The Adventure Continues - Settling In

It is done.

We did it.

We pulled it off.

This thing that we've dreamed about ... this thing we've sought … this thing that we have tenaciously worked toward … has become a reality! We are, as of this blog post, full-time at The Cabin On Huckleberry Hill!

It is really a good feeling. There's nothing fleeting or superficial about the feeling. It is one of those feelings that reaches clean down into the marrow in our bones. There is a bit of bitterness mixed into the sweetness. There has to be. It is, compared to the sweetness, just a small bit of bitterness.

It is hard to live in a spot as long as we lived on the lane and not develop some fondness's for a place. It is hard to not set some roots. There is a comfortable familiarity that develops with a place over time.

There are people too.

Familiar faces. Neighbors. A few that you develop some level of relational closeness to. Most of them you simply see and recognize as part of the surrounding social fabric and the familiarity stops at that point of awareness. This is, after all, life in the busy 21^st Century where closeness in a community isn't what it was fifty years ago. There are also the familiar people that you do business with on a regular basis. You get to know a lot of their names over time. They get to know yours. Last names may never be known. That's ok. People have names. Faces have names. We have names.

We've had more than names.

We've had a living presence among other living presences and the likelihood of ever seeing the vast majority of the aforementioned again, or them seeing us, is slim to none. We have moved on in pursuit of our interests, and our own better well-being, in a fashion that would not have been possible had we continued where we were.

Our leaving, where certain of our neighbors are concerned, has left an open hole. Change in the neighborhood, though the extent of the change is yet to be fully comprehended, has occurred. Change that affects them. Change that none of them had an iota of control over. Change that the vast majority knew nothing about until they began to observe our obvious moving activity.

No one wants things to change. No one wants their familiarities upset. Change in a neighborhood, especially for those of clannish longstanding in a neighborhood, is hard to accept. Who, after all, is coming in to fill the vacancy … fill the hole … left by our leaving?

Living life is necessarily replete with dynamics. What we do … how we do … when we do … will always have an effect on others. Positively or negatively.

There are things that none of us have any control over and time will answer the question of who will occupy that little spot of earth in that neighborhood. It is not for us to choose. It is not for anyone in the neighborhood to choose. Folks will simply have to adjust to whatever, or whomever, change may bring into the neighborhood now that we have moved and are no longer part of it.

I have always admired Scott and Helen Nearing.

Mother Earth News introduced a lot of people to Scott and Helen back in the early days of the magazine. The magazine was my introduction to them. 

Scott and Helen were two pioneers in the modern self-reliance movement that knew who they were and did what they had to do to remain true to themselves. They looked at the world's systems, saw them for what they were then and still are today, and went about their lives in a way that brought themselves satisfaction even if it flew in the faces of the systems managers.

“Civilization,” said Mark Twain, “is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries.” A market economy seeks by ballyhoo to bamboozle consumers into buying things they neither need nor want, thus compelling them to sell their labor power as a means of paying for their purchases. Since our aim was liberation from the exploitation accompanying the sale of labor power, we were as wary of market lures as a wise mouse is wary of other traps. Helen Nearing

I think the mice aren't as smart as they used to be. The cage built by the systems managers is crammed full of mice that, at this point in their dependency upon the systems, don't even realize they are caged.

The two of us?

Now our adventure continues.

The hard work of getting here is behind us. Our task now is to settle into this mode of living … this lifestyle of simplicity and self-reliance that we have chosen.

It Can Be Done

The past year and a half has been …

Interesting?

It has definitely been a project! It has been an interesting project.

The project, in some ways, is about complete. It is, in other ways, ongoing. In a matter of just a few short days we will be done here and pull out the lane for the last time. There is, though we have exercised a lot of forethought and care in getting things set up at the cabin, quite a lot yet to do at that end of the move. That's the ongoing part of the deal. The goal, in a project like this, is not the Finish Line.

None of the ongoing part is arduous. The arduous, if any of it can be called that, is behind us. The most arduous, I think, has been the many back and forth trips that involved a three hour chunk of time each time a trip has been made. At least one a week. Sometimes twice a week. Then, after the weekly once or twice, we'd go for the weekend to relax some and to work some. Relaxing work. We've always come back from those weekends feeling rested.

The number of trips that it has taken could have been greatly reduced had we moved things in bigger loads. We chose not to travel that bigger load road. Small logical loads instead. Slow and steady one logical and orderly step at a time. Things, this way, have been kept as manageable as possible without becoming overwhelmed. It would have been easy to get the cart ahead of the ox. Fortunately, the ox has stayed in front of the cart from the git-go.

Prioritizing and managing the logistics has been a bit challenging. The worst part of the whole deal, I think anyway, has been the issue of having our personal belongings … even drastically downsized as our belongings now are ... stored or stashed in three places in two counties. Simple things, like looking for a ball of string yesterday to tie up a bundle of Goldenrod … then finally realizing that it, and a good number of other convenient commodities, are in those totes in the cabin loft … can be a little aggravating.

We have previously mentioned that we would not recommend a project like this to the uninitiated.

That should not, however, be taken as something prohibitive. It certainly isn't intended to be anything more or less than a Caution Sign. Both eyes need to be open.

The simple truth of the matter is that it can be done!

Shirli and I … and The Cabin On Huckleberry Hill … are proof that it can be done. It can even be done after the sixty year age marker!

We are not the Original Model. There are a lot of models. There's honestly nothing original about what we are doing. It's been done before by a lot of people in a lot of places at a lot of different times. Not by anyone in our neighborhood, in our families, or by any of our close associates that we know of. We'll admit our uniqueness where these people-groups are concerned. We have simply followed the lead of other models and found a way to tailor the deed to our needs.

What was it Farragut was supposed to have said when he sailed into Mobile Bay … Damn the torpedos!

The next logical step, after we accomplish what we need to accomplish this weekend, is to build a proper set of steps.