The Happiness Thread

Perhaps, this is a crazy idea... but I truly believe that this would make me happier than any other options I have right now, maybe any option in general. I wish you guys could see this place, breath the air out there. I wouldn't be the first writer to live in the woods and find this sort of peace and paradise. Most of the people I've told about this plan think I'm out of my mind. All I know is that my life in the modern world isn't the life I want right now.

 

Is it something you need to commit to long-term, or can you just go there for a while and see how it goes?

 

You gonna hunt or order pizzas with mom and dad's credit card?

 

I could leave anytime. I don't know where I would go from there, but maybe that's what I need some time to figure out. Do you ever go back to your summer home?

 

I go there all the time, but it's updated now. Well, we still heat with wood, but we've got hydro and telephone and running water, and skidoos instead of Xcountry skis for when the road can't be plowed.

I totally get the allure of finding a simpler life... but I wouldn't want to romanticize it, either. We had no running water when we were kids and it was fine in the summer when we were in the lake for 3/4 of the day, but in the winter? Giving yourself a washcloth-bath with water heated over the stove isn't that much fun after the first couple times.

That said, I really miss my old house where I heated with wood. I have a furnace now so I use it and hardly use the fireplace at all--I definitely feel less connected to it all. There's something very satisfying about starting your own fire and throwing more logs on it when you're cold. I lived in that house for about eight years and never got tired of the wood stove (although I definitely got tired of stacking the wood).

 

With no phone or actual address I think it would be pretty hard to order pizza with anyone's credit card. LOL. I'm not going to hunt. That's not something I would ever want to do. But I am going to work hard to live simply if I make this move. You're welcome to visit and bring pizza.

 

Maybe I am romanticizing a little, but I also think some of that is trying to convince myself that I can really do this. I'm really taking everything into consideration. I have spent time out there. I actually love it in the winter. I get that this won't be easy. It would be a real move and not some vacation or get away. Part of me is terrified. But a bigger part of me is saying to do this. Since you have experience with this sort of lifestyle, any advice or tips are more than welcome.

 

And I just want to thank all of you who took the time to weigh in on this.

 

That's the kind of dream I had for a while myself. My life ended up very differently, but I understand the attraction.

Maybe don't make too pure a situation for yourself. You will need to eat, for one thing. So unless you want to live on canned goods all the time, you'll need to be able to go for groceries now and again. You can gradually learn to cook and preserve foods, but unless you're going to farm as well, you're going to be dependent on outside supplies. So you might not want to go too far from 'civilization.'

I have no idea what your financial situation is like, or what you would be living on. But subsistence living is a LOT of work. So you'd be spending most of your day just surviving.

However, if living simply and on your own in a wooded setting is what you really crave, then I think it's very do-able. There are certainly places you could do it. I'm from Michigan originally, and there are lots of places in Michigan's Upper Peninsula that I'm sure you could find that would suit you. If you want to make this dream happen, then start looking around. Thinking what you can afford. You'll probably need to own the land if you're going to be taking wood from it, so keep that in mind as well. What your skills are. Where you'd like to set up. How you plan to feed yourself, take care of yourself if you get sick, etc. Do a bit of forward planning.

Scout around and see if somebody has a remote cabin they don't use in the winter, that you could rent from them?

Above all ...if you want to do this, do it while you're young. As you get older and things like arthritis sets in, you're going to find it difficult going.

 

Into the Wild?

 

You could forget the wood and just find a place that has it's own natural gas reserve under it and have it as your heat source. Not only that, but you could then buy a fridge, stove, and hot water heater that runs off of it.

 

Thermal springs! Central heating sorted, and using a reverse heat pump you could run a thermal hydro-electric generator!

 

Doesn't Iceland have whole cities heated and powered by geothermal vents?

Ah, but no forests, whoops.

 

Pot roast, garlic mashed potatoes, sourdough bread, and a beer on a winter night

 

Yes it is, called a kotatsu, and according to the consumer energy data label, it costs about four yen (cents/pence, give or take) an hour. No central heating, so it's great.

 

I feel a little embarrassed to tell about this, but here goes:

Yesterday (Thursday) I was substitute teaching for a high school college prep English class, and I said something, I don't remember what it was, about editing your writing or getting the grammar right to communicate your ideas, or it may even have been about the Walt Whitman poem they were studying. And I linked it somehow to my own writing.

"Oh! You're writing a book?" the kids said. "Let's hear the beginning!" "Yes, Miss Lewis, read it to us!"

"Really? Seriously?"

"Yes! We want to hear it!"

It seemed terribly egotistical. But they had their work done, they kept importuning me, and, well, if I didn't oblige them, wouldn't I look like someone who only talked about being a writer but wasn't one at all? So . . .

I pulled up the file on the laptop and read them the first page of my WIP--- as revised since my writer's group crit session last Saturday. They listened attentively, and when I finished the page or so we had time for, they said how much they liked it and actually gave me a round of applause. I was amazed. Several of them even told me I had to let them know when it was published so they could buy a copy.

A nasty, objecting voice in my head tells me they were just taking the mick and this was a grand conspiracy to make the sub look foolish.

But another inner voice tells me not to insult the kids or my own work. That it's healthy for me to take a gleam of happiness from this. That I need to get used to having people say nice things about my writing and maybe get used to feeling they're aren't all crazy or cynical in saying so.

My gosh, my first public reading, totally impromptu, and it went over well. Wow.

 

Listen to the second voice and let yourself feel the warm hug of happiness . I'm glad it went so well!

 

I think I remember now what it was that outed me as a writer with this group. Thursday was Groundhog Day, and we were commenting cynically on how the darned rodent had seen his shadow, as usual, again. Six more weeks of winter. One of the girls said, "I think Punxatawny Phil is really a man in a groundhog body. They've put him in there and he has to say whatever they tell him to." I responded with, "That's a great idea for a fantasy novel. Have a world where certain people are Chosen to be trapped in the bodies of various animals, and they control the weather however their masters say. Yeah, that'll write!" And that's when they said, "Miss Lewis, you write?"

Yeah. That was it. And since I don't write fantasy, anybody who wants that idea can have it.

 

Not wanting to quash your dream, but rather to help make it more achievable:

You have to remember that people who lived like that were trained in those ways all their lives. They had certain skills they could call on, and their brains and muscles had gotten into shape over long years of practice. You're coming to it as one who is used to modern ways and modern conveniences. Unless there's something about yourself you haven't told us ("Yes, fellow WritingForumites, I was actually raised by bears in the woods"), you don't have the lore in your blood to tell you what to do in an emergency or even just to survive.

So I'd suggest taking it in steps. Make sure you have a power source, at least some of the time, so you can keep food cold. Have ways to communicate reliably with others, especially those who can help you survive and thrive in the wilderness. Keep the Internet connection: unless you possess the world's ultimate manual on surviving alone in the woods, you'll need it to look up how-tos for problems that arise. As for keeping yourself off the computer when you should be chopping wood or whatever, that self-discipline is up to you.

Speaking of self-discipline . . . You've never said that you want to turn your back on modern life so you can concentrate on your writing. So, disregard this if it doesn't fit. But a lot of people think that if they can just get away from it all, flee "far from the madding crowd" (!), they'll suddenly be able to focus on their creative work. But distractions inhabit our brains. We bring them with us and they find us wherever we go.

Anyway, if I were you, I'd ease into it. You can get rid of the freezer later, after you have your icehouse built.

EDIT: I recommend watching this series so you can get your head around what you'd be up against. Forewarned is forearmed.

 

And don't eat the potato seeds...

 

A bit of a gloat on my part, but one of my muses was nagging me through games night, I had a notebook and a pen so I was writing between my turns. One of the games we were playing was D&D: Lords of Waterdeep, bottom line, you win by getting the most points after all the rounds. You get points by sending warriors on quests or acquiring buildings.

Despite my muse and the fact that I never played the game before, I won. The only girl and the only one who hadn't played it before.

 

I'm organizing an evening at a nearby shooting range for my colleagues (I'm running this sports club with two other people and we do trips and try out new sports every month), and at first I was a little worried that no one wants to participate since even though we'll be shooting the modest .22, it's still a firearm. Turns out this will be the biggest event in the club's history! There are too many people interested in participating, actually; men, women, old, young. I'm psyched about this as I really want to support the few indoor ranges we still have here in the capital region. Yay!