Introduction

My Uncivilized Life

Q and A with Jenny

 Q: ‘What’s your place like?’

A: ‘We live totally off-grid: no running water, no gas heat as we burn wood, no light except from kerosene lamps when it gets too dark to read or see. Nor do we have electricity except what a generator can produce to charge the marine battery that runs the radio, the battery in my laptop, when I need to print a document, or when we need to use power tools for a construction project. I think that’s about it.’

Q: ‘Then what do you do for showers and drinking water if you don’t have running water?’

A: ‘We have a rubber tub, made for feeding or watering stock, which we haul inside if we want a bath. Otherwise, we go a week without one. As to our drinking water, we haul all of our water from the Carcajou well, which is about a 20-minute drive from the cabin. In the summer we use a big water tank on the back of an old flatbed trailer, but in the winter several 5 gallon jugs serve to hold our water supply.’

Q: ‘How do you cook?’

A: ‘We have a small, two-burner stove with an oven that will hold a 13x9 pan and runs on bottled propane like a BBQ.’

Q: ‘Where do you go to the bathroom if you don’t have plumbing?’

A: ‘There’s a good old fashioned outhouse over 50 feet from the house.’

Q: ‘That’s so primitive. How close is your nearest neighbor?’

A: ‘Oh, our nearest permanent neighbor… we have one neighbor who only comes about twice a year for the hunting seasons but I won’t count them… so to answer your question, I’d say about 7 miles as the crow flies? I’m guessing, here. There are only 4 households, besides ours, down Homestead but we are not really close to them, geographically or socially.’

Q: ‘You’re neighbors live that far away?’

A: ‘Oh yeah, but that’s okay by us. We really enjoy the solitude.’

‘That’s amazing -- so simple -- you guys have it made -- I couldn’t do it.’  

 

The Truth about Adaptation and Survival

Welcome to my blog, My Uncivilized Life.

The Q and A is a typecast of the conversations about my lifestyle that I have had with many friends, family members, and acquaintances. The last line varies person to person, but always ends with not being able to handle it or convince the spouse (not just the wife, either) into living such a primitive lifestyle.

What a lie.

Humans are one of the most adaptable organisms that live. We have managed to adapt to almost every environ, in spite of our physical weakness, because we have a very strong primal instinct for survival. The truth is that the life I lead requires a change of mental outlook, a change in how you view what is essential to living a happy, satisfied life.

What continues to fascinate me is how absurdly simple and easy it is to let go of the material for the natural, the worrisome for a relatively stress-free environment, an environment where your greatest worry is what to do in case of an emergency. Of course, you do your best to make sure there will not be an emergency. In the wilderness, your currency is your life.

 

The Dream Becomes Reality

My family once lived the fairytale success story of townies. We had the large house, I was a good student, actively involved in the fine arts and athletic department, frequented the two local coffee shops, and had great friends.

My dad resigned and I left school before the second term of the 2006/2007 school year. With our deadline being the arrival of summer vacation, the two of us began the long journey of building two storage sheds and moving the family possessions to what we still view as a 300-acre Eden of mostly virgin forest.

The road, I mean that bumpy all-natural game-highway we travelled by foot and quad the first year or two before we made expansions, has not been convenient, but it has been far easier to travel than what people realize.

Imagine a world with no bills except your monthly gasoline/diesel, cell, and grocery bills. A word where annual property tax is thrown in there to remind you that, in some places, bills like rent, landline, cable, internet, light, heat, and power still exist.

As an added plus, when you put in the type of garden we do each year you become about 75% self-sufficient. Gardening for self-sufficiency not only brings feelings of self-value and success into your life, but considerably reduces the amount you shell out yearly for groceries.

Such is my family’s life summed up in dollars.

What I have not told you yet is that my family and I live in a one-room 12x16 foot cabin (okay, it’s really a shed) we built, complete with double loft and oversized wood stove. We have lived this way since I was seventeen. Originally, it was to be our temporary residence. Now twenty-three, the cabin is still what comes to mind when I envision home.

Though we share 12x16 square feet of living space and sleeping quarters -- believe me, I can envision worse -- share school space with a library, an office, a foyer, a den, and a living room…everything but the kitchen, which is located on the other end of the cabin from my workspace. In spite of our unusual quarters, we are living a romantic dream every day.

Though I may not have my own room, sleep in a sleeping bag, have no closet, no refrigerator, except for the 300-acre one that forms with wintery convenience, keep cats for company and reserve local wildlife for friends, I find new adventures complete with new experiences waiting for me each time I step out my door. Well, provided I am not snuggled into a patio chair doing schoolwork, journaling, knitting, or taking imaginative adventures as I read NURRM* by the stove in our kitchen-parlor-den-library-foyer-office-all-in-one home.

*NURRM = Non-University Related Reading Material (also known as any book of any genre of my own choosing)

Phantasia in the Boreal Forest

I am starting this blog to chronicle my experiences at Rosehill so those who have wondered (in many cases the accurate word is marveled) at our miraculous change may gain deeper appreciation and insight into a way of life that is extinct except in the most romantic minds of the age.

My second reason is just as simple. I love my lifestyle. It fills me with wonder and inspiration all the time. I would love to inspire people who want to do what my family has done but doubt the possibility of taking their families into the wild. My parents did so, and I am more than grateful for the experiences and knowledge about life I have gained from the sacrifices we have made in order to take the adventure of a lifetime.

My posts will reflect both current events at Rosehill and memories of days and events. Without a doubt many will seem incredible; what I would call products of phantasia had I not lived through the events and know them to be true.

I admit I am always amazed at my experiences. Often, I feel like someone just told me a story and tried to make me believe it was my life: you know, those unbelievable stories where the fish starts out this big, gets THIS BIG!, and eventually leaves the listener wondering if there had been a fish at all.

 

Philosophy on Civilization

Before I begin telling stories to describe life at Rosehill, the like of which I ought to relegate to books, something I am not sure I feel qualified to do, allow me to explain why I say my life is uncivilized.

The commonly accepted definition of civilized means to, “bring a person or people to an advanced stage of social development.”

From my experience with civilization as “an advanced stage or system of human social development,” I have observed that until you consciously decide to live outside the conventional system of affairs in near or absolute isolation you will never understand civilization or, for that matter, what it means to be civilized.¹

Like looking in the mirror and believing you are average, you live with yourself and are incapable of seeing yourself as any different even when everyone else believes you are beautiful. Just as it takes a change of perspective for you to see yourself as others see you, it takes a removal from the norm, the status quo, your comfort zone, to embrace and understand that being civilized and living in civilization are not quite what you once imagined them to be.

It took long years of living in isolation -- the sacrifice of social community, something people need to feel they belong to the whole -- and of going against the conventions of North American society, before I observed how hollow the common idea is of what it means to be civilized, a member of civilization.

Play a game with me.

To put our different lifestyles in perspective, I want you to contemplate the various mediums by which you receive information daily. Next, compare your answer with mine. Because due to my isolation, I know little of the outside world anymore:

‘The scope of my news of the outside world is usually months behind. I am rarely online, get only the local paper, and have only regional radio stations to choose from on any given day. The exception is when CBC broadcasts actually come through clearly, or something is newsworthy enough for our remote Peace Country radio stations to take notice of and air. Did I mention that I have no TV?’

To use logic: I live outside the sphere of civilization, thus I am uncivilized. By the common definition, I am outside the realm of civilization, however, that goes against my entire perspective on civilization.

To my way of thinking, I live in the truest civilization with the civilized, not you, dear reader, with your personal agenda, and your life in your unnatural, paved, concrete forest.

To my way of thinking, I live in the original civilization, a civilization of primacy and primal instinct so old that the trees lull me to sleep each night with their whispered, ancient stories and melodies from long, long ago. This is no dream, but reality from the cusp of civilization.

Conclusions

Here is to what began as a brief introduction to my blog about life on Rosehill. I do not doubt that as my posts grow, you will grow to understand why my family chose to build our home in the wilderness away from the alleged comforts of society.

Come, explore.

Our journey is far from being over.

Slap some mosquitoes and get muddy trekking over those original game tracks of time that lead into the romance of another century.

Though I broke trail for you years ago, the romance of the wild is still waiting, waiting for you to follow my dusty footsteps, waiting for you to break your own path anew, into My Uncivilized Life.

Love,
Jenny

P.S. No littering allowed.

 ¹ All definitions taken from the Pocket Oxford Dictionary. “civilize” and “civilization.” 10^th ed. OUP: 2005. 156.