Off-Grid

Meditations on five weeks living in the woods

For the first time in over two decades I’m living off-grid. This time, things are quite different: it’s 2025. I’m entering my fifth decade of life. I have a family - I am a caregiver not only to myself but to my partner and child

It has been a welcome break to get back to the basics of life and see acutely, three meals a day and several toilet breaks, how the invisible infrastructure of power, water, sewage, internet and other utilities allow us to move through the world in a certain way, at a certain pace, and with a certain set of expectations, pressures, worries and conveniences. When none of this infrastructure is there, every quotidian part of life becomes difficult, a series of many choices, or none at all. This could be washing my hands, boiling a pot of tea or dealing with a basket of peed-on sheets and heavily soiled four year old summer camp clothes. Do we have water. Is it nearby? Is the little pump charged up or do I need to pour it? Should I heat it on the gas camp range or on the fire. Is the fire even still going right now? And are we out of gas?

Every drop of water, every joule of energy used to heat or cook, has to either be brought in, generated from the mountains of dead wood, or captured from the rain / clouds / or from a generous neighbor’s well.

Devices - I use them a lot less, both my phone and especially my laptop. The phone is still out and charged up to coordinate arrivals from visiting friends, read notes from teachers, and to stay on top of all the obligations / projects coming up in the fall. My laptop, however, has only been out a handful of times to write and do some light music mixing and mastering. It is physically and psychologically far more difficult than I had imagined to want to sit down in the middle of the forest and write, when there is so much to see, observe, when I have so much rest to catch up on and at the same time and surrounded by an ocean of huckleberry bushes which appear to grow a foot taller by the week.

I didn’t have my saxophone the first two weeks and regretted it. Then I brought it up and haven’t pulled it out nearly as much as I’d like. Sometimes it’s not wanting to expose it to the damp clouds that blow through the forest, or the salty air off the ocean. Other times my hands and fingers and arms are just too wiped out from the necessary manual labor of cutting wood, hauling water, and clearing massive amounts of brush and dead trees that have accumulated here since the forest was clear cut around 1960.

When I do play it, its resonance is unique, magical. The forest - a mix of redwood, fir, pine, tan oak, madrone and manzanita - resonates and amplifies the sound up high like nowhere I’ve been. And the breeze, which rolls in strong from all directions up here at all times of day, carries the sounds unpredictable through the trees with an extra lift.

It has been wonderful to receive visitors - a couple and their six year old, a friend and their dog. A very outdoorsy and industrious couple who helped us clear trails, campsites, and build out a camp kitchen with recycled pallets and all the random screws in my toolbox.

We might do a little trail work, go into town and get pizza, cook a meal over the fire or tortillas on the comal, make s’mores after dinner when it gets dark. Put the kids to bed and stay up late around the campfire talking and catching up on life. It is rare to get to enjoy these quiet, extended hang-outs with dear friends in a quiet, beautiful place.

Wishing you peace and wonder.