Kamalam
02-03-2007, 11:58 AM
This is an article I got off Matt Savinar's site, lifeaftertheoilcrash.net (http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net), by LATOC reader, John M. It is a realistic and interesting perspective on the sheer grit and determination necessary to relocate and start over. Equally interesting is the forum specifically created to ask John pertinent questions and receive to-the-point and informative answers.
For all of us thinking about relocating, this is a must read.
--------------------------------------------
My Background:
Perhaps I should share a little personal background before I proceed to more important matters. I was born in 1954 and raised just southeast of Denver, Colorado in what was then a rural area known as Greenwood Village. At that point it was suburb of sorts, but its eastern and southern borders were open to the high prarie. Most of its residents were upper middle class and the "gentleman farmer" type. Those "Gentleman Farmers" dominated at least half the ground in what would later become a small, very wealthy "home rule" city surrounded by the metropolis now known as the "Greater Denver Metropolitan Area". Through the fifties to the mid-seventies, a kid could not want for a better place to grow up. Open space abounded, and because so many of the parents, even though recently well-to-do, had ingrained in their souls from their own youth experience of growing up during the Depression, "a land ethic".
Programs such as 4-H were very popular in the area, and great number of the children were exposed to animal husbandry, bee-keeping, wildlife and soil conservation practices and in conjunction, "home economics" skills imparted to the girls. Virtually everyone who grew up there matriculated through college and became part of the burgeoning
illusion of the "American Dream". Lawyers, Doctors, Real Estate Agents, Oilman, Engineers... They all followed in Dad's footsteps or something similar. In the process of losing their souls, what little land ethic that had been imparted to them faded away as the mortgage on the 5,000 square foot home and the half-acre yard mowed by someone else's kids or immigrant labor became de rigeur. To these new offspring, what had been an important regimen of survival skills for the children of the depression quickly came to be viewed as little more than a quaint diversion in their childhood. Except seemingly, for me.
From my parents house, I could see every every Front Range Peak of the Colorado Rockies, from Pikes to the south to the Mummy Range lying north of Long's Peak, which looms majestically over the plains in Rocky Mountain National Park. The suburban blight had yet to surround my place of childhood privacy, and I would get on my horse and ride south all day towards Monument Ridge and the Palmer Divide, crossing ranch fences as if they weren't there and imagining in the wind-swept silence I was in a time a hundred years before and all was right with the world. I was a pioneer and a mountain man for a day of endless days. I wanted the illusion to never end.
The bluish foothills graced the snowclad high peaks like a flowing skirt on the fairest of maidens. The mountains of the Rockies were my constant call. As I grew in young years, I worked the physical jobs that are required to fuel the engines of growth, owned by those who push the cities onto virgin lands and believe such acts exemplify progress. I yearned to leave for the upper reaches, away from the circumstances of "civilized" life which in truth does little more than harden the layers of ones soul until you find yourself to have been sold, and the only true redemption left is what remains of your courage.
I drank, I smoked, I would escape for a moment and hunt and fish. Upon return I worked, I partied, I went to the nightclubs, and went to college. I existed. And I met a girl so fair...
I talked her into the mountains. We were young still and rather without means, but damn if we weren't at least going to try.
Back to the City and Careerism:
After one winter near timberline we ended up back in the lowlands, at least so far as Colorado is concerned. Worse yet, in a city again. At least it was on the West Slope and far away from Denver. Our plan was for me to finish school so we would have a regular income from teaching school up in the high places, and we would live a lifestyle that would be a combination of Mother Earth News, Organic Gardening, and Guns and Ammo magazine. Life though, always gets in the way...
Fifteen years later the mid 1990's are upon us and we have three children. The trap of "careerism" controls our lives, with its demands and false rewards, its associated mortgages and credit card debt and as parents, the obligation of schooling our offspring. We had trapped ourselves on the "inside", and had consciously bought into the societal-wide
Stockholm Syndrome while subconsciously rejecting every one of its premises. Our only saving grace was that in a meager attempt to at least feign freedom and independence, we had purchased twenty acres thirty minutes from town and our "spare time" was used in refining the arts of horticulture and attempts at self-sufficiency. It is hard work, and one must enjoy it to have a measure of success. Regardless of all the self help books available on being self-sufficient and living "off the grid" and the like, the trial and error period, even for those who have been inclined to such forever and have some experience, it is a long and frequently dispiriting stretch. Anyone who believes they can just quit work one day and head out to the hinterlands and make a go of it is delusional at best. It's a tough go even when the infrastructure to which we are accustomed is there to both support the endeavor in the first place, as well as to catch us when we fall.
To us, by 1995, in spite of the arguments of the various Chambers of Commerce, Colorado had become a place unfit for man and beast alike. People were everywhere, migrating into a promised land where the very landscape that attracted them was being subjected to the worst kind of anthopogentic alteration. Colorado may well have been better than where they had left, but was simultaneously becoming a mirror of where they had been. I had been lucky enough to have seen its' grandeur in my own visions of its youth, and some men's idea of "progress" was one I could not comprehend as any measure of being good. Certainly grand opportunities were ever present. The influx of so many new immigrants meant money was there for the taking. New homes, new stores, new roads... It also meant that if one were to advantage themselves of the moment... Well, it is our nature to get caught up in the moment and we stay there. My wife and I had been in that "moment" too long.
The Move to the Country:
Some called it a rash decision. Others said it was foolish almost to the point of being irrational. Between the two of us we abandoned our mind-numbing "careers" and well over a hundred thousand a year in combined income and moved to a cabin on a twenty-acre site in Idaho, surrounded on all sides by a National Forest. With three children ages 11, 7, and 3. And during our move she somehow began carrying a fourth. The cabin had no electricity, no plumbing or septic. We heated and cooked on wood stoves. We did have a year-round creek or would never have even considered the place. After buying "our dream home", we had about $10,000 left and that was that. Strangers in a strange land and surrounded by strangers who were all in the "in-group" and we were out of such as far as one could be.
"Why then?" it was asked. We knew in our hearts, let alone our minds, that the charade that passes for modern civilization has an expiration date stamped on it. A "use by date" is part of the bargain. What we see can only be believed to be as "permanent" if we willingly delude ourselves. And since no one knows when the expiration date is, why would anyone of real intelligence wait until catastrophe strikes to make a move to mitigate its effects on both self and those you hold dear? By then, it is too late.
We now have a 3,000 sq.ft. energy efficient structure with walls of R-38 value that replaced the old cabin. It is completely wood heated with an outdoor boiler that provides hot water for domestic use as well as structural heating. Two stoves are in the structure as well, one being an airtight cookstove, in case the other system ever fails. We designed and built a hydroelectric system that runs the home, which has an electric refrigerator, three computers, televisions, a pump for water, and two chest freezers. We have a five thousand foot garden and "can" the G.M.-Pesticide free produce with joyful ardor. There are chickens, sheep and goats as well, for both direct consumption and milk. We did this all ourselves. Trial, error, heartache and pain. We taught ourselves to butcher both the elk and deer which abound here, and the products of our own efforts at animal husbandry.
We built a shop for the equipment, of which man needs much of. Hand and power tools of all sorts. And of every power tool you have, you had best own several of its human powered counterpart because when things break, they may not be replaceable. A spare pump for the well and an extra inverter and generator for the hydro unit.
Nails, spikes, bolts, nuts, pipe fittings, glues, oils, paints - you must become your own hardware store. "Early to bed, early to rise."
Will You be Welcome Once You Relocate?
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but those who wait will not be welcome in rural America. Even if you abandoned your current affairs right this very moment, you are not welcome. The people who reside in rural areas see "newcomers" come and go, and generally the "locals" wish you would have never come in the first place. At least they hold that particular view for an uncomfortably long time. You are watched. You have no anonymity. You are more anonymous in a city by far. When you first show up in the hinterlands, you are like the sideshow at the circus. Everyone is watching. They are the "ingroup" and there doesn't even exist an "outgroup" for you to be in. A coffee here, a few beers there. Forget it. To be accepted, it takes a couple of years at the least for most of them and forever for a few. And that is the reality; and that is when economic times are "good".
Many of these folks have nothing to do but talk. And watch. It is like their "life force".
And what of your religious persuation? If of Christian belief, will you be the "wrong kind" of Christian and find yourself shunned and isolated? If an atheist or agnostic, will the next closest person of such philosophical belief be hundreds of miles away? Will any of this have an effect on your personal economy, let alone ones' social interaction?
Is your spouse ready for this? Will she help with the firewood, work a garden, sew knit and quilt? Does she know how to do anything of real value? Can she bear, at least for a while, social isolation? Will she get a disease we call "Mall Withdrawal?"
Are you? Have you the hard callouses on your hands and fingers or will you blister by noon? Are your hands like those of your wife? Can you drive the nails straight, cut the trees and split 10-15 cords a year? Stitch up a wound? Run and fix chainsaws, rototillers, ride a horse, split wood with sledge and wedges. Can you kill, clean and process? Do you really know how to do a damn thing that really matters?
And of your children, if you have been so blessed... Can they function without their X-Box or Playstation? Without the television and dance class and football and soccer and going to the movies? Will "they" make your decision for you because they refuse to leave their friends and school? Do they even mow the grass in your own yard?
Remember, there's no "I" in team...
Anyone who remotely considers the true reality of what it takes to make it work "out there" had best cease the both the delusional thinking as well as the procrastination. You get all of the above niceties and then some, with the addition of blizzards, forest fires, tornadoes, flash floods, no rain, too much rain, an early or late freeze, some critters eating your garden, and coyotes, mountain lions, bears, wolves all wanting your livestock. And then there is your fellow man, the most ruthless creature of all.
If you wait too long you have no chance at all of "making it work", let alone surviving. The "devil is in the details", they say. You will quickly become a thieving predator and you will be killed. Not murdered, killed. There is a very steep and unforgiving learning curve you must ascend. If you have any real motivation to do what is necessary, you had best start the climb. Immediately. Any notion that the folks "out there" will welcome a flood of foolish refugees is simply a delusion. Resources are finite, and "helping" those who did nothing to prepare themselves is akin to signing your own death warrant. It's plain stupid. And as an aside, I cannot think of anything more selfish than people who chose to take the easy road until the last minute and then believe that the burden of ensuring their survival should fall on the shoulders of those who worked so tirelessly to not be such a burden. The immoral act in this case is not the refusal to help, it is the act of begging for such. Those who have done nothing morphed themselves into nothing more than parasites. People who have refused to do with less, who refused to take the more difficult but correct course, deserve their fate. "Those who refuse to see..."
There is a point when that axiom of "being our brothers keeper" ceases to be in effect. It is not as if "our brothers" have not received forewarning. Ask Noah. Ask Lot. From sea to shining sea, in spite of the warnings and ominous clouds stretching across the horizon, our "brothers" continue to revel in consumptive activities that if not sin, tresspasses mightily upon its edge. Sacrificing anything for the better of the whole, which actually includes self as well, is rarely if ever considered, let alone acted upon. It's like they're "going to party till it's 1999." They did. They have. They continue to do so. And it's now 2007.
So if any and all of you are serious about these circumstances in any true measure, act like real men and make your move. Talk, as they say, is cheap. Move soon, for we may be but one day from the unforgiving reign of the "Omega Man". Good luck there, pilgrims...
For all of us thinking about relocating, this is a must read.
--------------------------------------------
My Background:
Perhaps I should share a little personal background before I proceed to more important matters. I was born in 1954 and raised just southeast of Denver, Colorado in what was then a rural area known as Greenwood Village. At that point it was suburb of sorts, but its eastern and southern borders were open to the high prarie. Most of its residents were upper middle class and the "gentleman farmer" type. Those "Gentleman Farmers" dominated at least half the ground in what would later become a small, very wealthy "home rule" city surrounded by the metropolis now known as the "Greater Denver Metropolitan Area". Through the fifties to the mid-seventies, a kid could not want for a better place to grow up. Open space abounded, and because so many of the parents, even though recently well-to-do, had ingrained in their souls from their own youth experience of growing up during the Depression, "a land ethic".
Programs such as 4-H were very popular in the area, and great number of the children were exposed to animal husbandry, bee-keeping, wildlife and soil conservation practices and in conjunction, "home economics" skills imparted to the girls. Virtually everyone who grew up there matriculated through college and became part of the burgeoning
illusion of the "American Dream". Lawyers, Doctors, Real Estate Agents, Oilman, Engineers... They all followed in Dad's footsteps or something similar. In the process of losing their souls, what little land ethic that had been imparted to them faded away as the mortgage on the 5,000 square foot home and the half-acre yard mowed by someone else's kids or immigrant labor became de rigeur. To these new offspring, what had been an important regimen of survival skills for the children of the depression quickly came to be viewed as little more than a quaint diversion in their childhood. Except seemingly, for me.
From my parents house, I could see every every Front Range Peak of the Colorado Rockies, from Pikes to the south to the Mummy Range lying north of Long's Peak, which looms majestically over the plains in Rocky Mountain National Park. The suburban blight had yet to surround my place of childhood privacy, and I would get on my horse and ride south all day towards Monument Ridge and the Palmer Divide, crossing ranch fences as if they weren't there and imagining in the wind-swept silence I was in a time a hundred years before and all was right with the world. I was a pioneer and a mountain man for a day of endless days. I wanted the illusion to never end.
The bluish foothills graced the snowclad high peaks like a flowing skirt on the fairest of maidens. The mountains of the Rockies were my constant call. As I grew in young years, I worked the physical jobs that are required to fuel the engines of growth, owned by those who push the cities onto virgin lands and believe such acts exemplify progress. I yearned to leave for the upper reaches, away from the circumstances of "civilized" life which in truth does little more than harden the layers of ones soul until you find yourself to have been sold, and the only true redemption left is what remains of your courage.
I drank, I smoked, I would escape for a moment and hunt and fish. Upon return I worked, I partied, I went to the nightclubs, and went to college. I existed. And I met a girl so fair...
I talked her into the mountains. We were young still and rather without means, but damn if we weren't at least going to try.
Back to the City and Careerism:
After one winter near timberline we ended up back in the lowlands, at least so far as Colorado is concerned. Worse yet, in a city again. At least it was on the West Slope and far away from Denver. Our plan was for me to finish school so we would have a regular income from teaching school up in the high places, and we would live a lifestyle that would be a combination of Mother Earth News, Organic Gardening, and Guns and Ammo magazine. Life though, always gets in the way...
Fifteen years later the mid 1990's are upon us and we have three children. The trap of "careerism" controls our lives, with its demands and false rewards, its associated mortgages and credit card debt and as parents, the obligation of schooling our offspring. We had trapped ourselves on the "inside", and had consciously bought into the societal-wide
Stockholm Syndrome while subconsciously rejecting every one of its premises. Our only saving grace was that in a meager attempt to at least feign freedom and independence, we had purchased twenty acres thirty minutes from town and our "spare time" was used in refining the arts of horticulture and attempts at self-sufficiency. It is hard work, and one must enjoy it to have a measure of success. Regardless of all the self help books available on being self-sufficient and living "off the grid" and the like, the trial and error period, even for those who have been inclined to such forever and have some experience, it is a long and frequently dispiriting stretch. Anyone who believes they can just quit work one day and head out to the hinterlands and make a go of it is delusional at best. It's a tough go even when the infrastructure to which we are accustomed is there to both support the endeavor in the first place, as well as to catch us when we fall.
To us, by 1995, in spite of the arguments of the various Chambers of Commerce, Colorado had become a place unfit for man and beast alike. People were everywhere, migrating into a promised land where the very landscape that attracted them was being subjected to the worst kind of anthopogentic alteration. Colorado may well have been better than where they had left, but was simultaneously becoming a mirror of where they had been. I had been lucky enough to have seen its' grandeur in my own visions of its youth, and some men's idea of "progress" was one I could not comprehend as any measure of being good. Certainly grand opportunities were ever present. The influx of so many new immigrants meant money was there for the taking. New homes, new stores, new roads... It also meant that if one were to advantage themselves of the moment... Well, it is our nature to get caught up in the moment and we stay there. My wife and I had been in that "moment" too long.
The Move to the Country:
Some called it a rash decision. Others said it was foolish almost to the point of being irrational. Between the two of us we abandoned our mind-numbing "careers" and well over a hundred thousand a year in combined income and moved to a cabin on a twenty-acre site in Idaho, surrounded on all sides by a National Forest. With three children ages 11, 7, and 3. And during our move she somehow began carrying a fourth. The cabin had no electricity, no plumbing or septic. We heated and cooked on wood stoves. We did have a year-round creek or would never have even considered the place. After buying "our dream home", we had about $10,000 left and that was that. Strangers in a strange land and surrounded by strangers who were all in the "in-group" and we were out of such as far as one could be.
"Why then?" it was asked. We knew in our hearts, let alone our minds, that the charade that passes for modern civilization has an expiration date stamped on it. A "use by date" is part of the bargain. What we see can only be believed to be as "permanent" if we willingly delude ourselves. And since no one knows when the expiration date is, why would anyone of real intelligence wait until catastrophe strikes to make a move to mitigate its effects on both self and those you hold dear? By then, it is too late.
We now have a 3,000 sq.ft. energy efficient structure with walls of R-38 value that replaced the old cabin. It is completely wood heated with an outdoor boiler that provides hot water for domestic use as well as structural heating. Two stoves are in the structure as well, one being an airtight cookstove, in case the other system ever fails. We designed and built a hydroelectric system that runs the home, which has an electric refrigerator, three computers, televisions, a pump for water, and two chest freezers. We have a five thousand foot garden and "can" the G.M.-Pesticide free produce with joyful ardor. There are chickens, sheep and goats as well, for both direct consumption and milk. We did this all ourselves. Trial, error, heartache and pain. We taught ourselves to butcher both the elk and deer which abound here, and the products of our own efforts at animal husbandry.
We built a shop for the equipment, of which man needs much of. Hand and power tools of all sorts. And of every power tool you have, you had best own several of its human powered counterpart because when things break, they may not be replaceable. A spare pump for the well and an extra inverter and generator for the hydro unit.
Nails, spikes, bolts, nuts, pipe fittings, glues, oils, paints - you must become your own hardware store. "Early to bed, early to rise."
Will You be Welcome Once You Relocate?
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but those who wait will not be welcome in rural America. Even if you abandoned your current affairs right this very moment, you are not welcome. The people who reside in rural areas see "newcomers" come and go, and generally the "locals" wish you would have never come in the first place. At least they hold that particular view for an uncomfortably long time. You are watched. You have no anonymity. You are more anonymous in a city by far. When you first show up in the hinterlands, you are like the sideshow at the circus. Everyone is watching. They are the "ingroup" and there doesn't even exist an "outgroup" for you to be in. A coffee here, a few beers there. Forget it. To be accepted, it takes a couple of years at the least for most of them and forever for a few. And that is the reality; and that is when economic times are "good".
Many of these folks have nothing to do but talk. And watch. It is like their "life force".
And what of your religious persuation? If of Christian belief, will you be the "wrong kind" of Christian and find yourself shunned and isolated? If an atheist or agnostic, will the next closest person of such philosophical belief be hundreds of miles away? Will any of this have an effect on your personal economy, let alone ones' social interaction?
Is your spouse ready for this? Will she help with the firewood, work a garden, sew knit and quilt? Does she know how to do anything of real value? Can she bear, at least for a while, social isolation? Will she get a disease we call "Mall Withdrawal?"
Are you? Have you the hard callouses on your hands and fingers or will you blister by noon? Are your hands like those of your wife? Can you drive the nails straight, cut the trees and split 10-15 cords a year? Stitch up a wound? Run and fix chainsaws, rototillers, ride a horse, split wood with sledge and wedges. Can you kill, clean and process? Do you really know how to do a damn thing that really matters?
And of your children, if you have been so blessed... Can they function without their X-Box or Playstation? Without the television and dance class and football and soccer and going to the movies? Will "they" make your decision for you because they refuse to leave their friends and school? Do they even mow the grass in your own yard?
Remember, there's no "I" in team...
Anyone who remotely considers the true reality of what it takes to make it work "out there" had best cease the both the delusional thinking as well as the procrastination. You get all of the above niceties and then some, with the addition of blizzards, forest fires, tornadoes, flash floods, no rain, too much rain, an early or late freeze, some critters eating your garden, and coyotes, mountain lions, bears, wolves all wanting your livestock. And then there is your fellow man, the most ruthless creature of all.
If you wait too long you have no chance at all of "making it work", let alone surviving. The "devil is in the details", they say. You will quickly become a thieving predator and you will be killed. Not murdered, killed. There is a very steep and unforgiving learning curve you must ascend. If you have any real motivation to do what is necessary, you had best start the climb. Immediately. Any notion that the folks "out there" will welcome a flood of foolish refugees is simply a delusion. Resources are finite, and "helping" those who did nothing to prepare themselves is akin to signing your own death warrant. It's plain stupid. And as an aside, I cannot think of anything more selfish than people who chose to take the easy road until the last minute and then believe that the burden of ensuring their survival should fall on the shoulders of those who worked so tirelessly to not be such a burden. The immoral act in this case is not the refusal to help, it is the act of begging for such. Those who have done nothing morphed themselves into nothing more than parasites. People who have refused to do with less, who refused to take the more difficult but correct course, deserve their fate. "Those who refuse to see..."
There is a point when that axiom of "being our brothers keeper" ceases to be in effect. It is not as if "our brothers" have not received forewarning. Ask Noah. Ask Lot. From sea to shining sea, in spite of the warnings and ominous clouds stretching across the horizon, our "brothers" continue to revel in consumptive activities that if not sin, tresspasses mightily upon its edge. Sacrificing anything for the better of the whole, which actually includes self as well, is rarely if ever considered, let alone acted upon. It's like they're "going to party till it's 1999." They did. They have. They continue to do so. And it's now 2007.
So if any and all of you are serious about these circumstances in any true measure, act like real men and make your move. Talk, as they say, is cheap. Move soon, for we may be but one day from the unforgiving reign of the "Omega Man". Good luck there, pilgrims...