Hobbit Life

Sometimes you find yourself at a fork in the road, unsure which way to go. The prudent choice is to take the path, which if it proves to be the wrong one, you can still backtrack and take the other one. Humanity is at a fork in the road, the vast majority will continue on the main highway with artificial intelligence at the wheel hurtling towards an unknown future of trans-humanism. A few will shoulder their packs and strike out up the rough trail yearning for adventure, guided by nature. As I stomp along the trail, I scribble, those random thoughts might one day fill a book. Here a few of them.

The book would be about how to live off-grid, build hobbit homes and achieve the freedom and happiness of the hobbits who lived in the Shire. Their world was turned upside down by the greed and avarice of outsiders, as is ours. A handful of brave hobbits and their friends turned it around against almost impossible odds, similarly, we can build our own bridge to tomorrow. First, a look at the problem.

People work to earn money so they can work and rattle their hamster wheel every day caged in a cycle of work and debt. Addiction to social media dulls the emptiness and encourages extreme self-interest to the detriment of creating community. Technology has enabled people to live without experiencing nature. Nature is tranquility, many yearn for it, once found, it is like finding something that you didn’t know you had lost. However, it is not easy to break free of the narcotic hold of coddled consumerism. Luxuries become necessities, which then shackle you to new obligations.

A hardy few break the bonds, flee the city and boot it down the cosmic highway in search of freedom. Peddle to the metal, wind in their hair, shifting their lives from automatic to manual over-ride. Jalopies are loaded to the gunwales with everything they could possibly need to carve a new life in the wild wet woods. They pack all their fears and leave behind the one essential – nothing. There are no luggage racks on a dandelion.

We need to slow down and become nature as we once were many moons ago. Our biology is our ticket to freedom. Nature is the mother of all dumpster cowboys and master scavengers, she thrives on discarded junk, or as the folk in lab coats would say, decaying organic matter. This works because she is a community of kindred spirits, everything is interconnected, interdependent and interrelated. The history of those of us who live in the settled world is one long attempt to conquer nature. We failed miserably. We invented the corporation to become more powerful, and later artificial intelligence. First, the corporations turned against us and then artificial intelligence took over the physicality of daily life, health deteriorates and folk succumb to the slow suicide of sedentariness. The necessities of life, which a century earlier were largely free, were turned into commodities, ensnaring young people into a downward debt spiral as they bar coded their lives away.

Meanwhile, the dream continues to draw hobbit wannabees into the mythical Shire to enjoy a life of free heat, shelter, food, solar power and the warmth of tribal support. Once established, daily living expenses diminish creating a feedback loop which gives them the affluence of time and money as they climb the chakras. The reality for many is not so rosy. These are the qualities required for this lifestyle.

Physical stamina, disciplined work habits, a well developed sense of reality, sufficient skills and manual dexterity, a strong desire for homesteading life, the ability to set goals, strong individualism combined with strong community spirit. You have to ask yourself the critical question – am I doing this to get away from something or because this is the life I want.

I have been living this life for over a dozen years and my enthusiasm glamorizes over the harsh reality, for me the rewards far outweigh the perceived hardships. It is too much for some and they return to the city disillusioned – or worse, they have more baggage than an airport carousel. Off-grid living is intensely practical, chop wood, carry water, grow food. Because I am open-minded to all beliefs and persuasions, I am at the nexus point between 19th Century homesteading and the woo woo brigade. Ohh, lordly I don’t need anymore stories.

Bike packing across Patagonia or a wine-soaked saunter along ancient pilgrim routes is my idea of a good time. When you go into the wilds on your own, you get caught in a slight undertow that carries you away from the mainstream and ever closer to the shores of spirituality. Your reset button may be pushed and you find yourself living the life your life wants to live, which for me was becoming a hobbit and, like Bilbo Baggins, my boots heels wandered.

“Use the gears, use the gears,” yelled the fellow cyclist.

I was cycling through the foothills of the Andes. Twice I passed a Dutch couple as I flew wildly down the hill on my fully loaded bike, only to get off and push it uphill. They would then peddle effortlessly passed me. I thought it was because they were from Holland and hardcore. My twenty-year marriage had recently ended and, like a coiled spring, I was mad for adventure. Dropping by the local bike shop, I asked for something that would get me across Patagonia. A Trek mountain bike was produced and I was taken behind the shop for a test ride. I wobbled. My previous biking experience was as a kid messing around in the backyard. Gears were new to me and not wanting to appear a complete dork I didn’t ask now to use them. As I climbed higher and higher into the mountains with the wind whipping my baggy tatterdemalion clothes, fellow cyclists could be forgiven for thinking that some village had lost it’s idiot.

It would have been a misconception. The loose-fitting clothes were an integral part of trip planning. The adage, if you sweat, you die, is a cornerstone of harsh weather trekking and it helps to be as inconspicuous as possible when passing through the barrios. Before leaving, I had studied the Royal Geographical Society’s guides for every type of expedition and read the Sierra Club’s book on bicycle touring. These guides combined with my own extensive backpacking experiences had given me a good foundation for crossing rugged country on my own. Adventure travel may not be your cup of tea, but the organizational skills required for self-sustained travel in the wild are exactly what you need for off-grid living. You also need to know how to bootstrap your life so that you are mentally and physically fully functional.

That means firing on all cylinders. Wet, tired and hungry corrodes resolve. Personal energy is the currency of life and it has been devalued by the stresses of modern life and now has to be propped up by caffeine and sugar. Your well being is too important to delegate to someone else. Lifestyle and spirituality guidance is a warren of rabbit holes into which time and money quickly disappear. To cut through the fog of healers and dealers of potions, I seek higher ground by using the navigation technique of triangulation and chart my course by taking three points of reference. I learn what polar explorers eat to enable them to cross the frozen ice fields, then what ultra marathoners do to maintain energy during a 100 mile race, finally I look to medical experts. “Oats”, they shout.

My love affair with oats got off to a lumpy start. Around nine years old I was sent off to a boarding school which believed in pushing frontiers. Films, like the one of Captain Scott man-hauling sleds loaded with rock samples instead of using huskies to transport food, taught us, even in failure you can glow in the glory of incompetence. The dining room pushed the boundaries of the palatable ever closer to the gut-wrenching world of the nauseous.

“If you can’t eat your meat, perhaps you would like dessert,” said Miss Gray, hovering behind me. Her prim matron’s uniform barely containing her inner drill sergeant.

She had an uncanny resemblance to Colonel Krebb, the assassin in Ian Fleming’s ‘From Russia with Love’ (the woman who fatally stabbed Bond with the poisoned blade in her shoe.) I looked forlornly at the gobs of gristle and fatty mutton floating in the watery stew. Miss Gray goes over to the counter and returns with a ladle of canned fruit salad, a rare treat from the usual soggy bread pudding. She dumps the fruit salad into my bowl of mutton stew.

My escape was by brief stolen moments day dreaming as I stared out the window when the teacher’s back was turned. Whack! a hard wooden blackboard eraser thrown with deadly accuracy across the classroom and smack into my skull ends my reverie. The school library was my other source of solace. Among the tomes of Macaulay and Gibbons were the latest James Bond books, the garish covers removed so that the black hardbacks blended in with the imperious empire builders. The Bond books were my Harry Potter and I became an expert on the likes of Col. Krebb and her ilk. It was not until many years later that I realized it was all part of the attempts to mold character. My love of books became my handrail to hobbit life. I did manage ten years of schooling and then one day, during the final year, I metaphorically stepped out the window, went from tuition to intuition and never looked back. Education is best acquired, not bought.

“Self-education is I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is. The only function of a school is to make self-education easier, failing that, it does nothing,” said Isaac Asimov.

For me, books are leverage. All the wisdom, insights and knowledge of a lifetime gets distilled, clarified and put into order in a book. I jaywalk through life cutting corners and taking short cuts. There is much that I should do or should know, but don’t. Hidden away on side streets or stashed at the back of thrift stores, there are shelves of wisdom and all available for a pittance. Last summer, I picked up a free 24ft sailboat off a lawn on nearby Nogies Creek, I enthusiastically gathered up all my sailing books and eagerly read them with notebook and pen at the ready. After wading through them my enthusiasm for the ocean wave was dampened somewhat and could be summed up by Mark Twain’s comment “civilization ends at the shoreline.” However, books on sailing boat maintenance and repair are a gold mine of useful information for those of us who live on the edge.

Diesel engine repair, solar systems and fixing leaks. These and many more challenges are covered in sailboat repair manuals, and they are sympathetically written for the klutz aground on a coral reef. Then there are the awe-inspiring accounts of the single-handed sailors who give there all in the ‘round the world’ races. They are the elite and hailed as national heroes. I couldn’t help noticing the dichotomy between them being exalted and achieving success by fundamentally violating the rules and practices of good seamanship. Building a yurt out the back is not the same as rounding the Horn, but, their single-minded perseverance and nobility of spirit inspires our own modest endeavours.

On another pinnacle are indigenous Elders. The ancient knowledge that has been pasted down through the generations has been recorded and generously shared for all our benefit. Foraging and herbal medicine that has been passed down is timeless treasure, along with an ethos of respect for the environment and for each other. All of this, and more, is available for pennies. The last word goes to Beat poet, Gary Snyder, “In Western Civilization our elders are books.” Next comes the big question of where to homestead, but first, I have a cautionary tale to tell. (to follow in the next instalment).