Perhaps my favorite book in this crop is "Up Tunket Road: The Education of a Modern Homesteader," in which Philip Ackerman-Leist writes about homesteading, using his experience in Vermont as an example. Ackerman-Leist challenges conventional notions of homesteading (owning one's own land, self-reliance, independence). Those days are gone, he writes. Today, you can homestead anywhere (a student of his has founded the "back to the yard" movement), not only in rural settings, and the key to successful homesteading is interdependence, not independence. It is no longer possible to fully retreat from society. "Homesteading is an act of defiance and of reliance: defiance of cultural norms and habits and reliance on self and local community." It is, he writes, "much less about location than it is about intent." "Up Tunket Road" raises the issue of mentors, literary and practical. Ackerman-Leist cites Thoreau, Helen and Scott Nearing and others who have written about the experience. (Thoreauvians try not to disturb the land; followers of the Nearings bring "shelter, order, and a whir of activity to a place.") He writes with great reverence about a local farmer-gardener who gave Ackerman-Leist time, tips and help. "Up Tunket Road" takes us through the choices the author and his wife made about their lifestyle: how to create light, how to bathe, how to eat. Homesteading brings you "face to face with ecological choices," forcing the homesteader to confront, to realize the effect we have on our environment. The book also contains an excellent reading list for people dreaming of a different American Dream.
Book reviews: Going 'off the grid' — what it means and what it takes and why
Eight books about moving away from the city and living without power, running water, cars and in some cases, companionship.
"Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid & Beyond the American Dream" is the story of how author William Powers built himself a new framework, a new way to think about his life and how he wanted to live it. The beauty of the book lies in Powers' generous intimacy — we watch him rethink his entire approach; we watch him relax into himself, become himself, carve himself out of a dream that was not his own. Like the other books, "Twelve by Twelve" makes a huge bow to Thoreau, but it is a far more spiritual, even naïve book (in the most gentle meaning of the word) than the others.
Powers' living mentor is 60-year-old Jackie Benton, a doctor who chose to earn only $11,000 a year so that she would not have to pay taxes. Benton lent Powers, a 36-year-old international aid worker on leave at home in the U.S., her 12-foot-by-12-foot cabin in North Carolina. "My time in the 12 x 12 was like an internship with Thoreau," he writes. Powers reconnects with the earth. His literary mentors also include Aldo Leopold, John James Audubon, Loren Eiseley, John Muir and Edward Abbey. During his months in the cabin, Powers learns how to live without things he thought he needed — electricity, a car, companionship, running water. Here are the things he finds one does need to be happy: positive emotion, engagement in the moment, and a sense of meaning and purpose.
In case you might be planning to go off grid in a rural setting, in "The Last Empty Places: A Past and Present Journey Through the Blank Spots on the American Map," author Peter Stark chooses four parts of the country: Northern Maine, Pennsylvania, Oregon and New Mexico, that still contain vast stretches of uninhabited wilderness — those blank spots on the map. It's true that just knowing these places exist is uplifting. "Creation is enormous and infinitely complex," he writes. "Man is only the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest part of all Creation. And you — yes, you — are even tinier than that. That's what blank spots tell us."
"Welcome to Utopia: Notes From a Small Town" is an intimate look at a town, really called Utopia, (population: 1,000) in Texas that has survived quite nicely, until recently, off the cultural grid. Karen Valby's editor at Entertainment Weekly asked her, in 2006, to find a town untouched by pop culture. What began as an assignment ended as a life-changing, mind-opening event for the New York writer, who lived on and off for two years in the town. She learned about roots; about what it means to live with generations tied to a piece of land, about what it means to live apart from commercial culture, to feel suffocated at times by your community.
