Well, the deck is largely done.  I have some railing posts (welding) and some railings (wood) still to make but the new addition to the deck is done, for the most part.  Just fiddly crap from now on.

Deck Extension

The new ‘little’ deck extension was built to adjoin or juxtapose the raised funicular cart that has yet to be built.  That cart is the BIG part of the project and I hope to get on with it this summer.  It will take me awhile.  The cart will rise along the tracks and rest alongside the new deck and thus raise the goods or the boats or whatever we are trying to lift from the water to the deck without strain.

It’s a plan.

I will add a small crane to the deck for lifting things like kayaks from the beach to the deck and vice versa.  The railings, of course, for safety.  And maybe a few other odds and sods since I am down there and messing about….like the second bathroom which has honestly not gone beyond the empty-promise, dream-on stage so far.  But I’ll get to it.

Update on deck – next blog.

Turns out that living OTG (off the grid) has so many iterations that the term is indistinct and used by so many different lifestyles as to be confusing.  Our book category is a melange of quirky titles and authors describing how to live in your car, your boat, your RV or on a surfing couch, live for free, live in a house built from garbage or live in a cabin in the woods – just to name a few.   One nut lives on a remote island up the BC coast!  And another self published book I saw on Amazon featured a shopping cart on the cover and promised to reveal the secrets of homeless living.  (Presumably, those suggestions work best in the city…I can’t see that shopping cart thing workin’ too good in the forest.)

Fair enough.  OTG is more of a mindset in my opinion, anyway, but I think Amazon is embracing the fringe rather than the real OTG’ers but why squabble over semantics? Basically, all of the folks living unconventionally are making a statement.  They don’t like the ‘burbs, the condos or the lifestyle required to get there.  Or else they can’t get in. Doesn’t matter how you cut it – voluntarily or involuntarily – conventional living simply does not work for everyone.

It doesn’t work perfectly for anyone, in my opinion.  It works for the system to have a ready-to-hand labour pool and taxpayers willing to hemorrhage money on demand in aid of that system but the lifestyle seems to grind everyone up in the end.  No one is happy unless they are on Prozac and have just recently avoided an indictment.   Heart attacks, drug overdoses, destroyed families, tension, neurosis, psychoses, failures to launch, chronic fatigue, addictions, divorce, cancer, bankruptcy, all this collateral damage in aid of sustaining a system that just doesn’t strike me as supportive for enough people to warrant it’s continuance.

But how do you change it?

I simply moved away from it.  I moved away like a person who objects to an industrial odour or heavy traffic or local drug houses or drive-by shootings.  I moved away from what I saw as bad rather than to what I knew was good.  That it turned out to BE GOOD surprised me as much as anything ever has.  But I lucked into this paradise.  I was really just getting out of the kitchen ’cause I couldn’t take the heat anymore.  No genius, here.  More like a rat leaving a sinking ship.

And, what’s it to me, anyway?  If folks wanna meth-amphetamine themselves to death in a highrise condo while avoiding their creditors and lying and cheating those they know, why would I care?  Even if they are NOT doing that but just being ground down to a tiny nub like so many others, why do I care?  Hell, even if they are living the high-life with only burnout as the price they pay, why would I care?

And, do I care?

I honestly don’t know the answer to that question.  I know I care a bit.  I care a bit that 7,000 Nepalese were killed in their recent earthquake.  I care that hundreds are dying trying to smuggle themselves into better lives from where-ever they came from. I care that ordinary Canadians are being made to feel like failures because of overwhelming debt.  I care a bit that people would incite radical Muslims to die defending the imaging of Muhammad at a cartoon contest.  I even care a bit that senator Duffy is being tried (rightly so) for simply being the wrong pig in the wrong pigsty at the wrong time.  Nasty pigstys offend me at all levels. I am a sensitive guy.

But how do you change it?

Seriously.

I’ve been asked to write an article on a milder version of that question (I haven’t agreed to do so).  How can a political party actually make positive changes?  I have some ideas, of course.  You don’t get to be 67 and having written a few thousand blogs by lacking opinions. I got opinions!  But what is the basic one? What is the pure message?  What cuts to the chase in 750 words?  How do you change the world in a soundbite?

Wanna job?  Wanna real job?  One that continues?  Then vote Green and change the world so that it can be all that it can be!

Old parties think the economy runs by selling our natural resources in bulk to other countries.  And the rich guys get richer.  The Greens believe the economy starts at the local level and we are awash in the resources we need to do that and do it sustainably.

Real jobs begin at home!

Or should I just go to my old standby?:  Get out!  Get out NOW!

I believe all that but is it game-changing?  I don’t think so.

Having said that, Elon Musk’s pretty conventional battery  – nothing simpler, really – will shift the big picture a little.  A battery will change the energy grid.  Our collective perspective WILL change.

OMG!  Maybe there is hope, after all.

The 45 degree steel beam is 90″+ high-off the rocky beach sitting on the concrete-based pedestal as described in the previous blog.  The second beam is there to ‘triangulate’ the structure and make it strong.  The steel beams are angle-steel, almost 1/2″ thick and double-hot-dipped galvanized.  They are BC Hydro-salvage fallen power line tower parts. They ARE strong.

Salvaged steel beams

The long beam is 21 feet long and weighs 220pounds.  The shorter one is almost 12′ long and weighs a mere 130 or so.  The joists are 2×12’s ‘sistered’ in to the pre-existing deck structure.   When that is up, we deck over but currently don’t have any 2×6’s for the decking.  Sal hinted that we might use a mixture of 2×8’s and 2×4′ to deck…….hmmmmm…..?

More Hydro salvage (pillar for deck extension and funicular rails behind) plus ramp salvaged from fish farm in foreground

“So, did you rig up a lift or something to place those beams or did you just work Sal extra hard?” asked my neighbour when he dropped by to see it.  He’s read the book.

Killer Drill

Drilling through beam using the Badger portable drill press

His visit cut into the work-day which is remarkably short as a rule and thus made shorter yesterday but we still put up two joists before the Malbec called.  We may finish the remaining sisters and be ready to deck today.  Tomorrow for sure.  I say ‘may’ because I am likely to run out of the 2x12s but I would run out of the short lengths and Sal is insistent that we can ‘make em’ from 2×8’s and 2×4’s so that we don’t have to stop.

Cobbling is SOOoooooooooo out-of-character for the work-site partner who usually brings a little OCD to the equation.

Cutting steel beam to length using our neighbour John’s fabulous machine

“That’s not like you.  Usually you want everything perfect.  The same.  Appearances have to be right.  That’s your schtick.  It’s me who says ‘oh, it’s good enough.  No one will see it.  It’s strong – that is all that counts.  Wazzup?”

Overview of work site adjacent to Boat House

“Shut up and keep working.  I am not that rigid.  And, anyway….I want this all done before our guests arrive.  Now, focus!”

Deck Frame in Place (strong enough for ANY load the barge delivers)

So I may be ‘making’ the remaining two joists out of parts.  I may be decking like a quilter.

All Work and No Play

Slave-driver Sal is back on the job!

Sal and I are building again.  This time it is a deck extension for the boat house receiver deck, the first place we load to from the boat and the beach, the first level spot on the property.  That deck was ‘build #1’ and done ten or eleven years ago – the one that, in the book, took us two weeks but would have taken my contractor friend two days.  We like to think we are so much better now.

Yep.  Now, it will take forever.

Basically an extension is a modification, a renovation, a tie-in to an existing structure. Renos are harder than building from new although, for us, it is all Everest, the Matterhorn, K2…who cares?  It’s all an uphill battle.  Our real problem is that even as we get better at doing things, we also get older.  So, as the skill level goes up, the physical ability goes down and thus visible progress on the deck is the same as if we were first-day amateurs. Glacial.

To tie in joist extensions means ‘sistering’ new-length joists onto old ones.  And, for that to happen, decking has to be pulled back to expose the old joists.  That would not be too hard if I hadn’t attempted to re-think every process at the time of building.  And, when doing the deck the first time, Genius-Dave decided to spring for stainless screws.  “Then they won’t rust and look bad, they’ll last forever and I honestly don’t see why others don’t do this!”

Now I do.  Stainless is a more brittle metal than other metal screws or (better yet) galvanized nails.  When the ‘driver’ is driving them in, the torque can rip off the heads. And so I had more than a few boards held down by headless screws.  That was not that much of a problem at the time.  It is a much bigger problem when trying to take the old deck off.

So, Sal got that job.

I took on the pedestal/support leg build.  I was employing a 160 pound six-foot, six-inch heavy galvanized pedestal (one of six I salvaged from the BC Hydro yard fifteen years ago).  It had to be bolted to a poured concrete base and then extended up by way of a smaller pedestal to the right height to support the joist extensions.  In theory, simple enough….except that that height is about 90 inches – seven feet six inches – 22 inches over my head.

Still, people build (literally and figuratively) over their heads all the time but my challenge was and is that my footing on the beach is over irregular rock.  And there was no place to secure a higher working platform without building something almost as elaborate as the deck extension itself.  I eventually do what I always do in such a circumstance – ‘wing it’ with something cobbled together and try to be ‘careful’ which is the rationale one uses when NOT being careful.

I took an aluminum ladder with folding ends and tippily stood it horizontally against the pillar. Then I climbed up and balanced precariously on it holding a HUGE drill (3/4 inch) so as to be able to drill the fastening holes between the pillar and the extension.  Sal-the slim-and-slight came to hold the ladder from tipping.  Shrek-like Dave relying on her strength to keep stable.  I really should have lashed it to the post in retrospect.  One spin of the high-torque drill and it was clear that it was going to tear itself from my hands, tip over the edge of the pillar and crash down on Sally’s head.  If it fell drill-bit first, it would impale itself in her brain. Otherwise, she would simply be killed by blunt trauma.

I considered giving it a second try but love triumphed and we abandoned the attempt.

Like everything we do around here, I found another way to secure the extension.  No one was hurt.  It was a miracle.

The deck extension is joists stretched out into thin air but supported on their ends by a steel beam.  The steel beam goes from the old deck to the pedestal.  The steel beam weighs 220 pounds and it has to be lifted to the 7’6″ height of the pedestal-with-extension. The footing, as mentioned, is irregular in the extreme.

That is today’s job.

You’ll understand if there is no continuance on this topic….?  Donations in lieu of flowers.

A reader accurately pointed out that the threatened writing change was quickly forgotten and my last blog was in the same vein as previous.  And he’s right.  I keep being despicable me and I have trouble changing. THAT is the real story: Guy struggles to change, remains the same.   

Oh well, I am not the first to try to deviate from my genetic disposition, cultural heritage and situational circumstances.  Look at Bruce Jenner (if you can).  The struggle to change is not really the prime issue.  It is the desire to grow that is the goal.  You want to be all that you can be without having to join the army.  Plus, you want to explore that which you are not so that you can see if anything else is in there and just hiding. Maybe there is a slim, handsome genius in there somewhere…shouldn’t I, at the very least, go look?

In the meantime, I will carry on with the same old, same old but know this: the search for Dave has NOT been called off!  Rescue crews are still deployed.  We have not given up hope just yet.

Let us return to economics for a bit – the study of human behaviour-by-numbers.  And remember that all views expressed (by anyone, actually) are like the view of Manhattan from the perspective of an ant.

China had a war in the early 60’s with India over disputed territory.  They both want it.  It is rock and desert and can’t sustain rats or bugs but they fought over it.  It is now ‘disputed territory’.  China is also spreading it’s influence by way of it’s navy and huge engineering projects in the South China Sea.  Some fifty or 60 years ago, China annexed Tibet and has claimed it as it’s own and seems to have succeeded since even the Dalai Lama has resigned from any political role there.  And China claims Taiwan, of course.

So we can conclude that China has a sense of manifest destiny – just like the US did as they spread west to the Pacific a couple of centuries ago.  They just ‘feel’ that a certain chunk of the planet is theirs and they are claiming it.  Fair enough, I guess.  The US. did that.  Canada is doing that with our re-assertions over the north.  Russia did it and still does it.

But, with the exception of Canada, everyone else seems inclined to morph from manifest destiny to imperialism without so much as a hiccup.  And China is manifesting imperialistic inclinations in Africa in a significant way.  They are building highways, railroads and bridges and all sorts of things in Africa in exchange for resources and influence.  Today China is being classically imperialistic.

But (and here’s the point of today’s blog) they are also being innovatively imperialistic. They are simply buying BC.  And we are selling it!  We are selling our province for filthy lucre.  We sold Richmond first.  Then we sold portions of every Lower Mainland neighbourhood.  Now we are selling all the best neighbourhoods willy nilly.

“Dave, that’s just the nature of immigration all over the world!”

That’s what I thought.  Now, I am not so sure.

I need to reiterate at this point that I have no problem with Chinese people.  They are just like us only slightly smaller and better at math.  And they have great food.  So, what’s not to like?  But think of it like this: an ambitious government wants to expand.  It wants to have an international empire on which the sun never sets.  So how do they do that?  In the old days, you sent warships and disease and killed the foreigners, raped the women, sold the young into slavery and imposed your will.  Tried and true methods.  It worked.

But the US added a wrinkle.  They introduced their currency as the common denominator of international business and their popular culture as a soft-invader along with the killing and all.  That proved to be an even more effective way to take over the world.  China is now doing all of that and adding a new tactic.  They simply pay the asking price.  They even pay 10% more than the asking price when they have to.  China has embraced Capitalism as an invasionary force.  And it, too, is working.

Are the real estate prices in Vancouver (average house price: $1.3 million) just the result of normal immigration?  Or is something else going on?  If you also consider the effects of climate change (north-bound migration from ‘hot zones-getting-hotter’) and the desirability of British Columbia in the context as a gateway to North America, then BC has more appeal than just as a new home to a single immigrant family.  Add into that equation China’s imperialistic ambitions and BC starts to look like a long term target.

“Oh, you are just being silly.  But you are right about one thing – it is obviously time for a change.  You are getting nutty!”

Alexis Creek is a 260,000 acre working ranch in the Chilcotin Valley.  It is a modern operation with all new equipment, new buildings, a few luxury residences and a landing strip to name just a few amenities.  It was recently sold for less than $100 an acre.  The Templeton Financial Group (American mutual fund giant) bought the ranch for $23M. That’s a good deal.

The house we stayed in while in Vancouver last winter is a 22,000 square foot mansion set in the British Properties.  It is all re-done, renovated, modernized, electrified and beautiful in a big box store kinda way.  Unfurnished and lacking even a lawnmower it will, when the landscaping is done on the 3 acres of exceptionally expensive land, be listed for much the same amount as the Alexis Creek ranch.  About $23M.  THAT is not such a great deal.  Not to me, anyway.

Setting aside the madness that is currently influencing our general sense of value, the message is clear: urban is good.  Rural is bad.  Urban land is valuable, rural is NOT. Never mind the 260,000 acres of land, disregard the ‘working ranch’ component, fuggedabout the ranchy-mansions and country-fancy that are located there, the unequal-in-every-way amount of rich-guy-fancy on 3 acres in Vancouver is deemed by the market as the same worth.  Three acres of heavily taxed, sloping mud is equal to 260,000 acres of income-producing land! That’s a distorted comparison to my way of thinking.

Hell, there is so much timber on the ranch land that that likely amounts to something in the millions all by itself.

Back-tracking a sec: I referred above to general madness in our evaluations.  Here’s why: I get a Honda mechanic to look at my fuel system on my outboard and I am $700.00 lighter.  I can BUY a new, fancy, inverter-genset from Costco for less than that.  I can buy a pair of jeans at Costco for the price of a cheeseburger.  Two hours of flippin’ burgers at McDonalds will earn me enough to buy an ounce of pure silver.  And an ugly-but-running vehicle is driven in to the scrapyard  for $500….barely enough to pay for this month’s groceries.

The point: values are way out of whack right now.  In some cases, like Alexis Creek and the West Van mansion, the values are way, way out of whack.   Crazy.

Even the Costco genset (Champion) is an amazing bargain of sorts.  Even if it doesn’t work as well as a Honda (and Champion is trying to make it do just that) the company had to make all the same parts, incur all the same expenses and market it to many of the same customers for a sum that is less than 25% of the Honda it was modeled after. Champion is made in China (owned by a California reg’d firm).  Their genset had to be ‘shipped’, warehoused, distributed and sold too.

“What’s your point?”

When comparables are out of whack, disequilibrium results.  Balance is thrown.  Relativity suffers.  Economies wobble.  Things come undone.

Everything is related to everything else in a stable economy and so a pair of shoes is worth so many loaves of bread, so many hours of manual labour, so much gasoline.  And that just hasn’t been true for some time.  Our system of prices – previously somewhat relative to stable, collected perceived values – has been sent off the tracks.

It is a sign.

Here’s another.  The Chinese Renminbi (their currency) has been, for the longest time, an internal-only currency.  By keeping it in-country, China controlled it.  And they did that to great economic advantage.  They kept the Renminbi artificially low compared to the dollar and that gave them a huge trading advantage.  We got a thriving Walmart, but they got a dynamic economy.  And so everything ‘out of China’ was cheaper.  That’s good for the local consumer, bad for the local economy.

That sign has been posted – but it took awhile to see it.

They also have the additional advantage of exceptionally cheap labour.  They worked that to their advantage, too.  And, finally, they benefited from the lack of rule of law (biggest guy wins) and lack of environmental laws.  China has positioned itself to be a big influence. And we haven’t seen anything yet.  So far, it has only been ‘positioning’.

The positioning is for a purpose.  And the Renminbi is starting to flow OUTSIDE China (the BRIC countries, Iran and Africa).  THAT is another sign.  But what is the purpose?

So, back to the ranch…………why did Templeton buy it?  There are lots of good, sound business reasons.  Ranching.  Climate change.  Farming.  Lumber.  Good return on investment….who knows?  But one of the reasons rumoured to be said by someone in the company was that, “We expect another major financial crisis within three years.  This is a hedge against that.”

Safe, distant, food-producing landholding as a hedge against a financial crisis? Who woulda thunk such a thing outside of Idaho and Montana?

I, personally, am not a doomsday kind of guy.  Getting all Mad Max on people is just too much trouble for most folks.  And, anyway, most of the ugly-type preppers will be busy with the zombies so I do not see a lot of physical danger inherent with financial collapse (the zombies will be stopped in Idaho and Montana). A few fistfights over bottled water supplies in California and maybe at gas stations is about it.

But Templeton is smarter than me.  Templeton is smarter than E.F. Hutton.  When Templeton speaks, even E.F. Hutton listens.  And Templeton just made a big statement in the Chilcotin on the economy.  We should listen.

…in the blog.

I don’t know into exactly what the writing will morph but it needs to change. Readership is fading.  Nothing like the always-fickle market to give you the news: “We are not buying your product anymore.  We’ve changed our minds.  We are going elsewhere.  You suck!”

Which is fair.  Even I got tired of the ravens.  And I am getting a bit shrill about politics. That some readers also got tired of my dark ravings seems only fair.  Life goes on.  And I shouldn’t.  I get that.

So, where to next?

I was thinking of writing cheap B movie scripts.  Buddy cop-type shoot-em-ups.  Cars exploding.  Naked women running around in the background for no apparent purpose to the story line.  That kind of thing.  I’d be good at it.

The new Dodge Hellcat (latest muscle car- 700 hp!) warrants a movie in itself!  Billy Bob Thornton and Lawrence Fishburne are homeless guys, ex Vietnam war vets.  They get along by busking in front of liquor stores.  Kinda crazy but funny.  A drug lord leaves his Hellcat running while he ‘offs’ a street-level dealer and the old guys, on an impulse, jump in his car and steal it. “What the hell!  Let’s go to LA and then we dump it.  So what!”

It’s a morality play.

But they find drugs and money and a few guns in the car and are having a helluva good time as they just ‘boot it’ down the west coast with the Russian gangster chasing them in his ‘vette along with his gang of bad guys in Hummers and G-wagens.  Black, of course. Maybe a helicopter.  The story line is a chase movie with homeless buddies and Russian gangsters.  Sorta Blues Brothers with a short Bucket List meets Fast and Furious.

Or not.

I dunno.

I said to Sal the other day, “Maybe we should try our hand at another book?  This time with the full intention of writing a book rather than just compiling blogs.  Waddya think?”

“Go ahead, sweetie.  I am not in.  I am quilting now.  You are on your own.  Knock yourself out!”

“I can’t do it without you!  Especially if it is Dave and Sally do OTG volume 2!”

“No.  No!  Absolutely not.  NO volume two!  I can’t stand it!  I can’t stand the idea of it!  I can’t stand the idea of you doing it even!”

“Good!  Now that’s the kind of passion I am looking for.  You are in, after all!”

“No, I am not.  Take up another hobby for God’s sake.  Try fishing or something.  Go hunting.  Carve.  Whittle.  Whatever.  But leave me out!”   

“Whatever, eh?  Really?  I was also thinking of writing a steamy sex novel, all kinky and all.  But I’ll need a research partner. You in?  Or do I have to recruit someone from outside?”

“That’s it!  We are done here!  I am NOT talking to you anymore today.  Maybe forever! Your readers are right.  You should be neither heard, seen or read and I, for one, am joining those leaving you in droves!”

“You want some tea?”

“OK.  Just don’t talk!”

….according to a company specializing in analyzing folks by their postal code.  Environics Analytics thinks of us as: Heartland retirees – one of 67 or so sub-groups of lifestylers.

We HRs are retired or semi-retired boomers fond of motorized 4wd vehicles and we live rural and simply.  We are empty-nesters mostly who have time for basic outdoor activities and even knitting.  There are 472,000 of us in Canada and we have a lower-middle income with mixed educations and background work experience.  We own our own very modest homes and like the outdoors.  And, it seems, we are much the same as each other.

Being white, is what I am guessing they meant by that.  But they didn’t say that except to say that we are the same and so far, the only thing I seem to have in common with most of my neighbours is skin colour.  Most of them are as mad as hatters!

Coincidentally, Sally also ran a social quiz on me today on mental health (answering for me, of course) and concluded from it that I was eccentric.  I ran the same test – answering for myself – and my resulting category was ‘balanced’.  One of us has an odd view of the other one, I am guessing and, frankly, I think SHE is the eccentric if, for no other reason, than picking me to live with!

Plus – isn’t it a little whacked to run a personality test on someone but you do the answering?

The really interesting point is that some marketing group operating on minimal information (I hope) has managed to quite fairly categorize us.  And, even though there are a half-million of us, only 75 or so live within a couple of hundred square miles.  How the hell did they put our postal code into that category?  Those bloody algorithms, eh?

So, what with my tell-all blog, our book, the modern science of data analysis and Google Earth, we are clearly prominent on the radar screen of some geeks.  Worse, we get mail and the barge comes twice a year.  Eyewitnesses!  We may be off the grid but not very far off and they – the bastards – can see us more clearly than Sarah Palin can see the whites of the Russian’s eyeballs.

Go OTG but know that there are crosshairs focused on your back by government and industry by way of the wonders of technology.  They know where you are.  And now they know WHO you are.

“Unh, Dave!  Isn’t that a bit paranoid?  They may know roughly where you are and who you are but they don’t care.  You are old and verging on senile. You are safe.  They are NOT watching you.”  

I know.  And, if they do watch me, they’ll likely fall asleep from boredom.  I am quite intrigued with my life but napping and crude carpentry do not make for boffo TV. Not for BIG BROTHER types, anyway.

Not today, anyway.

After Bill C-51, things may change.  They will change.  The natural consequence of taking on those Orwellian powers is using them.  They might pick me up for indecent exposure if I pee in the woods.  They might get me for howling at the moon a capella with the wolves (must be a law against that).  Hell, they could pick me up for using a product after it’s expiry date or pulling the label off the mattress.  They already see me all too clearly and even I am barely accepting of that sight myself.

If Bill C-51 passes, your life and mine will change.  For the worse.

Nien.  Me, neither.  Interesting language, tho.  NOT for the faint-of-heart, that’s for sure. Each conversation feels like a battle is just beginning, don’t you think?  An argument at the very least.  Sounds like growling and coughing, kinda.  I like it.  But, I’d prefer to speak it in the company of smaller people, ya know?  Big ugly guys speaking German is scary.  I dunno…..call me crazy. But big, ugly French guys sound like they are whining or explaining or something. No threat there.  And big, ugly Jamaicans speaking their patois make me want to sing and dance, ya know?  Could be just me.

Anyway, I mention it because our book has reached another step in the Germanic publishing industry.  Some Swiss people are looking at it for the purposes of translation and distribution in the Deutsche-speaking world.

That could be fun.

We didn’t write the book to make money (which is really, really good since, so far, we are still subsidizing it) but an author gets invitations.  Book clubs, book stores, radio interviews, that kind of thing.  We didn’t write it for that reason, either, but a little chat now and then with people asking questions can be fun.  Now and then.  Infrequently.  Twice or three times maybe.

UNLESS it is in Germany!  Now THAT could be fun.  We have friends there.  Close friends.  Doing a book tour there could be pretty neat.  And Germans love the wilderness. They can’t get enough.  I can tell them all sorts of crazy nonesense…they won’t know.

“Oh yeah, we kill bears alla time.  Mostly for the skin, eh?  But we eat ’em, too!”  

Germans own the most land in BC after Canadians and they are not far behind us measuring by the acreage.  They seem to buy vast tracts of wilderness for some reason. I dunno what intrigues them so much but they do like the wilderness and, by association, wilderness authors.  So, if our book gets published in German and the publisher wants us to do a dog and pony or bear and wolf show, we’ll don some mukluks and go to Octoberfest to talk forest and trees to them.  That could be fun.

I’ll keep you posted.

A book reviewer wondered about the lack of practical advice and how-to hints in OUR LIFE OFF THE GRID book.  They wanted to know more ‘instructions’ and wanted to get ‘advice’.   The assumption, of course, is that after having done the move and the building and then following that up with the actual residing and living, we might know a thing or two about living OTG.  And, we do.  One thing.  Maybe two.  Precious little, actually.  It was and still is largely a crap shoot in chaos with unpredictable and confusing feedback.

We’re still sorting the data….

But it is fun!  That’s conclusion  #1.  Number two: we’re gonna keep playing at it at least until we get the hang of it.  Which, judging from our chaos level so far, I am estimating will take 30 or so more years.

And I am mostly serious.  I am mostly not kidding.  Organized chaos, perhaps? That is how we feel about it still.  We are STILL learning after all these years.  Still enjoying each other’s company and we are still having lots to do.  So, we’re good.

But what of the advice they asked for, …really?  Well, there is no advice as to whether to do it or not.  There are no facts, data or lessons that prove the concept.  A crapshoot is a crapshoot.  Still, I do have a little advice…..

Don’t commit to it.  Taste it, instead.  Get a cabin.  Rent a cabin, even.  BE here (or there). TRY it. See if it works for you.  I think you will need at least one six-month full-on immersion to get a feel. Two years of summer cottaging MIGHT do it but it is not quite the same as being on the ‘spot’ longer than the summer folks…ya gotta know what it’s like when you are so much more on your own and that happens when the weather changes.

If you build, consider this concept: ZONE-living.  Plan for a small house, well insulated with a good kitchen, bathroom and one large bedroom.  Maybe a small living area.  Then, just outside of that, a bigger, still-insulated space that serves as a big living area and veranda-kinda thing. Space for the service room (electrical, freezer, mud, etc).  All of those two areas are under on big roof. Outside of that, a large covered area (maybe even under the same BIGGER roof but it is airy, open, maybe screened in some sections.

Think: wrap-around porch.  It gets cold out there in winter.  Then, outside of that, deck. Lots of deck.  Decks for BBQ’ing, working, sitting. Decks, decks, decks.   Maybe some potted plants, arbor, umbrellas but, basically, open deck.

Then you transition to the ‘outside-but-close’ area in which are the sheds, workshops, storage, water, greenhouse, genset shed, guest room with second bathroom….the kind of space that is ‘steps’ away from the main house but not yet ‘somewhere else’.  Outside of that is compost, fruit trees, gardens, lawn (if you must) and basically an area that your dog might consider the pack’s immediate domain.

Finally, a less-than-full-bush buffer zone between the dog’s empire and the wild forest. The wild forest is the place where you feel you are NOT home.  If it feels like home at all, it is still transition zone.

These living zones are the actual zones we have.  Or feel.  We do NOT really have them; NOT by design, anyway.  But that IS the way we use our space.  If I had to do it over, the house would have been a bit smaller and we would have more ‘outdoor-rooms’ before getting to the covered deck area and so on.  Why?  Because as the season cools, we hunker more around the wood stove.  When it gets warmer, we move out.  The stove stays off from May til October.  The outdoor temperature regulates where we stay.  If it is chilly, we are inner.  If it is sunny, we are closer to the outdoors.  By summer-time, we are almost always outdoors.

How big is a small inner house?  For us, 1000 sft.

Then we started spreading.  If you add up all the space we think of ‘living space’, we are at 2500-3000 sft.  By the time the dog lets go of his patrolling responsibility, we are at two acres.  75 – 90,000 sft.  I have no idea if this is typical or not but my immediate neighbours (who live very different annual schedules than we do) are not too dissimilar.  Each ‘influences’ an acre or so.  Each ‘lives’ like we do – in, when it is cold.  Out when it is warm.

It isn’t rocket science but it is something we were NOT conscious of when we started. The above-described zones are something we learned-while-doing.  It would constitute advice in the sense that you are NOT likely to live like you do in the city, in well-defined spaces and boundaries.  In or out.  Out here, you will live to your natural space and that described above is what we grew into.

Advice!  Insufferable, isn’t it?