Why Home to the Wild?

 

What would make a person want to leave the comforts and conveniences of modern life to live in a place without what we consider the basic necessities of life?  Who would want to live without conveniences like running water, electricity, grocery stores, TV, a bathroom and a car? 

  How can one explain the deep quiet of the northern forest wrapped in snow?  Or the incredible sharpness of everything as the sun is slanting across that same landscape at 25  degrees below zero. Where every twig and needle is on fire from the light and you hardly want to breathe for the beauty, that almost defies reality.

 Could it be the draw of a life, away from the overwhelming complexity that our modern society heaps on us?  Maybe there is a longing deep inside some of us for a life where things are clearer where life is more stark... more real.

Maybe the virtual reality that we have created for ourselves is not real enough for some of us. Maybe we need to touch the earth, to feel and hear the wood burning that heats our homes, to grow and harvest the food that feeds us. Maybe some of us need to shape the dwelling that protects us.

Maybe it's not enough for some to just park in a building somebody else built, maybe some need to know and to understand, maybe some need to feel the biting cold and the warm rush of air as we come in from that cold.  Maybe the tepidity of our modern, climate controlled, comfort ensured lives is just more mediocrity then some can take! 

 Maybe some need to feel the extremes, to touch the sky, to really live! 

 These are the ideas and thoughts that swirl through my mind as I try and figure out why I have always been drawn to the wilderness. Why it has been such a reoccurring theme throughout my life.   This desire to live in the wilderness, through all the years and miles, has never gone away.  The desire to live away from the modern conveniences surrounded by the ruggedness and hardships of the wilderness have only deepened with time. 

 How is it that one can find peace and security in an environment that most view with at least some level of mistrust and fear?

 I will document here our family’s  move from where we are, to a life in the wilderness.  Where, at the age of 14 or 15, I knew I wanted to live.  

 How has it taken 30 years to come to this place? How will we make it happen? 

 I hope this story can help those who want to simplify or to live in the wilderness to begin their own journey.  To give them courage to swim against the current of modern societal norms.  I hope this story will not only provide those who have no desire to live that life an interesting story but, a deeper understanding of those who do want to live in the wilderness.

So how do you go about moving to the wilderness, is it really a place you would want to take your family and what does it take to make the change?

 Stick with me for a while hopefully as this story unfolds we will all learn the answers to these questions!