Quote:
Originally Posted by GH85Carrera
Off the grid is one of the romantic ideas that I suspect would totally SUCK in reality.
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I lived 8 months a year way off the grid when I was younger - in wilderness areas; just me and my field notes and some scientific instruments
for 4 years I skied in to my study sites, up to 25 miles each way
next 5 years, it was only a 7 mile ski each way
after that, I had to use the word processor more than the statistics package and the programming languages (or vis-calc after it and the PC were created), and I had to run my lab, teach students, yada-yada - it is much more fun to be a graduate student off the grid than a professor on the grid
once you get older, then you definitely need access to medical care, mattresses, and other luxuries
You can also find some info on Gary Snyder and his cabin in the Sierras - the local realtors even use him as a marketing tool to sell similar properties to people wanting the simple life - I'm not sure if he also had an apt. in Davis once he started his professorship gig at UCD or if he commuted, or couch surfed - he was older then tho
He has one great story about his life in the cabin - he'd trek to a nearby spring or stream for water just like when he was a fire lookout and wilderness trail worker living in a tent earlier in life. He had no electricity... until he bought a generator. Now, why did he buy a generator??? So his daughters could blow-dry their hairdo's. He'd go crank it up - they'd do their "fixin' up" and then he'd shut it down until the next morning. Daughters will do that to a man.