By CRAIG LEISHER
Three weeks ago, my wife and I moved with our three boys, two cats, five bikes and canoe from the New Jersey suburbs to a cabin in the Maine woods. We’ll be here for a year, and from time to time I’ll be updating you on our experiment in living in tune with our surroundings and off the grid.
We have no hot water, no microwave, no washing machine, no coffee maker and only enough solar electricity to power two laptops and a cellphone. We turn on a small generator every other day to pump lake water into two 55-gallon barrels on our roof that serve our needs. A lot of tasks are harder up here, but we have daily adventures, no commute, views from every window and a chance to cure our suburban kids’ nature-deficit disorder.
The biggest surprise so far is that the transition was easier than I expected. We didn’t forget anything vital, the cabin is as we had hoped, and the move itself went largely as planned. Perhaps the worst challenge so far was trying to give the cats a pill from the vet on the morning we left New Jersey so they would sleep on the 10-hour drive. There was clawing, blood and lots of yelling. We gave up eventually, and they were fine without the meds.
To continue working remotely for my job as a social scientist at the Nature Conservancy, a top priority was getting satellite Internet. I called the company on the first Monday morning after we arrived, and they promised a Thursday installation. Our Internet-addicted boys, ages 7, 9 and 11, began counting the days.
On Tuesday, the installer called and said he would come on Sunday instead. On Sunday afternoon he called to say he was “out of cable” and could not come until the next Friday. I called on Thursday to confirm that he indeed had the cable and was coming.
When he arrived on Friday, he said my planned satellite receiver location would not work because the disk needed to face southwest, not south, contrary to what the company’s Web site said. “You’re going to have to cut some trees,” he told me. He charged me $50 for a “site consultation” and gave me the azimuth (232 degrees) and the angle (31 degrees) at which the dish should be placed.
I had a compass but needed a 31-degree angle. I remembered seeing a broken carpenter’s level that still has its bubble in the shed next to our cabin. This would be a good horizontal base, but I needed to know how high to make the 90-degree tangent for a 31-degree angle on the long side, or hypotenuse. Thankfully, my engineer dad loves these kinds of questions. In minutes I had the answer via cellphone.
I cut a stick to the right length and duct-taped it to the level à la Red Green. I found a slightly bent all-thread rod in the shed and hammered it straight to use as my hypotenuse. With the new triangle taped to a stepladder, I found an almost clear sight line for the dish at the right azimuth and angle.
I had to cut some limbs high up on a tree, so I duct-taped a handsaw to a long branch and did the job. An hour of work with hands as high as they could go reminded me how physical it is living in the woods. I stay fit with the occasional triathlon, but here I am so exhausted by the end of the day that I feel like a high school kid with mono.
The boys have adjusted better than anticipated to no Lego.com, YouTube or Internet games. That’s mainly because of the wild raspberries: they line our road, and the boys’ hunter-provider mode switched on when they saw the berries. They spend hours each day collecting raspberries for dessert or for squeezing into a fruit juice that they swear is the best they’ve ever tasted (because they made it).
We’ve heard almost nothing about the town pool back home or the much-diminished food options for dinner. Constant outdoor activity has increased their appetites, and even our most finicky eater is trying what’s for dinner with only a little whining.
Living in a basic cabin in the woods means that many things take more time, like heating leftovers, preparing drinking water (we boil it for three minutes and then have to wait for it to cool down) and washing dishes, but a few things have gotten easier. Laundry, for instance, is much decreased because clothes get rinsed in the lake (the kids don’t bother with bathing suits) and only go in the laundry bag if the dirt appears to have become ingrained in the clothes.
Getting kids started on an outside activity is also easier because there are no electronic screens to turn off to howls of injustice, and biking, swimming, kayaking and exploring are just outside the door. Our daily schedules have gone from being highly planned and dependent on others to being driven by the weather and what we feel like doing.
On balance, we have more time in the day to do what we want to do now than before. On Sunday we connected the wood stove’s chimney pipe in the morning; in the afternoon we paddled five miles and saw a family of bald eagles up close.
Every stage of life brings favorite music to mind, and for me, it’s been Jimmy Buffett the last few weeks. I’m not at the beach and there are no bars, but there’s a sandy area along the lake, cold beer and an attitude tilted toward enjoying life.
Stay tuned.
Craig Leisher is the senior social science adviser for the Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental group.
(Source: www.feeds.nytimes.com )