Things they don’t teach you in art school

This is as far as the Eco-Warrior can go. From here, it's on foot with a flashlight.

I learned a new word this week: dépaysement, which is that sense of disorientation one has on arriving in a strange place. It’s the perfect description of my initial shock at living in this cabin. As I’ve developed routines and some sense of familiarity, it’s gotten easier.

My bathtub, which I shared with a chorus of indignant bullfrogs.

I just finished my last night alone here. (I’m returning for one night at the end of my workshop, but I will have Sandy with me.) In the end, the things that I expected to bother me didn’t, and some things I never thought of at all proved very irritating. For example, I hate washing dishes without copious hot running water, but yesterday I succeeded at taking a sponge bath with a quart of cold water. 

This is a stovetop oven; it's a neat little device that replaces the toaster oven or microwave in the on-the-grid kitchen. Working in the dark is a fact of off-the grid living. 

Being alone doesn’t bother me but walking alone up a dark path at night makes me very jumpy. I read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood at an impressionable age and can never quite shake my fear of two-legged predators in the silent countryside. Last week, my sleep was interrupted by a serenading coyote who was close enough that I could hear the thrum of his vocal cords. I decided to discourage him by sprinkling human urine in a large circle around my cabin. He hasn’t been back.

There are, of course, many consolations, including the incredible beauty of the landscape.

I would not describe myself as a girly-girl, but three weeks without the luxuries of 21^st century grooming have left me feeling pretty disreputable. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to neatly shave one’s legs without running water. And walking in sandals on dirt paths grinds one’s pedicure away in no time.

Beans and eggs to the right, boiling drinking water to the left. It's a propane stove hooked up to a standard gas grill tank. Without it, life would have been unbearable.

The fifteen bucks I spent on my portable toilet seat turned out to be my best investment. It is neater than using an outhouse, as long as one is diligent at burying waste, and the mosquitoes aren’t too bad if you go out to do that at first light.

My biggest difficulty has been in drinking enough water. I either need to boil it or carry it in, and I never seem to have enough time for the former or enough memory for the latter.

The off-the-grid coffee grinder. Really.

The darkness here is a force that presses against one’s consciousness, particularly in the deep woods. I love the beauty of the night sky, and the darkness feels friendly to me, but for many people, that much darkness is a problem. In winter in Maine, the sun sets in mid-afternoon. Then darkness will be an ever-present friend. In fact, for all the reasons that camping is more difficult in winter, living off the grid will be more difficult then, too.

The off-the-grid shoe-drying rack.

I have long been fascinated with the Tiny House movement, perhaps because I feel I’m saddled with too much house and too much stuff for this phase in our life. I find myself constantly bumping up against the lack of workspace in this 12X16 cabin. Put two people in here and it would be impossibly claustrophobic. Perhaps the people who thrive in Tiny Houses have no avocations except living in Tiny Houses, for my studio and my husband’s guitars alone would fill one up.

I think I could live like this if I had to, but having no sense of moral imperative to do so, I’ll be very happy to return to the interconnectedness of on-the-grid living.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME starts today! Message me if you want information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

Do you know the Night Soil Man?

My neighbor clearing a fence at 6 AM, before the bugs came out.

In Leisure: the Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper posited that leisure is the foundation of culture and that our bourgeois world has stamped out leisure, Pieper wrote this before the construction of the welfare state. If he’d lived to see it, he might have posited a corollary: the West now concentrates leisure in the least-educated classes, and our movies and music reflect that, with their emphasis on violence and misogyny and peculiar fascination with Kim Kardashian.

That's a well. And a bucket. You know the drill.

As an intellectual in the German Empire, Pieper presumably had servants to do his grunt work. Being off the grid makes me wonder who in pre-Industrial society had any time to do anything but work. Of course, I am trying to marry my 21^st century work with an 18^th century existence, which in some ways means I’m doubling my work load. But having said that, I’m able to take certain shortcuts, such as going to the Laundromat instead of pounding my clothes on a rock.

The Eco-Warrior can't come up the lane any farther than this. Her poor suspension is meant for city streets, not off-roading.

 On the other hand, I also live with 21^st century expectations, such as wanting clean linen and hair. And there are no longer systems for living without electricity and city water; for example, we no longer have night-soil men, which means my first job in the morning is to bury the waste from my improvised chamber pot.

Any camper knows the night-soil solution. Best done before one actually wakes up.

At home, I’m a pretty organized person. Here, I’m watching all my systems fall apart, starting with making my bed. It is obvious that integration of domestic work in a non-industrial setting means that if one job doesn’t get done, everyone suffers. Without refrigeration, if you don’t make dinner, you go hungry. If you don’t wash clothes, you’re filthy. There are no deep pantries or walk-in closets here in the woods. Just mosquitoes. The pejorative terms “slattern” or “layabout” have real meaning in a world where work equals survival.

There are definitely consolations. Being alone in Paradise is one of them.

I am not afraid of the dark, nor am I worried about being alone in the woods. I do, however, perceive darkness differently from this vantage point of aloneness. Having not had the foresight to bring a musical instrument, I find myself going to bed early and reading, and then getting up with the birds at about 5 AM.

No electricity and a ladder to my loft means an 8 o'clock bedtime and getting up before 5.

Having spent Saturday morning painting re-enactors, I was able to peek behind the curtain of their performance. On Sunday evening, they went home and took hot showers, and went back to their day jobs. I wonder what they would feel about their existence if their encampments lasted an entire summer, and if there weren’t a lovely, clean restroom at the Visitor Center.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

Off the grid in midcoast Maine

Lichens on the well head at my new home. One lowers the bucket to get water. How cool is that?

I arrived at my temporary home in mid-coast Maine at mid-day yesterday. Despite ample warning to charge my toys, I managed to run my cell phone, my laptop, and my Kindle down to nothing, which is why this post is late.

I’m staying in a 12X16 cabin owned by dedicated off-the-gridders. It’s set back in the woods, and it has a living area, windows with screens, a dry sink, a wood stove, a propane stove and a sleeping loft. I have a plastic bucket for my human waste, and any other garbage must be packed out, which is a strong impetus to not buy lots of packaged goods.

My beautiful bike, waiting for me to use it while teaching in Belfast.

As a city dweller, I notice first that it’s shockingly quiet and shockingly dark at night. But the beauty of modern America is that even in the deep woods, we have 4G, so I was able to check Facebook before going to sleep.

The amenities I find primitive would have been considered luxurious by our pioneer ancestors, desperate to get a roof over their heads before winter. They would be considered luxurious by the standards of many of the world’s poor.

The powder room.

I plan to reflect a bit on this during the weeks I’m here, but that will have to wait a bit. I leave tomorrow for Castine, ME, where I’m participating in Castine Plein Air. I’ll be staying with a friend who not only has hot water, she has a guest room with a bath. Whoo hoo!

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

Back of beyond

Like it or not, we're all in this web together. This particular web was at Wahconah Falls in the Berkshires, where I plan to stop to paint on my way to Maine in two weeks.

Non-New Yorkers always seem skeptical when we tell them there are vast tracts of our state that are uninhabited. Hamilton County, for example, sprawls over more than 1800 square miles of land, but its population is fewer than 5,000. That gives it a population density equal to North Dakota.

Since I leave—shortly—for the duration of the summer, I took a short trip this past weekend. I’ll be off-grid for much of the time I’m in Maine. I needed a better sense of what was negotiable with these old bones and what I can’t live without. I haven’t done any back-of-beyond camping in more than a decade.

My 2005 Prius--which went over 200,000 miles on Friday--has a perfect smartphone holder in the door. Amazing, since there were no smartphones when it was built.

Yes, I can still sleep in a tent and get up the next morning and be (relatively) limber, providing I have some kind of air mattress. Yes, it’s still a lot of work to camp, what with pitching a tent, hauling water and food and rolling and rerolling bedding. And although I used to like to cook over a campfire, I find it a pain these days.

Since I almost never paint from photos anyway, there is a declining advantage in hauling around my Panasonic DMC-LX5. If I'm just testing viewpoints for a painting--as here--I might as well use my pocket-sized computing device, a/k/a 'phone'.

What has changed since I last went back of beyond is the nation’s cell phone network. I was on the top of a hill with no running water, no electricity, no septic, no artificial lighting of any kind—and an absolutely stellar 4G signal.

I’m thinking that will change how I interact with you while I’m on the road. Daily blogging without wi-fi or electricity may be difficult (although there are open wi-fi networks everywhere) but Instagram and Facebook are available everywhere. Does that mean my camera, with its beautiful, fast Leica lens, is obsolete in favor of my cell phone? Perhaps.

Of course, going off-the-grid with a party of youngsters is a little different from going with a party of painters. Mainly, the toys are noisier. (What we have here is a convoy.)

I have two openings left for my 2014 workshop in Belfast, ME. Information is available here.