Society forms for a few basic and long-necessary reasons; protection, reproduction and cooperation being the obvious big three.  

We derive some sense of security in numbers.  It’s kinda primal.  Our group vs the other one.  Bloods vs Crips.  America vs Russia, et al.  That kind of thing.  It may even be more primal than that, tracing it’s roots back to schools of fish, flocks of birds or herds of animals.  The risk to the individual is made less by being surrounded by so many just-as-vulnerable others. Playing the odds is still our primary go-to method for achieving safety.

Reproduction, it seems, is well-served by diversity and there is obviously more diversity in numbers.  If a potential father has little to offer, he stands a better chance of finding a little-to-offer but willing mother in a large crowd.  We are more like rats than bees in that regard. God bless the gene pool.

And cooperation is the magic that humans bring to the equation more than any other species.  An antelope may increase their chance to reproduce or be protected because of the herd but antelope don’t share grass.  No handsome antelope sidles up to a real pronghorn cutie with a bunch of prairie grass in his mouth to ‘help out’.  Even domesticated animals don’t share food very much.

But we do.

We have the magic of sharing, cooperation, specialization and even the systems to distribute it all.  Not only that, we have complicated production and we have even more complicated systems to get it to others around the world.  Animals generally don’t.  Some insects do to some extent.  But they are generally less egalitarian than we are and definitely more single-minded.  Ours is a major leap in the complexity of life.

And, for a long time – maybe the last few hundred years – we have become increasingly more complex, more interdependent, more dependent, more specialized and more vulnerable to the fortunes and mishaps of the group than ever before.  In fact, the modern person is, for the most part, incapable of surviving alone.  Even the intrepid, well-equipped and skilled couple would likely perish living completely isolated fr any length of time. Modern mankind needs modern mankind.

But what happens when modern mankind starts to develop lemming-like tendencies? What happens when the larger mass of humanity encounters the hard-to-see virulent disease of the microscopic invader?  Or, what if the complex and relied on life-style of the many is actually self-destructive?  Even worse, what if it is environmentally destructive? What then?

Well, the answer for the most part, is that previous survivor groups simply moved on. Nomads having herds of goats or camels would overgraze an area and then move on to do their destructive practices elsewhere.  Easter Islanders, on the other hand, had nowhere to go. They perished. Moving away to another place worked so long as there weren’t too many eaters and the main victim was fast growing grass.  Seven billion people make a much larger and more complex destructive impact and, with few exceptions, there are not a lot of places to go to next. Not for 7 billion, anyway.

But there is a bright spot.  It’s OTG.

Even though 7 billion people can seemingly destroy the environment for everyone (or so it is currently postulated) the fact is that the seven billion have, like lemmings, run to the epicentre of the problem.  They are gathering in cities.  It is, in my view, dystopic. Suicidal.

What might look like on the surface as protection (grouping) and cooperation (complex systems) is, in fact, more like a concentration of the species for exploitation.  That exploitation may come in the form of disparate economics thus nullifying the benefits of cooperation or it may come in the form of an easier-to-spread contagion.  Viruses do better in cities.

If any of the above was actually true, then a species intent on survival would cause to create contrarians.  Geneticists call them mutants.  Psychologists call them deviants. Popular society calls them rebels and I tend to ascribe the term free radicals.  Basically, it is a term for those who refuse the Kool Aid.  Those who choose a different path.

It’s a form of diversification, not putting all your eggs in one basket. In a sense, it is as inherent to survival as is the gene pool.  Sending out ‘runners’ is a survival technique.

And there is no question in my mind that OTG’ers self describe as survivors.  They may not use that term because they are not constantly faced with threat but, scratch the surface and you hear and see survival skills being developed.  They are like the ship sent into space to colonize another world except they just leave the overpopulated area and colonize another world off the grid.

There is no question that mankind is a social animal.  But there is an equal founding principle for man’s survival through adaptability.  Adaptability and group-think are not mutually exclusive but they do tend to show up that way.  Those who go along to get along are group thinkers as a rule.  Those who chaff in the cul de sac are looking for alternatives. They have to be more adaptable as a result.

“Dave, what’s your point?”

“Well, If you don’t have a ticket on Virgin Space Travel or are a preferred guest of Elon Musk, then the next best place to move on to is a remote island NOT near you.”

Jus’ sayin’…. 

“I think we should get a gun.”

“Why?”

“I dunno.  We live remote.  We have a truck.  Seems like a gun is a natural accessory.”

“That’s silly.  We don’t hunt.  There are no dangerous animals where we are.  We don’t need a gun.”

“What about the zombies?”

“What zombies?”

“When the zombie apocalypse erupts, we need to shoot ‘em in the head.  It’s the only way to kill a zombie, they say.”

“Who says?”

“The company that sells ammo for killing zombies.  They call ‘em zombie-stoppers.”

“There’s no such thing!”  (for the record: there are several brands of zombie-stoppers sold on the market)

And so the discussion went regarding having a gun in the house.  Neither Sally nor I are natural born killers but we know we have to defend ourselves as is necessary. If it is ever necessary.  No one can come to our aid in time if there is ever a dangerous threat to our well-being so we have to do it ourselves.  Being prepared means being prepared to do what needs to be done and, in some weird, Mad Max kinda way, that might mean using a firearm.

Yes, I agree.  That may mean some day needing one in the city more than in the country but so far, not yet.  Close, maybe.  But not yet.  Well, not yet in Canada, anyway.  

There is also the question of hunting.  Truly independent people are self-sustaining and, for many, that means an omnivorous diet.  Omnivorous includes meat.  We already hunt/gather fish and shellfish.  Isn’t harvesting wild game the same thing?

And what about raising domestic animals for meat?

We are not likely to ever be truly self sustaining because food production is incredibly time consuming and, to a modern palate, too limited and seasonal.  Our goal is to achieve some semblance of independence and sustainability but we know that harvesting even 50% of what we consume is an impossible goal.  We could do that for a year, perhaps, but chocolate, coffee, dairy-without-a-cow and so many staples like flour, toothpaste, sugar, and well, the list is endless, make it unsustainable over longer periods of time without hardship and deprivation.

We don’t mind simple, limited and plain but we draw the line at deprivation.  We are not trying to make this lifestyle an Olympic event nor are we trying to prove anything to Les Stroud.  We are just trying to, basically, live within our somewhat limited means but to do so with healthy, tasty and varied foods.

And, of course, wine.

Raising animals for meat is even more time consuming than gardening.  We are not inclined to keep domestic animals because, to be frank, to do that job right, they turn out to keep you.  You have to always attend to farm animals or they will suffer and, perhaps, die.  Even our distant neighbours who keep chickens are severely limited in their movements by the need to care for them.  Other distant neighbours we know with goats are even more restricted. No one we know on the remote islands keeps cows.

It is not that I am advising against raising domestic animals.  I think, for many, chickens, at the very least, are a huge asset to a homestead and so are sheep and goats and ducks.  So, go for it if you are so inclined.  Just know that they are a lot of work.  And there is no legal market for them so they are not a cash generator. People do trade and barter with home-grown but, on any scale, the authorities put a stop to it.  They have their rules and, for the most part, their rules eliminate small-time producers.

It’s for your own good.  Bless their protective bureaucratic hearts, eh?

But all that is academic.  It is simply not a pursuit of interest for us.  If I want some meat, I would prefer to buy it from the somewhat distant abattoir that handles only free-range animals.   Or, I’ll fish.  Or gather oysters.

But the question of hunting deer seems to loom every fall when it’s hunting season.  It seems a healthy, good sized deer will yield somewhere around 60-70 pounds of good meat.  That is more than enough to satisfy all our needs with some left over for special dinners and guests for an entire year.  It’s almost free, it’s healthy and it is good.  So, why not?

Well, one reason is that it is killing and I would prefer not to.  I will if I have to.  But I don’t have to.  It is also hard work and I would prefer NOT to do that, either.  We clearly do not need to hunt at this stage in our lives.   And, if society keeps plugging along, we may never have to.  We may be able to rely on the region’s specialists and buy from a butcher or farmer who raises extra for selling.

Key question: Will society keep plugging along? 

On the other hand, no one sells deer meat.  It is illegal.  It is also relatively plentiful and, when we have been served some, it was pleasant and tasty.  And, like everyone, I cannot help but think wild venison is a healthier, more natural form of meat than is feed-lot beef or warehoused chickens.

So?  To kill or not to kill, that is the question.

But before you ask yourself that question, you have to ask yourself, ‘by what means would I kill?’ And that question raises the gun issue.  Do I hunt and, if I do, do I do so with a gun, a bow, a spear or a trap line?

And, if you decide to hunt with a gun, then it gets really complicated. Different guns and different calibers of ammunition for different game.  Licensing.  Permits.  Learning and practicing.  Hunting equipment.  Butchering.  The list seems to go on and on.

I can’t imagine the complexities involved in hunting with a bow.  Or a spear.  It seems the more primitive the means, the more complex the skill set.  A guy with a spear is likely a helluva better hunter in the practice of such activity than is a guy with a high-powered, long rifle with a scope hiding in camouflage and using special binoculars.  His ATV parked nearby.  Accountants and used car salesmen can do that.

But I don’t think I can.  I do not know anything about hunting and that should be apparent from reading this section.  I include it only because the question of self protection will come up and the corollary question of hunting will follow it.  Having a gun is an issue to consider.

I posed for a picture with my wife’s shotgun but she won’t let me have one for myself.  Not yet.  Too prone to hurting myself, it seems.  But I am still considering it.  At my age, I am unlikely to develop into a hunting enthusiast so self protection is probably the only logical reason for me.  But, even then, I still have to get past Sal for that.  And she’s armed.  I am not.

Maybe I’ll wait until I see my first zombie?

“Are you more free?”

“Yes.”

“How so?”

No one cares.  The government, despite what they say, does not really care about you.  That is a hard concept to grasp after just getting a speeding ticket or even getting a government benefit in the mail or not paying your taxes.  They seem to care.  But they don’t. They don’t hate you (I hope) but there is so much work for them to do to keep everyone else in line that a stray hair is allowed to fly away.  OTG’er are like stray hairs or wild hares. We are free mostly because we are too much hassle to manage and control.

We are more free because they do not care.

But, make no mistake: government knows that and so they wrote rules for OTG’ers anyway.  They will not likely enforce any of them but, just in case they need them, they have them.  Some poor-sap woman trying to snip her tethers recently in Coral Gables, Florida, can testify to that.  

You are technically and legally not more free.  But you are, practically-speaking, much more free than the city mouse simply because they are not looking for you.  Essentially you are out of sight and thus out of Big Brother’s mind.

We try to keep it that way.

And, in some ways, you are more free.  Building codes, for example, don’t apply in the strictest sense when you are off the grid.  They were not written to protect the individual homeowner, anyway.  They were drafted to minimize the effects of shoddy construction on other citizens.  Same for all the fire bylaws.  They don’t care if your house is engulfed in flame, the fire trucks first make sure the houses next door don’t get engaged.  How can any fire department save a house from fire damage – by the time they get there, there already is some.  Fire departments are about minimizing damage to other buildings. They were created for insurance companies.  Not you.

And that lack of personal caring is also re-enforced by the fact that most insurance companies won’t insure you anyway.  They do not trust you to keep your own house safe from fire.  And there is no one else to do that for you when you are OTG.  So no policy is offered. They trust that firemen and fire-hydrants and fire-trucks will protect to the extent that less than 1% of the housing stock burns down.  Fire departments are about fire damage mitigation.  That is what matters.  Those are the numbers the actuaries are looking at.  But, without a bunch of neighbours, fire hydrants, roads, trucks and well-clad heroes, to hell with you.  You are on your own.

Which is fine.  We take care of it.  We have fire extinguishers every ten feet or so.

“I built my house to code.  Actually, I built my house better than code.”

“We don’t care. We’re never going to inspect you.”

“But, you can.  Even my electrical was done to the code and that doesn’t even apply without us being tied to the electrical grid.  But we did it.  And then we built the rest to meet or exceed common alternative energy practice.”

“Dave!  You are not hearing me.  We don’t care. Live in a yurt for all we care.  Just don’t do it in a subdivision.  We care about yurts in subdivisions.  Can’t have that!  Property values would fall, tax base would drop.  I’d lose my job.  But, when you are as far off the grid as you are, we don’t care.”

That conversation was had by me and the head of the local government.  NOT the head of the building department, the head of the whole local government.  The top bureaucrat.  Not only did he NOT care, he would not have had the resources to seek out and inspect and then follow up on all the OTG’er in the area they ‘control’.  His staff was too busy keeping the local city folk in line. (I was there for another matter entirely.  The conversation above was just said in an aside).

There’s freedom in that.

There is also freedom in NOT having umbilicals.  We do not have piped in anything.  There is no disembodied voice or impersonal notice informing me of some arbitrary decision that will affect my daily life.  BC Hydro, for instance, wants another 4% from the public.  I won’t get that notice. I am free of the invisible little bureaucratic busy bodies that interfere all the time with an urbanite’s life.  Those intrusions are not much.  And not that often.  I know that.  But we are free of them.

There is some social freedom, too.  You don’t have to dress up to go out.  Your car does not have to be clean.  You do not have to line up for anything.  There is no up-to-the-minute schedule to keep to.  There are timeliness, to be sure, but they are measured in days if not weeks.  Minutes don’t count out here.  There are health parameters to consider, of course.  But a lot of the social pressures lessen because there is no cooperation with hundreds of others required all the time just to get the bus, say, to run on time.  There is no bus.

There is a lot of freedom in that.

Are we really free?  Probably not.  I was raised in a first world lifestyle, indoctorinated with capitalist and Judeo Christian ethics.  I have suffered the propaganda machine for half a century or more.  TV is in my DNA.  I have imbibed a lot of Kool Aid.  Even if you get out of the box, what did you just step into?  A bigger box, I am guessing.  But that is partly the answer.  There is more room for you in a bigger box.  You may never be totally free but expanding the box is worthwhile in itself.

Almost everything I have said about Donald Trump so far, is something that you would expect from me.  I think he is a clown running amok.

Since I am slightly left on some things and slightly right fiscally, I have concluded that, politically, I am right in the middle.  So, my opinion should carry some weight.  

‘Course, Harper, Trump and, probably, Li-keqiang all think they are middle of the road, too, so who really knows?

But I know ignorance when I see it.  I know bigotry.  I know bombast.  I know simplistic and I know when someone says one thing one day and the other the next.  And, sadly, I am intimately familiar with arrogance and conceit.  I don’t like Trump.  He reminds me too much of me.

Of course, I am not as bad as Trump but I am pretty sure that is only because I am not as rich.  If I had billions, I would lash out with opinion after opinion on all sorts of things I know nothing about.  I already do.  And, I think it is that very aspect of the Donald that is resonating with the vastly stupid, the abysmally ignorant and the rightly angry middle and lower classes.  The Donald is channeling their anger and frustration with the establishment. For them, he does not HAVE to be right – he only has to be angry.

He seems a bit ‘outlaw’ because he rants and raves and does not speak mealy-mouth. He speaks stupid but it is NOT mealy.  Ironically, a spoiled, billionaire from New York is coming across like a James Dean (Rebel Without a Cause), a Marlon Brando (Wild Ones). He is Sonny Barger in a suit.  He is Rob Ford.  He is Jesse Ventura.  He is as close to a rebel-who-can-do-it as we have seen in a long time.

Which is really too bad.  Because there is a large appetite for a rebel in a lot of places.

I am all for rebelling, myself.  Honest.  I would invest in berets and bandoleers in a heartbeat.  I’d call myself Commandante Cox.  Maybe carry a machete.  Or an axe (it is Canada, after all). And, Oh God!  It would be great to put out a little red book with quotes!  I can see the giant posters now.  I would likely feature huge posters of my butt, tho.  It is my best feature.

But I digress.   What I am saying is that as stupid as he is – and he is – he is closer to ‘everyman‘ than is Hillary.  He is closer to ‘everyman’ than any of the other idiot Republicans.  Sadly, he is closer to ‘everyman‘ than even Bernie.

The USA is in trouble in this regard because of ever increasing income disparity.  There are a helluva lot of poor, ignorant, angry ‘everymen’.  And they are everywhere in the country; east, west, north, south and, after Iowa, centrally as well. They are, collectively, the most ignorant 1st world population on earth.

A recent poll conducted by some Ivy League University discovered that over 40% of their student population did not know when, where or who fought the Civil War.  Half of those didn’t know that ‘civil war’ meant within one country!  Americans are, by design, ignorant of the rest of the world and, seemingly, even their own.  Except for celebrity.  Those same stupid students knew everything about the Kardashians.

That does not bode well for a majority of ‘everyman’ to vote well.  In fact, it is the perfect recipe for ‘everyman’ to vote for a ‘celebrity’.

And the one thing TRUMP is, is a celebrity.

New to me, anyway…..

Sal and I have been driving a 1996 Pathfinder for the last 8 years and it has been a great vehicle.  Best car/SUV I ever had – perfectly suited to this slightly odd lifestyle.

We do half our regular driving on logging roads and some of that is in snow and ice (winter). We do about 125 feet at the last part of the journey at an angle that makes the roadway illegal.  It’s a degree or two too steep to pass ministry standards but the old Pathy handles it with aplomb.  I can usually get a dramatic gasp from my passenger (even Sal) when I plunge over the edge and down the slope to the sea as if a fundamentalist lemming.  The last bit is steep.

And we have two parking spots buried more deeply in the forest than the other 16 or so in the main lot.  Those are the least desired spots because they require some serious clambering into and not all vehicles or drivers want to do that.  Those two are steeper and even more scrambly than the hard slope.  You have to rock-crawl somewhat.  The Pathfinder does that, too.

And we never drive it light.  Every time we went out, we went out with at least half a load of crap and came back with a full-load or more.  I have driven the logging road with 300 pounds on the roof and the rest of the truck jammed to the headliner – a few times towing a small utility trailer also fully laden.   It’s rated as a half-ton but I exceeded that weight limit many times.

The old Pathy had 208,000 kms on it and, even tho they do 400,000k without much trouble, that is true mostly for their city-dwelling siblings.  The ones that work hard off-road have shorter lifespans.  I figure the old Pathy was and is still good to 250,000kms maybe 275,000 but that puts it into the need-to-have-a-mechanic-nearby mode and there isn’t one out here and I ain’t good enough.  It was time to jump ship.

We bought a 2004 Pathfinder with 160,000 pavement-princess kms on it.  In effect, it is the same car only cleaner.  And I figure it will go the same 250 – 275,000 kms that I expected from the old one.  I will get 100,000 kms.

That’s the part that scares me.

We bought the old Pathy almost 8 years ago.  It had 148,000 kms on it.  It now has 208,000.  I’ll do the math for you.  We put 60,000 kms on the old SUV or about 7500 kms a year.  We drive, on average, under 500 kms a month with maybe four or so longer trips a year to see family or go to the city.  And that frequency of trips south is slowly tapering off. It is extremely unlikely that we will average 600 kms a month or approximately 7500 kms a year but lets think that we will.  I can easily have this car for ten years and, even by then, it will still be going strong.  Most likely.

I’ll be 78.

This car may be my last.

I may have bought a hearse!

I not only write my own blog, I comment on a few others.  Mostly political blogs.  I figure if I can get my politics out in someone else’s backyard, I won’t stink up my own.

It’s dog-think, really.

Laila Yuile is a political blogger and I like her.  No Strings Attached.  She wrote recently about site C and, in her text, she mentioned the hoary old phrase, “of course, we all deserve good paying jobs so that we can raise our children.”  Or something of that sentiment.  Her point being we need good paying jobs.

And so, now to my point…

I am not so sure there is such a thing as a good paying job.  In fact, I am pretty sure there is not.  If they ever paid you what your life was worth, you’d get a fortune in pay for the first few years and never work again.  So, the amount doled out by way of the system is ‘just enough’.  You get paid ‘just enough’ to get by and keep on working.  They call that good management.  We are being managed!

They want you to eat and sleep but they don’t want you to get rich and be an influence.  Of course some of us get by with less and some of us get by with a new SUV and a swimming pool but, basically, we all just get by.  Even the guy with two Escalades, a summer cabin and a mistress is not calling the shots behind the scenes.  Chances are that guy is just stressed out of his mind.

Only one percent of one percent have a say in calling the shots.  Maybe not that many.

The point is that the hoi poloi can never be anything other than that.  They are middle upper class at best.  Most of us languished in middle class on a good year and flirted with lower class more than once.  I grew up in poverty and scrambled up a notch.  We did not throw our weight around. Not ever.  We were and are the invisible, silent and dispensable majority. We are commoners.  We always will be.

So, really?  Is there such a thing as a good paying job?  Or is there just subsistence and subsistence plus and minus?

“Dave, why nit-pick?  If ya got two Escalades, a pool, a mistress and a few big screen TVs….what more does a guy need?”

Well, therein lies the rub.  We don’t really need any of that nonsense.  They convince us we do.   But even that is not the point. The point is we think we need that crap and so we sign up.  We enlist.  We drink the Kool Aid and join the system thinking we may eventually make 4-star general but knowing that most grunts remain just that – grunts.

It is not news, I know, but we were conscripted at birth (see your SIN card) and most of us don’t even think about it.  I think we should think about it.

And the irony is that we sell out to do it.  We sell our precious lives to make money to stand in line and buy a box we have no time to live in.  We don’t follow our dreams, we follow some curriculum.  We don’t march to a different drummer, we march in goosestepping cadence and sing the national anthem.  We are small parts of a large organism that is not a good one.

Our system has lost it’s moral compass.  We have shed our ethics and our morality because, in a money-driven world, those are luxuries.  No longer are we there to do the right thing. We are there simply to ‘make a buck’.  We are here only to ‘make money’ now; not to help others.  And, perversely, we willingly sign our names on a debt for a million dollars so that we can never change our minds. Some of us even take on system-entrenched careers like lawyer or doctor or accountant so that we are additionally trapped.

The longer I live off the grid, the more like incarceration living on the grid seems.

I know, I know….‘easy for you to say, Dave.  You are free.  We are not.  Stop saying nyah, nyah to us!

Sorry.  That was not my intention.  My smugness runneth over.  Mea culpa.  My bad. Apologies.  What I really mean is that some of us want to help others and study medicine or law or just grow great vegetables.  I have no problem with that.  But when your motivation is no longer to do good work or help others because you have to make a buck, then our priorities are all wrong.  The result of that wayward path is not just your own misery.  That is how evil gets done.

I have no real idea (I have a few real biases) whether site C is needed or not.  Is it good or evil? I don’t know.  I think it’s wrong.  But I do know that, when people are trampling all over others like the government and BC Hydro are, it isn’t all good.  And when I wonder why the BC Hydro guy is speaking with contempt to the protesters and the police get ready their tear-gas and tasers, I realize that they are doing it just to keep their well-paying jobs.

And there we are again….well-paying jobs…..

Attitudes toward money, work, things, schedules, time, focus, fears, goals, relationships, needs, wants and even government all change….just to name a few.

Money, of course, is money…..uber important stuff.  But, out here it morphs into something less important.  It changes in your head.  Money is no longer the reason for all things. Money becomes an ancillary issue at best.  Money is no longer #1 on your mental hit parade. People do not talk about real estate values, for instance.  Ever.

Hell, they do not even talk about the price of fuel which you would think would be on their minds. It’s not.  “It is what it is.”

The main reason for all that is simple: you are no longer – for the most part – engaged in the workforce. And the language of the workforce is money. Of course, we are all still somewhat engaged in it but even the most entrepreneurial OTG’er can’t put in a full day chasing the almighty buck.  Just ain’t enough customers, bucks or interest to make that happen out here on a daily basis.  Slowly your mind shifts from money-hunting and saving and spending to other things – issues requiring filthy lucre looming up maybe only once every two weeks at most.  Most of the time you are thinking about employing some ingenuity to a weird OTG problem that money just can’t solve.

Seriously, when the main topic of your old modern life fails to come up in thinking or discussion for at least two weeks, it diminishes as a topic in your own consciousness. Most people out here not only don’t wear a watch, they don’t carry a wallet!  You are no longer thinking every half hour, “Geez, parking just went up!”  Or, “Sheesh, I gotta get a raise or something…I can’t make ends meet”  Or, “Jeez, I could go for a Starbuck’s coffee!”  All those constant ‘consumer’ reminders keep money at the forefront of your consciousness. When they go, the topic fades.

There are many other reasons, too.  No stores helps keeps the issue at bay.  Fewer wants.  No peer group pressure.  Advertising non existent.  Slowly but surely, the cost of things becomes a non-topic.  When that happens, money becomes less of a focus.

It’s conventional attitudinal determinism, actually.  Researchers find that drug addicts are more addicted when hanging out with other addicts.  Surround them with people who do NOT talk, think and pursue drugs and the addict spends less time on their cravings.  And the cravings diminish.  In that sense, the modern state of consciousness regarding money is an addiction.  And, with time, it an addiction/fixation/topic-of-concern we eventually have less than our urban cousins.

Work is another thing.  Maybe because there is no competition out here, any workers for hire do not negotiate.  Nor will they quote.  And, if they do, it means little.  “Well, things changed, eh?  I had to go up north for a week and that meant my neighbour’s wood supply dried up and so I had to go down the road to another guy and that meant hiring a truck and the other guy charged more for the wood so the price I quoted changed from $1000.00 to $1100.”  

But it is more than just that.  People who might seem to need the work (they are poor) and have a mill and have some logs most often don’t want to make lumber.  “Well, it’s kinda wet out and I have mostly fir in the yard.  You can use Hemlock for studs.  Plus I need a part for the machine so I may not get to milling til next summer.”    

There are maybe ten small mills out here and it takes a while to find one that is even thinking about working.  And that’s because ‘work’ is no longer customer or schedule-driven.  Work is not 9 to 5.  Work is now driven by immediate needs or boredom.  “Well, can’t do any milling right now.  Gotta fix the roof on the chicken coop and put in the garden.  But, later, I can maybe fire it up.  I get kinda bored if I don’t do some millin’, ya know.  Just don’t know when.” 

I still have the remnants of city work habits.  If someone comes for something, I get it done within a day or so.  Often they are surprised.  “Wow, Dave, you wrote that contract up in a day?  Man, that’s great. Sheesh, I don’t need it for a month or so.  Can I leave it with you for a bit. Wife and I going to Saskatchewan for a wedding.”  

“No problem.  But I thought you needed it right away?”

“I do.  Right after the wedding.  And, after I put in the garden.” 

This second book I am grinding away at is not funny.  It is airy-fairy.  It’s psychological.  It is more ‘explanatory’ and deals a bit more with how to make the move, how to transition, what steps to take and what to expect.  How it all feels.  It’s about the thinking process and the shift from one way of living to another.  I am writing it from the perspective of having done it but having done it without knowing what I was doing at the time.  I still don’t. Not really.  I am still in transit.

Still, this book is about hindsight, partial hindsight – hindsight while still underway.

For example; one of the little weird, odd things I have discovered is how much time, interest, learning and investigating alternative energy took up.  It seemed to be the number one topic from the get-go.  I was attracted to the technology and I felt that I had to know all there was to know.  Then I had to get a ‘good deal’ and put together a ‘good system’.  The energy system became the focus, the iconic symbol of the effort to move off the grid.

I was talkin’ solar panels while still living in the cul de sac.  In retrospect, it was like a flag is to a movement, a leader is to a country, a loss-leader is to a supermarket.  It’s a symbol.

To be fair, talkin’ trash about alternative energy is part of the fun.  It’s new and evolving and there is so much to learn.  But, by way of making my point, people who move off the grid also talk a lot about sewage and water.  Somehow, we think OTG is all about power, poop and pipes.

It’s not.

Those topics have to be dealt with, of course, but they are not the essence of moving off the grid.  It is true that ‘the grid’ is all about power, poop and pipes but, if that was all there was to it, one could move off the grid simply by moving in to the garage.  Moving and living off the grid is 10% alternative systems, 90% lifestyle shift.

OTG is some new kind of different culture, some new kind of mindset, it is a different way of spending your time on the planet.  Flicking a switch to get power from a different source does not make a person OTG.  Even peeing in the woods doesn’t do it.  Living OTG is a shift in perspective, values, behaviours and possibly, relationships.  It is like moving to another country.  A third world country at that.

Of course, those topics are very subjective and personal.  It is hard to wrap your head around attitudinal shifts to the point that you can talk about it.  It is hard to imagine a new perspective until you get one.  Adding up your electrical needs is so much more graspable.  Piping in water is simpler to understand.  Newbies fixate on systems for the simple reason that they are needed and they are different from before when they lived in the cul de sac.  We know that stuff is going to change.  For many of us, we fixated on carpentry, too, simply because we hadn’t done it before – but now we are doing it and so it falls back in to the mundane.  Those topics are tangible, present and necessary.  They are also easy.

Still, the initial discussions: Lets talk poop, power and pipelines.

But the real topics are mental.  They are philosophical.  They are attitudinal.  They are the reconstruction of ways of thinking.  The real topics are hard to talk about because they are deep in our psyche, they are still changing, they are about life.

I am trying to give that a shot.  Feel free to help.

I have no idea if any of that which is written below is correct.  How could I?  I suppose I could do research but my opinions are never based on facts, so why start now?  I was just wondering why the economy is so flat and further….is there a good time to make a break for it? Just musin’, mostly.

Is there a natural time to stop playing?  Is there a time for everyone to quit the rat race?  Is there an ideal time to move off the material grid?  

I don’t imagine so.  We are all so different.  But young people are especially (read: hormonally) driven to find mates and so that fact alone suggests that the 20-somethings are more inclined to seek the largest gene pool available and that’s in the city.  Swimming in the gene pool is expensive.  Living in the city is expensive.  Young people drive the economy.

Thirty-somethings are usually fully engaged in whatever career they are pursuing and, if not, usually still looking for one to pursue.  If they have mates and children, those two factors mitigate to staying in the city and working and spending to do it all.  Thirty somethings sustain the economy.  

There aren’t many forty-year-olds out here. They are economic sustainers, too.   I guess if you are forty or so and have NOT YET been kicked out or committed to opting out, you are, by circumstance, pretty locked in to the major circuits and drains of the city and all that that requires.  Of course, there are exceptions but I don’t know any.

We have always had the marginalized but I think we have more now.  The homeless, the mentally ill, the under and unemployed, the millenials who never left the basement…these people are just not playing in the game.

But, by far, the largest contingent of new opters-out and OTG’ers are 50 to 65 year olds. They are the retirees.  They may already be rich and retire early, they may be late in that contingent and simply retire modestly or else they may have had the dream for decades and are slowly making the move incrementally.  For many of them, they are making the REMOVE.  If there is a new face in the sparser, non-competitive population, it is usually someone checking out around 55 to 60.

So, maybe 55/65 is the natural time-to-exit group?  There is no question that the majority of OTG’ers out here are 55+.  But I am still not so sure that indicates much except that it is true in our time.  And in our place.  It was true for me and Sal.  It was true for many of the folks we know. But there are plenty of exceptions, too.  So, hard to say.

But one commonality is largely true for all of us (at whatever age) who were rejected or who opted out: we are not huge consumers. In our case, our consumption levels dropped off because our kids fledged and we moved from a fast-paced urban setting which required high consumption levels so as to keep up with the Jones’s and to buy the convenience necessary to make more money. To be fair, we ‘consumed’ a lot getting ourselves established out here (although, no more than we would have in the city just living there) but, since then, our needs and wants have been reduced by 75%.  We simply do not buy as much as we did even in our thirties.

The point of all this musing in demographics is ultimately economics: Marginals, urban retirees and OTG’ers do not constitute much of a market. Never have.  Nor do those who are exiled by early retirement or illness even if they live in the city.  Of course, there are plenty of products we can buy and employ for our use and convenience and we do.  But products specifically aimed at early retirees or OTG’er are rare.  Products aimed at the marginals are non-existent.

I suppose more and more products and services are being generated for the ‘aging-in-place’ generation but that is a zero sum market.  A good example is a retirement home. The regular, good ‘customer’ is relatively short-lived, so to speak.  Hard ot build up a steady clientele.   And even if oldsters still buy, they don’t buy big and they don’t buy big-ticket items.  Few, if any, move up-scale, they down-size.  Ninety year-olds don’t have two-foot-itis nor do they lust for the latest muscle car. When you are old, OTG or urban, you simply buy less.   The marginalized consume even less.

Another way of looking at the lower consumption levels for me is simply looking at what I can buy out here.  Virtually nothing.  We have no stores, no restaurants, no services. One can hire local help for some transportation issues and maybe lumber supply. Maybe. Sometimes a heavy machine is available but, most often not.  And that is also true of older urbanites. They don’t shop for fun any more.  They aren’t accumulating.  Fashion does not motivate them.  They don’t want for much.

You might say, “So what?”

Well, here’s the point: the homeless, the early retirees, the OTG’er and the perpetually unemployed are a bit like the financial canary in the capitalist coal mine. They were rejected or opted out early and are no longer heavy consumers.  And that contingent is growing.  Fast.  Add in the ‘greening’ effect and people are buying less, recycling more and being less indulgent.  I think.  So, I am saying less consumption is a growing phenomena.

It is very much a function of age.  That’s for sure.  And, in particular, our lifestyle seems to accelerate that.  So, we who used to be drivers of the economy are no longer doing so. The bulge of the boomers marching to retirement is going to magnify that.

As people get increasingly marginalized as a consequence of inequality or incapacity or age they stop playing the capitalist game.  They cease to spend as much.  Ergo, the economy is flagging.

And you can see it.  The global downturn may be simply demographics.  It seems so. Japan aged faster than the rest of the world and it’s economy has waned for some time. And, at a smaller scale, we have plenty of older friends in the city and those living OTG and they are not spending as much either.  Large chunks of the consumer population are dropping off the statistical consumer radar.  Those of us older OTG’ers are just the early and more noticeable balers.  The urban old bale, too.  The dysfunctionals never had a chance.

The point: we will have zero to negative economic growth for the foreseeable future. And it may be partly my fault.

I fell a week or so ago and it still hurts to bend over.   Not so much.  Just a sharp reminder.  I am healing. I’ll be fine.  But I mention it again because I slipped on the stairs and about a week later, walking gingerly and holding on to the rail, I slipped again.  No fall this time.  Just a minor heart attack.  WHOA!  Just that feeling of ‘slipping on a greased surface’. Absolutely frightening.

“Sal.  As soon as I can bend, priority one is fixing the steps.  If not, priority two will be finding another husband and burying this one.”  

Two yesterdays ago, we began to pull up the steps and put down new boards.  After the boards were down, they were treated and then covered in wire mesh.  I tread on them with increasing confidence but still with one hand on the rail.  Once bitten…..

But here’s the real story: we put those treads down ten or so years ago when we were building the stairs which would allow us to ascend to the higher elevation for the building of the house. There are about 40 or so steps in that section.  Plus landings.  There are another 40 or so steps before and after depending on the terrain and deck and house design.  From low tide to the top floor, I think we have 80-something steps.  I remember the locals saying, “Your stairs are likely good for ten years.  But wood doesn’t last forever. Around then, you may have to replace much of it.”

Ten years flew by.

The top ten steps are shielded from the sun by a deck running along side.  Those steps get extra greasy in winter.  The rain would combine with the slimy, moss-cum-algae growth to form a slick grease that seemed slipperier than ice.  Every year it got a smidge slimier.

When we took up the first board, it was covered in a goo that, even when gripped tightly, allowed the board to still slip right out of my hands.  Even grabbing the boards with two hands denied a firm grasp and, as I worked them, they slipped and fell often.  Seriously, it was like handling slimy fish.

Planing the stair treads

I took each board and ran it through the planer.  Typically twice.  If I ran it slimy side up, nothing happened. The blades could not cut. The board might go through but most often it stuck.  Very strange.  If I put the boards bottom-side up, because the slime was considerably less on the back-side, the planer took off 1/32 of an inch and revealed a board that was perfect.  No rot.  No cracks.  If anything, the board seemed harder with the time spent in duty.  So, basically, I just ‘cleaned them up’ and replaced them.

It is remarkable that the wood was so un-flawed and perfect after all that time.  Especially in light of the warning and the extra slime.  I imagined the slime was also rotting the wood underneath but that was not the case.  Kiln dried, untreated, styro-wood from Home Depot would have been truly punk after such neglect.  I am sure of that.  This local stuff was great!

Before

After

Well, I didn’t actually do the lift and replace.  Sal did.  I was trying not to bend.  Instead,  I worked the reno-side (planer, saw, tool-fetching and supervision) and, on a few boards, I replaced them with new but it was Sal who took up the old and waited til I handed them back for replacement.  She’d take out the six deck screws and, a few times, do a bit of remedial work on the stringers and then put the boards down again using six different screws and holes.  Then she’d paint the new side with preservative and move to the next step.

Sally re-installing stair treads

She worked on her knees just as you’d imagine.  She’d position herself on the step below and work on the step above.  On the first of the steps, she put a hand down as she leaned to reach for the far screw.  It was so slippery, she fell on her face.  Because she was on her knees and so low to the steps it was just a surprise and no damage was incurred.  But imagine how slippery the steps had to be for that to happen.

When the top section was done, we stapled down new hardware cloth, a light metal meshing, for even better grip than that of the first day with new wood.  We had used the stairs for ten or so years without the cloth. Can’t afford to take that risk anymore.

We worked well.  We got the first section done. One third. We walked on it.  It worked. Good grip. But I can’t stop reaching for the rail.  It may become a habit.

Halfway down, half done

It sounds odd but this is a milestone.  Rebuilding something as fundamental as the main stairs even if it is still sound, is a milestone of sorts.  Nothing marks an anniversary quite like it.  We’ve been here almost twelve years but the stairs weren’t finished in the first year so this is like a symbol of our first ten years.  A milestone that portends of more maintenance, more repair, maybe even more falls.

Welcome to phase two.