Day 321, Year 6: Getting It Right
Date: Saturday, September 10, 2011
Weather: Warm, Sunny Day
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
When I was in my late twenties and Mark in his early thirties, we saved money, quit our jobs, and headed to Alaska to build a cabin in the woods. We didn’t like Alaska and ended up back in northern Idaho. We cleared and planted a garden space in the forest, built the cabin, and then ran out of money. During that winter, I also got pregnant with our daughter Heather. We had to leave our mountain cabin and go back to ‘civilization’ but we had changed. Our experience in the mountains made us want to live as self-sufficiently as possible, but that was not really possible in the mountains. In order to make money, we moved to Washington, DC, where Mark worked at PBS. Heather was born in Alexandria, Virginia, in a small apartment. When she was only six months old, however, we left Washington seeking a place where we could farm. The city was just no longer a place where we could live. Minnesota is where we landed-cheap land, freezing winters, but long, hot days in the summer that were great for growing food. After four years in Minnesota, we moved to southern West Virginia where it was much easier to be self-sufficient. But being self-sufficient on a 40-acre farm meant that both Mark and I had to have full time jobs to pay for food for all the animals and to finish building our dream home. By this time, both children were in school and then the focus shifted. More important than being self-sufficient was getting a good education for our children. We re-entered ‘civilization’ once more, moving to the Eastern Shore of Maryland where Mark worked at a small university and I taught kindergarten. Five years there and fifteen years in New Hampshire saw our children graduate from college. It was then that we started planning our voyage around the world on a sailboat. This was Mark’s dream, but fulfilling his dream has once again changed both of us. Building a cabin in the woods was one dream and it led us to the hope that we could live self-sufficiently. We weren’t successful at that, but we did try. Sailing around the world was a second dream and it has once again led us to the hope that we can live as simply as possible in a modern day world for the rest of our lives. When we were in Vanuatu in the South Pacific we learned of their dream of “Kastom” Economy. This translates as “custom” economy meaning that you live using only those things that are readily available to you in your environment. This means NO electricity. We’ve been there and done that in our earlier years together and are not ready to commit to that again, but we can work to live more simply.
All of this is background to the point of this log. When we talked to our son and daughter-in-law last night, we heard the same longing that we once felt for trying to make a change in their lives to live as simply and self-sufficiently as possible. They live in a home in the high desert of New Mexico and it gets very cold in the winter-so they are dependent on fossil fuel for heat. Their band, Silvermouse, goes on tour in a Greyhound bus. Albeit refitted for bio-diesel, it still takes tons of fuel. Their experience at Burning Man last week opened their eyes to new realities and a new vision. They really want to make some changes so that they are not so reliant on oil. Not easy. Our daughter and her husband, both scientists, try to live an eco-friendly life style. They have a garden, they have used G-diapers with both boys, cloth when they were little and plastic-free paper liners as they got bigger. They are trying to get rid of plastic as a packaging material for food or drink-stainless steel water bottles, glass storage containers for food. The list goes on but the point is that both of our children, in different ways, are struggling with the modern-day reality that we are dependent on oil for almost everything. We just want to wish them both the strength to continue with their struggles to try and “get it right”-right for their children, right for the future of humanity. Living on a sailboat is one way to reach this vision. We make our own electricity, or at least part of it, by having solar panels and a wind generator. We do still have to use diesel fuel to run our engine to charge our batteries as our main source of energy, but we supplement as much as possible. When in warm climates, we never have to plug-in for heat or air-conditioning. We make our own water from salt water through our reverse-osmosis water maker. When in a warm climate, we can wash our clothes with the water we make and dry them on our life lines. There are many aspects of living aboard a sailboat that are very appealing for anyone wanting to live a simple life as free of dependency on fossil fuels as possible. BUT there is still that dependency for many aspects of life. I think both of our children are on good paths, trying desperately to change their lifestyles to use as little of the earth’s precious resources as possible. Each one of us can make a difference, so we hope you are doing your part to get it right. None of us can do it all, but each of us can make a difference.
