I've lived in some crunchy, edge of the hinterlands type of situations. Some with a small group, others totally alone in an old cabin with a cat, no cell phone / internet service, and my thoughts.
I once ran out of heating oil and only had heat from a wood stove I loaded every 12 hours with scrap oak I had gathered from a wood mill that summer. I couldn't get a delivery of more oil because the roads were too fucked up for an entire month.... an uncommon but not rare occurrence. I didn't freeze to death, but it was a lot of effort to keep the house warm. I worked ~300 yards away (an old building with a shitty old heater, so you had to leave your layers on inside), but I had to keep my stove loaded and blazing so pipes didn't freeze while I was out.
It was deep into some mountains where a foot of snow might dump overnight and the winding, rarely serviced county roads were treacherous on good weather days in summer, let alone the 40-50° below freezing that we occasionally dropped to. It was beautiful at times and I wouldn't trade those days and their instructive frustrations for anything, but they taught me not to take conveniences for granted.
I love being in nature and being intimately tied to it in my daily work, but I know deep in my heart that it's an unrequited love. People who want to "challenge" themselves using nature are fools that end up humbled if they're lucky, or destroyed.
I've lived in some crunchy, edge of the hinterlands type of situations. Some with a small group, others totally alone in an old cabin with a cat, no cell phone / internet service, and my thoughts.
I once ran out of heating oil and only had heat from a wood stove I loaded every 12 hours with scrap oak I had gathered from a wood mill that summer. I couldn't get a delivery of more oil because the roads were too fucked up for an entire month.... an uncommon but not rare occurrence. I didn't freeze to death, but it was a lot of effort to keep the house warm. I worked ~300 yards away (an old building with a shitty old heater, so you had to leave your layers on inside), but I had to keep my stove loaded and blazing so pipes didn't freeze while I was out.
It was deep into some mountains where a foot of snow might dump overnight and the winding, rarely serviced county roads were treacherous on good weather days in summer, let alone the 40-50° below freezing that we occasionally dropped to. It was beautiful at times and I wouldn't trade those days and their instructive frustrations for anything, but they taught me not to take conveniences for granted.
I love being in nature and being intimately tied to it in my daily work, but I know deep in my heart that it's an unrequited love. People who want to "challenge" themselves using nature are fools that end up humbled if they're lucky, or destroyed.