly expensive but definitely well worth every penny. So far, however, I have just written about the money and effort. I think you should know the benefits as well….

There is a sense of freedom that can’t really be described adequately in conventional ways. Not by the weird finances of it, the relative ease of it, the reliability of it or even the sense of independence it represents for one’s own personal psychology (read: paranoia). And it is more than just not being dependent on a faceless, inhuman utilities company. Or government.

It is more like a hard-edged, measurable manifestation of personal growth.

Independence coupled with a bit of competence and a familiarity with one’s personal life support systems actually feels like an extension of yourself. Like you have grown stronger somehow. It’s weird. I am older, stupider and definitely poorer but, somehow, I feel stronger, more able and more competent simply because I put ‘another section’ of my living requirements under my own control.

It’s kind of pathetic, really. How dependent must we be from birth in our society that one small step away from the bosom, umbilicals and grasp of the city makes one feel so liberated?

Yes, I know what you are thinking…..“that’s just a feeling of independence, silly!”

And I am saying that it is more than that. Think of it this way: if I was given a chance to prepay-for-life all my electrical bills, including maintaining existing and owning new appliances with a source that was 100% reliable and I had the money with which to do it, would that not be the same?

Answer: No. No it would not. Even with that fantasy, I am ‘connected’ to something against my will. With my system, I can fix it. I can add to it. I can change it. It does not send me mail or phone me. Ain’t no smart meter reporting on me, either. I can care for my system as I do myself (hopefully a bit better) and it is that sense of personal ‘extension’, I am talking about.

There’s something else, too. It, too, is weird science. Having an alternative energy system feels organic. Crazy, eh? I mean you have steel towers (windgen) and wires and batteries and gensets and solar panels and God-knows-what-all technology and yet it feels organic. And this is why: the power (mostly) comes from the sun and the wind. And the more panels I add, the more organic it feels. It just feels ‘natural’ in a way the grid never can.

We try to do all this ‘personal growth’ stuff in other ways too, of course. Gardens. Fishing. Hunting (some day, maybe) and a variety of anyone-can-do-its like fixing and building things (instead of buying) and cooking from scratch and all that. Hell, we even try to eat the 100 mile diet and do it with slow-food. But there is nothing yet quite so satisfyingly lovely as generating our own electricity.

You might want to try it?

To have a happy life out here, you gotta stay busy and stayin’ busy means projects. That is not a hard challenge, actually. There is always something to do on the chore list. You know, building a new set of stairs, re-routing a pipe, fixing a sink, adding some more solar panels, fixing the boat, bringing up the logs and, well, you get the point. Busy, busy, busy.

Having projects actually means having several projects on the go at once. It is not a good work habit, to be sure, to be able to wander from one incomplete chore to another, maybe several times in a day, but it is the way to do it out here. Firstly, you run out of parts. You always run out of parts or damage one of your own fleshy parts. Either way, the project is interrupted. And you can’t zip down to the hardware store and get back in twenty minutes. So, you move to the next half-done chore on the list and get 20% of it done. That is simply the way it is. Don’t fight it. Go with it. It’s kinda a zen thing. “First I do one chore, ‘zen’ I do another!”

One of the projects that always sneaks up on me is ‘clean-up’. If you have four or more chores on the go at all times, what is the point of cleaning up? May as well go from one ‘established’ work site to another without cleaning up especially when you know you’ll be back tomorrow. Makes sense.

Not to Sal. Sal is tidy. She likes things to ‘look nice’. Looking nice means ‘putting things away’. She used to be obsessive about it but now she is better. Read: sneaky. Now she only puts the crucial tools away when I am not looking. Usually when I have gone in to get a drink of water or made the mistake of taking my eyes off her for a second, Whoosh! Crescent wrench is back in the tool box and I didn’t even see it taken!

So, like an idiot, I assume I misplaced it and go back to the sink where I got the drink of water to see if I left the wrench there (an increasing probability, I confess). In the meantime all the bolts, screws and measuring devices are gone! Put away ‘nicely’ as Sal says. ‘Course that is the giveaway. When she tries to put too much stuff away, I catch her.

“Sweetie, you seen my wrench? Thought it was right here.”

“I have no idea what you mean but I am sorry to have interrupted you. Clearly you still have plenty to do and I suggest that you get on with it!”

Sally uses the threat of ‘cleaning up’ as a management tool.

And you wonder why it takes so long to finish a project?

Attended a party last night at Rendezvous Lodge located unsurprisingly on North Rendezvous Island. That’s about ten miles North as the 16 foot skiff flies. It was well attended. About thirty people including the locals, our hosts, their son and his fiancé and at least three dogs. It was great!

Rendezvous Lodge looks out across Calm Channel (anything but, in the winter) to the entrance of Ramsey Arm by way of Raza Passage. See: http://www.rendezvouslodge.com.

A few miles to the Northwest lies Stuart Island, home of the rich and famous and Sonora Lodge, their convenient and uber upscale local guesthouse. Michelle Pfeifer lives (sometimes) a few miles from there up Bute Inlet. We keep beautiful company.

Our hostess had spent the previous year or so in Arizona, the last few months with over 100 degree temperatures 24 hours a day. That’s right – 100 degrees F. even at night! It was so hot that the cold water side of the plumbing in her house delivered warmish water! And this incredible heat wave was not limited to Arizona! Large portions of the good ol’ USA got BBQ’d this year. Seems a bit harsh, eh? I mean the rest of the world expects they are all going to Hell but no one really expected them to get pre-warmed while still here.

Oh, I don’t think they are all really going to Hell. Not all of ’em anyway. Maybe Texans. Some of my best friends are ‘Mericans. Nice folks, as a rule. But you have to admit, that the four horseman of the Apocalypse do, at a cocktail party conversation, come readily to mind when discussing ‘Merican politics. To my mind, anyway. There is CONQUEST, WAR, FAMINE and DEATH. Think Dick Cheney (how many Vice Presidents shoot their friends in the face?).

They do seem to have Apocalypse in their culture somewhere.

I don’t usually talk ‘Merican politics at cocktail parties mostly because I don’t attend cocktail parties or, better put, I am not invited to them. Either way, my discourse on US politics these days usually starts and ends with Sarah Palin. As soon as she does a nude spread for Playboy, that weird story is complete and I, for one, would then go see the movie. Until then, it is just a poorly done farce. That perspective amuses half my ‘Merican friends. But not the other half. Ergo – few invitations.

There is a point to this blog (just taking awhile, sorry). Our ‘Merican friends are wonderful people or better put; people just like us. The politics doesn’t really play a role in our relationships because, like us, they are not involved in the way their government works. Not really. They watch it all on TV just like us.

Having said that, their politics is hurtin’ them these days even more than ours hurts us. Has been that way for a few years now. We see a deep divide in the US and it is getting deeper. Red and Blue. The Reps and the Dems are just getting further apart on issues and the rhetoric they are using to bring harmony just seems to be working in reverse.

Things seem to be heating up down there in more ways than one.

It would have been my mother’s birthday today. But she died 21 years ago so the issue is moot at best. She was almost 64 when she died from Cancer. My mother was the longest-lived in her family except for her dad who, I believe, lasted one year longer (but died thirty-eight years earlier). “The Force isn’t strong on that side of the family, Luke!”

The Force is stronger on my father’s side but, really, it seems as if late 70’s is their average and, with modern lifestyles and tubes, machines and the miracle of weird chemistry, I may be able to stretch things out til I am 80 or so. But I really tend to reflect more of my mother’s side of the family in my health patterns. And I hate tubes, machines and chemicals.

I also tend towards my father’s side of the family when it comes to lifestyle and accidents. My father was disinclined towards safety and his body was a walking litany of scars and misadventure. In fact, he walked with a slight limp.

So, frankly, I doubt that I will see 80. Even if I do that is only 16.5 years away! I am too inclined to pulling wheelies and such to be expecting a good chance at reaching 4-score, tho. I may just make the 3-score and ten that we’ve heard so much about if my mother’s gene pool influences strongly. And, if that is the case, I may have just 7 years.

Hmmm……7 to 16? Doesn’t seem like much, really. But keep a happy thought.

Sally’s dip into the gene pool yielded longer legs, so to speak. Cuter, too. The Davies go on forever. I did a little actuarial calculation and Sal is likely good till 90+ and, honestly, the way she is going today, 100+ is more likely.

And I am four years older than she is.

If you do the math, she is likely to have all of the forty years we have had together all over again. A second life, as it were.

Weird.

Did some work the other day. My old kind of work. Arbitration, mediation, paper-pushin’, talkin’-and-writin’ kinda thing. Felt good. Felt different. Felt sorta weird, too, almost as if it was a deja vu thing, ya know? ‘Been there, done that, doing it again? A bit odd.

I enjoyed my work as a mediator (1992 – 201?) and there was a time when I was pretty good at it. But mediating is like anything else – to be good, you have to do it all the time and I have had some significant time off.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not getting all ‘humble’ on ya. I’m still good. But with everyday practice there is a rhythm, a timing, a ‘zone’ you can feel as you get ‘into your groove’. This time, I could feel the rhythm but not the blues, I had the pace but not the timing. I was a hiccup out of the zone. I felt like Tiger Woods likely feels. Kinda. You know? Different reasons, tho.

I spent a lot of time with Mother Nature. He went more primal.

Similar, tho.

A bit like pulling wheelies on a motorcycle now that I think about it….

It’s age mostly. It sneaks up on you. After a 2 hour mediation and two hours of ‘writing it up’, I used to go do another one. There were more than a few times back ‘in the day’ when I started at ten in the morning and went til midnight. Sometimes even later. I once did two 8-hour mediations in a row. Ended at 2:30 am. Had to wake up a law student who was ‘watching how it was done’.

This time, I was exhausted after each session. It was not the people nor the issue. They were great! It was just being ‘out of the zone’, not ‘in the groove’. I am no longer ‘primed’ for the work week, the hustle and bustle. I can no longer run with the rats. I can’t take the heat and am glad I am out of the kitchen.

Can’t pull wheelies, either. Been a tough couple of weeks.

Still…………it was kinda neat.

I was just wondering why I had only 20 readers still……………and, worse, I know that some of them (the reg’d few) only signed up to be supportive but don’t, in fact, read the blog on a regular basis. My daughter is one of them.

“Well, dad, you know……..I was reading it every day and all and then you took a few days off and, well, I wandered away. You know? Like, kinda bored.”

“Well, yeah. Sorry. I mean Bri and I just got a new 48 inch TV screen and, like, I also gotta new Mac, ya know? Like………it’s hard to compete with that.”

And so there you have it: virtual life is simply more interesting than real life. Or, maybe better put: Hollywood tells better stories than I do.

Damn.

How about?

Yesterday an Orca blew up in the channel outside our door. It was spectacular. The body parts flying in slow motion, the huge blob of red blood filling the air. I saw other Orcas scattering as the invading pod cruised by. There is a pod war afoot. It’s over who controls the seal trade. Bruce Willis does the voice-over for the invading gang leader,

“Take that, fatso! Yippee Aye Ki yeah!”

Whoopi Goldberg does the voice-over for the dead whale’s girlfriend,

You dead, man! Dead tube swimmin’ is what you is! I gonna Bobbit yo ass!”

Her little brother is played by Chris Rock, “Girl, what’s wrong wich you!? Whales don’t have no asses! Sheeeet, girl, we talking like fools out here, now. Git yo self back in the damn pod!

Is that better? Less boring? Or should I go with a sit-com about seals and otters trying to get along together on a small rock?

Back was functioning. Leg burn healed. Time to re-enter the public domain, such as it is.

Yesterday was ‘market day’ and the usual group of neighbours attending were augmented by a couple of touring boat crews that happened to drop in for lunch. People we hadn’t seen before. And they sat at our tables!

We assembled in pockets off to the side like the standing-room-only crowd we were. Bit weird. But it wasn’t that bad, really. Some of our folks mingled with their folks and the only real difference was that the market did boffo business. Kinda nice, really.

We took pictures of them!

I always find it fascinating to see ‘tourists’ in their new, shiny Goretex-with-integrated-lifejacket and attached-safety-equipment outfits (even on their dog! Honest!) hanging out with locals whose sense of fashion is limited to layering rag-shirts and making sure that not too much bare skin shows. You can tell the tourist from the locals by the glare of newness given off by their clothing and equipment!

We look like cow-birds to what looks like peacocks to us.

This is not to imply that our guys aren’t dressed for the conditions and ready to deal with emergencies. Mostly, they are. But they dress in layers all year ’round so that they can add and subtract as the situation requires and also so that their winter wardrobe is the same as their summer one. It is simply more efficient that way but the overuse does fade and tatter their garb rather rapidly.

We can look a bit shabby at times.

Tourists, on the other hand, go to Mountain Equipment Co-op or score some Costco bargains the day before their two week trip to Desolation sound. A group of them actually ‘crinkle’ as they move. The clothing has not even gotten dirty yet!

Gawd! They are pretty in a day-glo kinda way!

The tourist boats are usually also very clean and shiny and ‘tiddley’ in keeping with yacht club sensibilities and our boats – even amongst the tidiest of owners – tend to have plastic totes, buckets, equipment and broken parts all higgeldy-piggeldy strewn about the bilge. It takes nothing to identify a local boat. See a log dog and a small sledge in the boat? Dead give-away.

Funny, isn’t it? Resistance was futile. I think I have been assimilated.

To me, the best writing is bone-scraping real. Gritty, perhaps, ugly sometimes, but even when nice and Disneyesque good writing always hits the visceral core of truth. ‘Keeping it real’ as they say. And I wonder if I am doing that…………

You see, I am basically writing about our daily lives and our lives are more than ‘basically’ good. We are totally fortunate and, in religious terms, blessed. I often tell people, “I live in heaven with an angel!” So, with all that sunshine and happiness, is it real?

I have to think about this stuff………..

Frankly, I don’t think it is entirely real. I think we managed to ‘opt out’ of what passes for real nowadays and have temporarily landed in paradise. We, in effect, ‘left the civic building’.

I don’t apologize for that in the least. It was a good move. But we didn’t really plan it and it is a bit of a surprise. We find ourselves in a different mindset as well as a different place, actually.

And why shouldn’t we? We don’t get riots up here. We don’t care about the stock market. I rarely even listen to the news (it’s all lies, anyway). We don’t ‘do’ rush-hour. We don’t commute but once or twice a month and we rarely have to deal with the ubiquitous petty bureaucrat that seems to breed like Pine beetles in modern everyday life.

Most surprisingly, the people out here being low income to poor don’t even complain about prices. I don’t think I have heard a single gripe about gas prices or even ferry fares. Or even HST! It’s not that we like the way the world is going or the overwhelming presence of greed and more greed, it is just that we can distance ourselves from it mostly. When we can’t (going to town), we just close our eyes and ‘get through it’ and get back home as soon as possible. Kind of a denial-by-distance thing.

Unreal. But it works.

We don’t even seem to recognize the existence of the federal and provincial governments except where we have to be law-abiding (read: fearing). Honestly, we don’t respect our government, we just fear it. Which, when you are off-the-radar, is not too often, thank God!

We are not exempt from BIG Brother nor are we immune from bureaucrats. But at least we have fewer ‘watchers’. Less rules to obey. Fewer potential conflicts. We don’t have CCTV here. We don’t even have police! Hell, I think we have only one government issue sign in ten square miles!

But really? It is not that the government has let our people go. Instead, we have stepped out. It is like a quiet, passive revolution has gently taken place and the weapon is disengagement. Ghandi may not be proud but it is better than desperation and suffering at the hands of ‘the man’.

“Feds? We don’t need no stinking Feds?”

OK, I am exaggerating a smidge to make the point. If I am ‘keeping it real’, I just have to confess: we ran away from the madding crowd and hope they never find us. We are living in a state of denial for as long as we can and we really don’t want to know about general crap anymore at all. My previous obsession with keeping up with the news has been cured and replaced by dark glasses, ear plugs and a gag under a baseball cap.

Call me crazy!

There is an unusual and foreign aspect of off-the-grid living not often mentioned in many books, articles or blogs like mine and yet it is an important issue. I am talking about the type of ownership of land.

Most of us are familiar with conventional structures of ownership from fee simple to strata title, from leasing to housing co-ops. But buying land off-the-grid has often required more creative means of ownership and, where it wasn’t required, it was chosen or has evolved. The reasons for this are myriad but, essentially, it boils down to this: the property you are buying is not in the city and all the rules we grew up with were written for that venue. And also because banks don’t like to finance remote properties. Let me explain (in part):

Purchasing individually is clearly the simplest (fee simple) and the most common way to ‘own’ land (although we never own land, really. We just rent it by way of increasing taxes from the government. Don’t pay the taxes and they take your land. So, was it ever really yours?).

But, when buying rural, the tracts of land are usually in larger chunks and, perhaps, the use of the land will only be seasonal. Or one in which the main feature of the property is something that should or must be shared (like a lake). So, it often makes more sense to buy with others. Whatever. Bottom line: a lot of parcels are bought by groups.

It’s not always easy. We bought our 86 acre property with a group of ten only to discover that the government later dictated that any subdividing would require lots no smaller than ten acres. By bureaucratic standards, we now had two partners too many. So, eventually six of us bought four of us out. We six now fit nicely into the ‘paper rule book’ should it ever come to that. And we hope it never does.

We seem to do just fine by neighbourly cooperation rather than lines, boundaries, rules and regulations. But we have a few. And we won’t likely ever subdivide (the topography does not lend it self to that, anyway) which would reinforce the regional district rules and regs on our lives. Why should we want that when it is working fine as it is?
And, anyway, to do that would require roads being built on a parcel of our land that would do us no good (it may be a regional district benefit but not one we need) and that we wouldn’t/couldn’t use. We are, essentially, a water access only community.

It is not that the local government is bad. Stupid, perhaps. Definitly narrow minded. But not evil. It is just that so much of their ‘paper rule book’ was written for ‘planned neighbourhoods’ and many of the concepts enshrined and enforced by bureaucracy simply don’t fit an off-the-grid site. Especially a water-access only one.

Our company structure is a sufficient means of holding title. We pay our taxes and build to code and generally obey all rules and regulations that pertain to us but so many aren’t applicable and so we adjust accordingly. Parking regulations, for instance, simply do not apply. We don’t have cars over here. But boat mooring does, so we obey the rules and restrictions and share the solutions as a group.

Other groups got together during the hippy era when co-ops seemed all the rage. And I suppose they work. Somewhere. But, generally speaking, co-ops often don’t work well when the use and or involvement in the subject property varies greatly with the members. It is difficult to ‘share’ and ‘manage’ equally on everything with full-time, part-time, sporadic and absentee participants. Especially when all those different users have equal votes. Co-ops are not the recommended route for off-the-grid holdings.

Having said all that, buying in a group and then subdividing later into generous chunks is a good way to go if you can agree on an imaginary subdivision in advance (or agree in advance never to subdivide) and then endure the bureaucratic process of making it so. But you should also know that subdividing ain’t cheap. Road building alone (intended to tie you to the grid) can be hellishly expensive.

Personally, I feel I need at least five acres and ten is better. I don’t raise sheep or even chickens (tho our worm bin is expanding!) but I do need the sense of space. I love the quiet. I like not looking into my neighbour’s back yard. I just like it. So, I need/want space and that means a larger parcel and that means partners for affordability.

So, to wrap up: I would advise looking at larger parcels. They are cheaper on a per acre basis. I’d try finding friends and decent acquaintances with whom to buy it with. Bear in mind, you rarely get to choose your neighbours anyway so you don’t have to love the ones you buy with. But start with respect at the very least. They should be honest and responsible. You must, however, agree on how to own it together and that agreement must include a good dispute resolution mechanism. You will definitely use it!

And, all things being equal, I would recommend a company structure at first, with the longer term goal of a strata title or subdivision (in maybe ten years time? Maybe never) so that you eventually achieve some kind of sole ownership.

One that you ‘rent’ from the government, of course.