I was flipping through the workbook we used back when we had our little Mastermind group and I came across one exercise I had done in it. You were supposed to list your deepest urges and afterwards see if you could identify certain themes. Could some of them be grouped under a single theme, or were they quite separate? I don’t think I recognized it at the time, but what really jumped out at me when I saw it the other night was that it’s all one theme. All of my deepest urges concern occupying a particular spot on this earth and participating fully with that spot. That’s it. That’s all I really want.  A place of my own, preferably a place with some biodiversity. A place to sink down long roots. A place to get to know with great intimacy. A place that could support me—where I could raise and grow and gather all my food. A place that nurtured my soul as well. A place where I could participate in the rhythms of nature, and the seasons. A single spot on earth that I could merge with, become one with. That’s been my deepest urge and my deepest need. That’s how I can be the fullest embodiment of who I’m  meant to be.

I saw a neat plan on the Internet last night for a non-powered refrigerator. It just uses a copper coil full of refrigerant and a bunch of radiator fins placed outdoors to freeze solid a huge chunk of ice each autumn. The chunk stays frozen (or mostly so) all through the year until the next autumn when you freeze it again. More and more I’m leaning towards going not just off-the-grid, but even totally without electricity of any kind. I could have a masonry stove, wood cookstove with hot water reservoir, solar hot water, a non-electric fridge, candles, lanterns, a root cellar and other forms of cold storage, and lots of hand tools. If it was all paid for as I went and I truly could be self-sufficient I could get away with having no phone or internet. Those are the only two things I might still need if I weren’t self-sufficient and I still needed to earn some money. Of course, I’ll always need to earn enough to cover property taxes, but I could probably do that without having phone or internet.

It’d be nice to find an inexpensive piece of land and build a small strawbale cabin. I’d have a composting toilet and maybe an indoor hand pump and an outdoor one. And a gray water system from the sink, tub, and wash tub. No wiring, no septic system, no major plumbing to do.