The coffee is extra strong this morning. I might have allowed it to burble on the stove a little bit longer than I should have, but it has a nice kick. I’m sitting here, almost ready to head in to work and I’m trying to make plans. I knew that hibernation would wear off eventually.
First off, I want my cabin. I really, really want a proper cabin. It would be so much easier to heat than this RV. We would have more room to work in the kitchen. We could have better spaces to relax or hang out and not be in each other’s way. That has to wait. My loose plan is to wait for March when things melt to get the sawmill working and get the lumber cut so that when the season ends my shuttle job I can put in the time to build.
Then there is the garden. I want a garden. I’m pretty sure I can grow potatoes and cabbage, carrots and beets. I just don’t know how much protection I will need to install so that critters won’t trample or eat my garden. I put a question in to a group about that. We’ll see if I get anything useful.
I still don’t know what I’ll do for work in summer. Or if Chris will work and I can live off of his paycheck for a few months. I haven’t decided if I’ll drive for Basecamp for a second season or not. Some of this resists planning. It’s too far away and has too many variables.
I used to make lists and plans all the time. I find it really helps when your brain is too busy. Having things written down helps me focus. I’ve been getting better at letting go and winging it, but I would like an outline.
I know what I want to do out in the real world. I’m pondering a couple of ideas for content on the blog. I want your feedback.
What do you want to know about life in Alaska? Do you want to know about living off-grid? How do we keep warm? Cost of living? What it’s like driving? Ask me questions!
I have just finished reading through my posts for the last year. More recently I have been telling stories, but last January I posted a series detailing my camping list. I want to revisit that and compare camping to my current lifestyle. That could be an interesting ten articles.
Please, tell me what you think. I love sharing what it’s like up here and I would love to share the adventure with you the way you want to hear about it.
So we hit the end of one calendar and have started on the next. Days and weeks and months flow by and people act as if the numbers make it different from what came before.
Do the numbers make the difference? Do they really?
I would make the argument that numbers are nothing but markers. It doesn’t matter what page you turn to if the book is blank. The numbers just help you label when things happen. We are what will make the changes.
What made 2020 good or bad has nothing to do with the year itself, but how we responded to events. I lost my dad and we couldn’t gather for a funeral. I moved to another state and still don’t have my cabin built. The job I was hired for and quit my stable job to start went away as covid-19 cancelled that entire season. Wildfires threatened my Oregon home and forced my family to evacuate. I had to spend a few nights without heat as the temp dropped as low as -31°. All of these things make it sound like 2020 was a disaster for me, but it wasn’t.
2020 might have been my best year yet. It was the year I took control of my life. I left a job that was destroying me and only my bank account regrets it. I have settled into an area that is beyond beautiful, even with the darkness and extreme conditions. My cabin might not be built, but that means I am living close to my helpers. If anything goes wrong I can call for assistance and they just have to cross the creek. We might have had to get through some harsh times, but on the other side we know that we survived and can do it again. The job I have now is proving to me that I really do like people. My family learned what is really important to them and what can be left behind. My oldest son is learning that he is stronger than he thought and takes great pride in his ability to keep the household functional in Oregon. My middle son is getting a bit bored here, but he knows how to keep our RV comfortable. And even though we miss my dad, we still were able to say goodbye in a memorable way.
So what is this new year going to bring? I don’t know. There will definitely be challenges. I still have a cabin to build. Chris and I both will have to find work again. Hopefully it will lead us closer to the lifestyle we want.
I can’t predict the events to come, but I plan to meet them with the intention of making the best of whatever comes my way. I’ll do my best to be ready for when things are bad. But in every disaster there is room made for growth. Change is inevitable. Adaptation is necessary. Optimism is not a flaw. You get what you look for. If you look for reasons to give up then that’s all you will find. Better to look for the good in life. Look for new opportunities. Look for new people. Make the most of your life no matter what comes your way.
Here’s one good thing we know is coming. My nephew and his wife just announced that the baby they are expecting in a few months will be a girl. Considering that my extended family has had only boys for the last 25 years, that’s pretty exciting. This is going to be a good year.
The light is coming back. The last two days have had spectacular sunrises and sunsets. It stays light a little later than just a week ago and that’s perfect. Then there is the full moon. This morning the moon set as the sun was rising and I couldn’t decide which side of the sky was prettier.
I was running errands this morning, in full professional scavenger hunt mode. My boss sent me a list and I was checking it off. At one point I had to go back to the shop for something and as I pulled in I caught a glimpse of the moon setting huge and beautiful. So I parked the van and walked over to where I had the best angle. I had my phone on camera mode and was zooming in and framing my shot just right when I suddenly realized that there were fuzzy ears in the foreground. I was so focused on the moon that I hadn’t seen the moose.
How’s this for a photo bomber?
The shot I got wasn’t perfect. There was another moose about 20 feet to the right, but I didn’t get them both in a single frame. But I got a story.
How many times does this happen to people? You are so focused on the things in the distance that you forget to see what is close by. All those big things you are heading for are great. Keep aiming high! But don’t forget to look for the little things close by too. Smell the roses. See the moose. Enjoy the moment.
I’d join him if I could. He’d love the extra body heat.
It’s very close to the solstice and the temperature has been dipping lower more frequently. This weekend was the second in a row that hovered around -17° for most of the time. Oddly enough, it wasn’t as hard as last weekend.
I had zero plans for my weekend. I literally stayed in a cocoon in my bed as I explored and built in a new world on minecraft. Then Saturday afternoon a friend texted me to let me know she would pick me up at 4. I had to think about it for a while. I wasn’t sure what day it was. Then I remembered that she had informed me that I WOULD be joining her on a girls night out with her friends. Okay. I said I’d be ready.
We went to a favorite Thai restaurant and talked and ate. I knew I would probably like her friends. She has good taste in people. And I know I need to make more connections. As much as I could be happy as a hermit, I still need to socialize. After we left the restaurant we ended up going to look at guns (Missi has found one worth saving up for) and I bought a smaller cast iron skillet. Then we had to park at the side of the road to watch the solstice fireworks. We didn’t even need to be downtown.
It’s cold outside and I’ve been typing this while I wait for the truck to warm up. But the time comes to head for work. Clay is happily tucked into the blankets. He isn’t fond of this weather. It’s snowing again, so I’ll be thankful for the empty Sunday morning highway. It isn’t quite hibernation, but it’s closer than I have been to it in many years. And it feels good.
A couple of weeks ago we wanted pizza. Chris went 10 miles into North Pole to fill the heating oil cans and picked up two pizzas. They were gone in a flash and we were still hungry. All for $35. It didn’t feel worth it.
I tried again a week ago. I picked up a pizza on my way home. For $12 it was underwhelming. Sparse toppings, mediocre flavor, I can do better. My pantry has most of what I need to make pizza. All I needed was some fresh spinach and mushrooms. I think I spent less on toppings for multiple pizzas than I would have if I bought a ready made one. Plus, we like our crust better than anyone else’s.
Nothing beats homemade pizza.
While I waited for my pizza to bake I fixed a plate of salad. The entire time I was eating it I was watched by the world’s greatest optimist. I know the dog doesn’t like greens, but I’ve gotten him to eat them before. He knew what I was eating, but he still drooled hopefully. Maybe, just maybe something delicious would fall into his mouth!
Optimism at it’s finest.
I didn’t feed him, but he loves me anyway. As he put his paws up on my knee I could feel how cold they are. Soon we’ll get tucked into bed and he’ll warm his toes while he acts as a living hot water bottle to mine. Dogs are a treasure. They’re full of optimism and loyalty and they’ll clean up any crumbs you drop on the floor. What more could you ask for!
That time when the sawmill almost worked… We got 5 boards before it broke again and the snow came.
So my cabin didn’t get built before the snow came. I have come to see that as a blessing in disguise. As much as it would be more comfortable to have the space Chris and I are spending the winter close to friends who can help. Any time something goes wrong they are just across the creek instead of a few miles away. Not everyone gets to cheat like this their first winter living off-grid.
Last June I put together a plan for my cabin and calculated what it would cost. While we got some things set in motion, access to the build site was limited by the rain making a mess of my driveway. My building help had a friend who had fewer limitations and needed a cabin as well. So much of August and September was spent about 50 miles north of Fairbanks working on Zach’s cabin.
The video is about 30 minutes long. Lance recorded chunks of it as they worked. All of his kids were involved at some point; even the 3 year old got to be a gofer. Chris manned the saw. The trailer my dad built was used to haul materials.
This isn’t my cabin, but it might as well be a practice run. It’s nearly the same size and design as what I plan to build. Take time to watch the video and maybe subscribe. I’m sure Lance would love to have more people to share the view from his world. He gets some amazing scenery pics driving the highways of Alaska.
If we’re lucky I’ll get him to make some videos of my cabin build next spring.
It’s currently 4:15am and -11°. This is relevant because I woke up an hour ago when it was only -9° and spent the time debating if I had to pee bad enough to go to the outhouse. This is normal. I’ll debate if I’d rather go now and have to go again at 6am or if I can hold off and make fewer trips. I usually just go out, stretch, and drink water when I come back in to perpetuate the cycle.
So cost/benefit analysis? Absolutely! Here’s another example where some idea from school can actually apply to real life for the common (wo)man. Do I have to go out bad enough to be worth putting on my boots and coat? If it’s above zero that gets easier because I can manage without the coat. If it hasn’t been snowing I might get away with wearing my slippers. Usually there is enough benefit to make me leave my cozy warm blankets.
The dog does the same calculations, though I doubt he’s aware of it. Some mornings he decides he doesn’t have to leave the bed. He’ll get grumpy if we insist. Other days he’ll want to run around and explore everything. This morning was all business. Get up, get out there, get back inside and sit in front of the heater. That’s how I know the cold is real. He got really close to the heater until I finished with my water and got back in bed.
Thanks for reading my 4am meanderings. I hope they have amused you. Now I’m going to bury myself in blankets and hope the frost stays on the walls as the temp goes down.
FB memories recently showed me this post from four years ago. It fit in with a conversation I had with a guest. It was a conversation that I found very upsetting. I have been letting the conversation and my reactions simmer in the back of my mind for a couple of days now, trying to make sense of it all.
It takes nearly an hour to bring people up to Basecamp from town. I have kind of a spiel that I’ve put together to tell guests a bit about history, local animals and plants, local economy and jobs, and the way that life can be different up here in interior Alaska. Each trip is different because of what catches the attention of a given guest. This couple focused on the dry cabin aspect and what that entails.
The husband asked about how much land costs and what restrictions there might be. How do you get started, etc. I explained some of my journey and why I left a good paying job that made me miserable, and tried to explain some of the things that have made this possible, especially the mindset. The wife told me how I should have done my job back driving bus and at one point very passionately told me that “not everyone can do what you have done! Some people are trapped!”
Some people are trapped. Trapped by circumstances. Trapped by the fact that they have children that they can’t bring themselves to pull out of a school where they are bullied and abused by the other kids. Because if they aren’t in school how will they be properly socialized? Trapped by income limits. Trapped by dysfunctional relationships? Trapped by their own ideas of how the world works and how you should submit to the system, even though it makes you so miserable you don’t want to drag yourself out of bed to do it another day, but you have to because what about the children?
I get it. As the old FB post above hints at I spent a long time feeling trapped. I had no idea how I could do anything different. I saw only the limitations surrounding me. I could not imagine any other way, but I was desperate for something different. My life at that time was doing its best to destroy me, and for a while it came close.
I looked for inspiration in many places. I listened to podcasts to learn about how to create a farm business, how to manage money and create wealth on a normal income. I heard about possibilities outside of the beaten path from people who had found their own version of success that fed their souls instead of destroying them. I dug in and kept trying to figure out what I really want in life. The post above is an early version. Now I summarize it by saying, “I want to live with the seasons and I want to be able to hibernate.” I’m still working out what that means, but I have a feeling that it will shift through the years as I have new experiences. Right now I just want to make enough money to live on and build my cabin. I have options that I never saw before. Life isn’t perfect, but it’s happier than it was 4 years ago.
To answer the idea that people are trapped, I just want to say this: yes, you are in a cage. It is made of expectations and debt, materialism and keeping up with the Joneses. You have been socialized by school to put up with abusive work environments just so you can have a paycheck to keep it all afloat and not disappoint your family and friends. But it is a flimsy cage. The bars are weak and spaced far apart. You can escape any time you choose. It all starts by deciding you want something better. Then you make a plan. You spend a couple of years dismantling your cage and one day you walk away from it. It only ever existed in your mind anyway.
If you look for reasons to not succeed you will always find them. If you look at people who succeeded despite all the reasons they shouldn’t, you will find them as well. Life is never completely comfortable. So you need to decide what kind of discomfort you can put up with in order to find the life you can be comfortable with.
I chose to leave a reliable $60k/yr income and a four bedroom, really nice home so that I can have the chance to live in an RV in the extreme cold, using an outhouse with no roof. The trade-off is that my soul feels free. I am happier than I have been in years, and I feel better day by day. I have a job I can go to without crying the entire commute.
Am I lucky? Maybe. But only because I found new choices and made myself step out and do something different. It was terrifying to buy the plane ticket to come visit Alaska for the first time. It was terrifying to actually purchase my property up here. It was scary to apply to seasonal jobs that paid half of my income rate at Trimet. But once it all started coming together I felt a peace with everything. Only my bank balance regrets leaving Trimet.
I don’t know if that guest realized that her words were like knives, twisting in some old wounds, but after pondering my reactions I came to two conclusions. One, I’m glad for it. I feel like some old pain has drained from me that wouldn’t have without this interaction. And Two, she wants something better in her life but she feels trapped. I tried to explain to her how I got here. I tried to encourage her to take tiny steps and see outside of whatever barriers she thinks are there. I truly believe that people can do whatever they set their minds to. I hope my words set hope in motion for her. In the meantime I hope that the beauty of this place helps heal the wounds in her soul.
Even at 2:30pm this sunset feeds my soul.
I’m happy here. This is not an easy place to live and I know it isn’t for everyone. My greatest hope is that with this blog telling my story I can inspire other people to find what makes them happy and take the steps to improve their lives. If anything I say or share does that for you then let me know. I want to see more people living well.
My dear friend Missi doesn’t celebrate Christmas with things. The reasons are complicated and incomprehensible to some, but simply put she and her family prefer to focus on the reasons behind Christmas instead of the commercialized holiday. She knows that my family does like Christmas. More specifically, I like the lights and the music that put me in a cozy mood. My boys are a little bit cynical about it and put up with me.
With our surroundings and circumstances being so very different this year I was fully prepared to let the season slide by. I left my special ornaments in Oregon. I don’t need to make the generator work extra just for colored lights. There’s no room for a tree in the RV. It’s okay, expected, and perfectly alright for me to do nothing this year.
I was surprised when my dear friend showed up at my door on Friday night with this baby Norfolk Island Pine. They are my favorite plant to pet and I haven’t had one in years. She said she wanted to make sure I had something for the season. Even though she doesn’t celebrate she wanted to make sure I can. (And she says she doesn’t understand why she has been told that Hospitality is one of her spiritual gifts.)
My son immediately dubbed it Plant. Plant will keep Mr Coffee company now that Mr Coffee has been abandoned for the stovetop version. It will be hard to keep Plant alive in the variable environment of the RV, but we’re up for the challenge. We still don’t know how or if we will dress Plant up for the holiday, but this could be fun.
As a side note, we spent all the daylight on Saturday (11am to 3:30pm) rebuilding the stand for the heating oil barrel. The quick and dirty stand that was put together to get us warm was starting to fail. We dismantled it and made a much better one.
The original lasted a month before it started to lean. A crack as fuel was added made replacing this an easy choice. Almost finished. Much stronger, but the light was fading fast. We finished it by headlamp.
Really, it only took about 2 hours of work, but we had to come inside multiple times to warm up our hands and the driver drill. Our tools didn’t like the -13 weather any more than we did. It’s done now and should last us a good long while. I keep saying we, but I have to give all credit to my son. I was just the gofer on this project, as much as that goes against my nature. He can be proud of his work and I’m proud of the man he has become.
You know the memes: a picture of a cabin in the middle of nowhere and the text says, “for a million dollars” or “give up football” or something like that. A lot of people say YES! Others don’t think they can. A few more are emphatically hell NO! Most of them will never try.
I listen to podcasts and recently one covered a guest’s life growing up in North Korea. The host was rightly horrified by the description of the human rights violations and starvation faced by the people, but also by the idea of no running water and the struggle for electricity.
As I drive guests to and from town I talk about local history and the economy and life in the extreme conditions, but what often fascinates them most are stories of my own adventures. I mention how warm it feels at 18° and how strange it was when we got up to 38° for a few hours the other night. Then I casually say it has been as cold as -31° and oh by the way I spent that night without heat. And I wonder… Do they look at me the way that podcast host looked at the woman who grew up in North Korea? Do they pity me for doing this hard, crazy thing? They are all pretty well off to be able to travel and spend the money on the location I work for so maybe the idea of giving up modern comfort and convenience is something they would never consider, let alone do.
Another podcast I listen to uses the term voluntary hardship. It’s a strength training podcast so they literally mean choosing to pick up a heavy thing to gain the ability to bring in the groceries or work in the garden. You choose to do hard things so that everything else is easy by comparison. You gain strength in more than just your body. I haven’t gotten started on the strength training yet (I really need to) but I’ve been applying the concept to other areas in my life, often just as a mindset exercise.
I could have stayed in Oregon. I could have kept that stable job with benefits. I could have stayed in the house with all the modern comforts and conveniences like showers whenever I want. I didn’t have to come to a place where the air hurts my face and I have to go outside in the middle of the night when my bladder wakes me up. I chose this, knowing the shape of the life I was stepping into.
We didn’t have to stay in the RV with no heat on the night it hit -31°. We could have gone across the creek and stayed in the warm cabin. In fact we did that the next night before the Toyo got running in the RV. But staying in the cold proved that we could do it. In our own minds we survived the hard thing and came out the other side a little stronger. Each time something goes wrong we can tackle it with the knowledge that we are strong enough to do what has to be done and when we fix it we gain more confidence in our own ability and experience.
2020 has been hard on everyone. It might be your health or work, finances or need for social connections. There are things to be dealt with to get through this. It cannot stay bad forever. I suggest you embrace the hardship. Tackle it and find a way through that leaves you stronger. Life is there for the living and when you’ve been through a challenge the easy stuff is that much sweeter.
Life without running water, predictable power, and heat is not something that I expect everyone to try. I say it over and over, this really is not for everyone! But that doesn’t mean that only people who deprive themselves can benefit. Everyone can benefit by handling some hardship in their lives. It doesn’t have to break you. Let it make you stronger.
