The Terror and Tedium of Living Like Thoreau | Hacker News Reader

The Terror and Tedium of Living Like Thoreau

theatlantic.com

63 pointsmyth_drannon45 comments

I moved to the Yukon 4 years ago, and have spent many hundreds of nights in my tent around the far reaches of the Yukon and Alaska. [1]

I don't live "in a cabin" during the week, though I have many friends that do so, completely off grid.

The author of this story is searching for a wilderness experience, but not embracing it. Checking wifi almost daily? looking for external stimulus? Avoiding those things is the main reason to move to the North.

If you want to truly live the life, it involves getting your own firewood, growing your own food, hunting your own moose, bison, caribou, catching your own fish, building/working on your own shelter, making your own clothes, etc. You will wuickly find that even 20 hour days are short.

Of course, it's absurd to "live in the North" without staying through a winter - it's by far the most peaceful, beautiful time in the North, and the best time for thinking and reflection. -50F is a magical thing.

[1] Stories and photos from my Northern adventures on http://theroadchoseme.com

You know, there's a lot of praise given to entrepreneurs because they're doing what most people are talking about. Well, you sir are doing what most people are dreaming about.

I'd love to hear about what drove you to the lifestyle you now have. Also, what do you do to feed yourself? How do you derive an income and live off the grid?

I wouldn't say most people dream about it. At least not in the sense that they want to do it.

I'm passionate about living my dreams. When I have a dream, I work hard, and make it happen. I drove Alaska->Argentina over 2 years, and am about to drive around Africa in 2-3 years.

I don't really like "the world" right now. Consumerism, big cities, crowds, iPhones and new cars. I wanted to get away from all of that stuff. I wanted to test myself and learn new things. I wanted to cut my own wood, hunt my own food and learn to survive by my own wits. I also wanted to see exceptionally beautiful places.

On my way back from Alaska I passed through the Yukon and thought it was beautiful. The people are friendly, and there are tons of activities to do. I thought I'd give it a shot, so I did. It's very easy to meet people in the North to teach you stuff like hunting, fishing, building a cabin etc. The first couple of times you do it with people that have done it before, after that you're good to go.

> Also, what do you do to feed yourself? How do you derive an income and live off the grid?

I personally have been working 5 days a week since moving up here, though only because I wanted to save enough money to build my Jeep and drive around Africa. Tons of people up here work 3/4 or 1/2 time (or less). If I wanted to, I could easily earn enough money to "live" by only going to work for 2-3 months a year. The rest of my time would be for activities :)

Putting 1000lbs+ of wild, organic meat in your freezer does a lot to cut down your grocery bill, as does all the salmon, halibut and growing your own vegetables.

Are you worried about bears?

Worried isn't the right word for it. Conscious? yes. Aware? yes.

I always carry a can of bear spray, and when we're hunting we always get a tag for a black and a grizzly so we could shoot one if we had to (thankfully, that's never happened to me).

We've had some encounters for sure - including a large female grizzly stamping her feet and frothing at the mouth at us, but it worked out. One shredded our tent while we were out sheep hunting too :)

It's something to think about, but nothing to worry about. About one person every ~5 years is attacked and killed by a bear up here, so it's much more likely for you to be killed in a car crash or robbery than for me to be attacked by a bear.

The author of this story is searching for a wilderness experience, but not embracing it.

Neither did Thoreau. So in that sense, the title of the article would be accurate.

I found this to be a strangely disjointed, self-conscious piece that struck an uncomfortable chord with me.

I think everyone has a wild savage living somewhere in the back of their head, telling them that they don't belong in modern society, and that life would be so much nicer out in the wilderness.

It's awesome that the author embraced this voice and actually acted on it. At the same time, her writing provides no greater insight than that of a tourist on vacation. She describes a couple cool events and the day-to-day boredom/routine, but she never really commits to the lifestyle of the authors she idolizes. It's as if she knows she's just doing this for a little while so that she can write a meta piece about living in a cabin in Alaska.

Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman - they are literary giants because they truly lived an experience, to the point of cultivating and inscribing beautiful insights about their experiences. Transcendentalism is about living in the moment, being one with nature, feeling every gentle gust and hearing every gurgle and lap of the stream. It's extremely self-conscious, but not in the modern way of - oh shit, I need to think about all of this stuff and write it in a way that other people will like. It is a celebration of the senses without paying lip service to what others might think.

I respect the author for following Emerson's advice to "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string," I just wish she had delved a bit deeper. Hope to see more pieces from her in the future.

re: "Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman - they are literary giants because they truly lived an experience."

There were at one time millions who lived on the frontier all their lives without becoming great writers. Just being more "committed to the lifestyle" seems unlikely to help much with writing. More likely, you have to have some clear goals in mind when undertaking this sort of experiment. Either that, or luck into some good material. (Although often that sort of luck looks a lot like misfortune.)

I would posit that most living on the frontier were workaholics trying to bootstrap a new society into being. They weren't doing much "living in tune with nature"; they were fighting nature tooth-and-nail for resources to survive and, almost as important, trade with.

Living on a frontier with other humans—where you don't have time to listen to a burbling brook, because those other humans have urgent needs—is a very different experience to living isolated, with the rest of nature as the closest thing to a companion.

You could also see it as a refreshingly honest take.

Most people who spend time in the wilderness feel the need to write about how great it was and how much wisdom they think they acquired in the process, because let's face it, if you do it and don't come back with some platitudes in tow then you look like a fool.

This author's "been there, done that, got bitten by mosquitoes, saw a moose one time, that was cool" is perhaps more honest than Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau put together.

It would've been refreshing if she hadn't tried to make it into a large, drawn-out essay and had just said "been there, done that, got bitten by mosquitoes, saw a moose one time, that was cool" rather than opening with an attention-grabbing anecdote of an eagle attack that turned out to be 3 grumpy owls, going off on tangents about running through the wilderness to get away from an ex boyfriend, her spiritual connection with the breeze at the end of her stay when the world seemed to be "alive with so much dance."

It also wouldn't have been that interesting, to me at least.

It is quite "fun" how two people can read the exact same text and get totally opposing views from it.

I actually think this is an absolutely awesome essay exactly BECAUSE she talks about the mundane aspects. It's a fantastic take on peoples insatiable appetite for "longing" or "searching". She chases a romantic picture of solitude as a way to escape or re-shape her existence. And while the experience as a whole might do this, the everyday living will still be filled with mundane tasks.

Having travelled alone for 30 days with a backpack in Myanmar, this just rings so true to me. The experience as a whole I would not be without - but there is a lot of mundane living no matter how you choose to live your life. The only constant is you.

Agreed - that's why I think it's so important to live/travel in solitude occasionally, so that you can learn to live with yourself.

You might like this piece about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail - it expresses a lot of the same themes:

http://priceonomics.com/hiking-the-2650-mile-pacific-crest-t...

Thanks a lot! Never heard of the Pacific Crest Trail - only heard about the The Camino de Santiago. Very interesting...

Speak for yourself WRT wild savages in your head, mate. I'm perfectly comfortable in civilization. It's quite possible to live in solitude surrounded by people. It's all in your head.

Interesting read. Remember that Thoreau actually didn't write Walden in a deep isolated wilderness; rather, he lived in a cabin at the far edge of Concord, MA. There's even an entire section in Walden about receiving visitors, and another one about the trips to town he takes a few times a week. So living totally isolated 7 miles from the nearest town (which she makes sound more like a "highway rest stop" than a "town") goes beyond what Thoreau did.

I point this out because there's solitude, and then there's isolation. In my mind, there's only terror in one of those.

I believe when Thoreau was arrested for not paying his taxes in opposition to the Mexican War he had walked into town to have his shoe fixed. So yes... it's a common misconception he lived out in the middle of nowhere. He really didn't at all. There were many many people at the time much more isolated and solitary than Thoreau... they just didn't generally write books.

I visited Walden Pond a few weeks ago and learned this as well! It even says on the plaque next to the foundations of his cabin that he was less than a 30 minute walk from his parents' house. It made me laugh, because the brief times Thoreau was mentioned in school, it was always done in a way that reinforced the notion that he was living in isolation.

Yup - I actually live in the woods near Concord where Thoreau used to wander (Walden pond is round the corner). It's very nice. Good schools. You can get pizza delivered.

People say "Oh, but surely it's changed a lot since Thoreau's day", but honestly - we're talking about Concord. The town was founded in 1635, it was already 200 years old when Thoreau moved into a hut on his buddy Emerson's land. The Boston and Maine rail line past Walden Pond was already running when Thoreau moved in, for goodness' sake.

That area would have changed a lot, if it weren't for a very active preservation effort. The Walden Woods Project, founded by Don Henley (yes, that Don Henley) prevented multiple large commercial development projects from happening in the 1990s, and has allowed the character to be maintained.

Has the author read Walden? If she had, she might find it incongruous to use cellular internet service and wi-fi during her adventure. She might also recognize that Thoreau was not so short on things to do, partly because he did things. He designed and built his cabin himself, rather than buying one ready-made. Maybe it's the difference between then and now, but if the dream was to live life raw, why not start with raw materials, and without a smartphone? Days don't seem so long when you are struggling to survive rather than to fill them with alarm clocks and books about people you want to emulate, but only sort of.

He also had his mother bringing food by every day or so.

And his sister! They brought him baked goods. Thoreau was no dummy.

And he'd go have dinner at Emerson's, so he could get away from weeding his beans and eyebang Emerson's wife.

> Much of the time, I slept through the three alarms I set each morning, then put a pot of hot water for oatmeal and coffee on the propane stove.

This sentence struck me as odd. I think that the author would do well to connect with her needs as a human, because a regular sleep pattern would do her wonders and is one of the most beautiful things about being able to set your own schedule.

Ever spent time in Alaska in the summer? Getting to sleep at a decent hour can be a real trick unless you're sleeping in a cave. Hell, an entire movie was made with this very problem being a major plot point. http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0278504/

Just saw it last week! It was good - sort of. Very interesting to see Al Pacino as the good guy - mostly. And Robin Williams as a really, really creepy bad guy. I'd never seen him so convincing before.

At first thought there seems to be no substitute for these types of experiences then to just go out there and live the life in the woods.

I once read the short story NatuLife by David Brin where a couple are each their own preferred natural life in seperate VR worlds. Perhaps you could simulate part of these existential experiences of being on your own interfacing with nature and the transcendent with survival games like Stranded Deep, Ark: Survival Evolved or Rust (alone on your own server) combined with an Oculus or streaming Android Google Cardboard based setup right now. Or use your imagination with games like Robinson Crusoe solo (board game) or Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead.

I remember I once build my own OpenSim island and tried to meditate within the landscape (I used a low-FOV Z800 hmd) so a certain kind of immersiveness is possible.

Another article by the same author "The Thoreau of the Suburbs" [February 2015] http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/the...

"Much of the time, that’s all there is: some movement, and some light, and we call it a day."

This absolutely beautiful inspiring clip "Wanderers" comes to mind: https://vimeo.com/108650530

> Finally, one learns that boredom is a disease of civilization. It seems to me that what boredom mostly is is that people have to keep themselves entertained or occupied, because if they aren't, then certain anxieties, frustrations, discontents, and so forth, start coming to the surface, and it makes them uncomfortable. Boredom is almost nonexistent once you've become adapted to life in the woods. If you don't have any work that needs to be done, you can sit for hours at a time just doing nothing, just listening to the birds or the wind or the silence, watching the shadows move as the sun travels, or simply looking at familiar objects. And you don't get bored. You're just at peace.

Ted Kaczynski

Like, I'm sure, many other people, I occasionally think about going off to live in a cabin in the wilderness for a while. It's nice that other people are doing it and writing about it, so I don't have to.

So you don't have to? Does reading about it really satisfy that impulse (if you have it)?

Honestly, yes. It does enough to sweep away my romanticised image and replace it with one containing a realistic share of insects and boredom.

After living in the Yukon for 4 years (see my post above), I have truly come to respect and believe the saying "only boring people get bored".

I have never lived anywhere in my life with so many varied and exciting things to do on any day. I often feel anxious trying to decide between all the amazing options available to me in the Yukon&Alaska. It's such a common thing people up here call it "FoMo" (Fear of Missing out).

Depending on the season, I could be hiking, camping, boating, mountain biking, hunting, fishing, paddling around iceburgs, watching bears, watching whales, hiking on glaciers, hiking up mountains, backcountry snowboarding, snowshoeing, cross country skiing, snow mobiling hundreds of miles into the wilderness chasing bison at -40, etc. Of course I might just decide to read a book by the fire too.

In every one of those activities, it's exceedingly rare to see other people. If we're out more than a couple of days, we don't even see signs of people - i.e. no fire rings, no roads, no nothing.

Move to the North, give it 12 months - if you love it, you'll never leave. If you decide to leave, you won't have lost anything, and you'll have a head full of unique memories.

> Depending on the season, I could be hiking, camping, boating, mountain biking, hunting, fishing, paddling around iceburgs, watching bears, watching whales, hiking on glaciers, hiking up mountains, backcountry snowboarding, snowshoeing, cross country skiing, snow mobiling hundreds of miles into the wilderness chasing bison at -40, etc. Of course I might just decide to read a book by the fire too.

Where does earning enough money to survive come into it?

I think you missed the point. Money would be the last thing you needed to survive there.

Snowboards, kayaks, boats, snowmobiles, guns, snowshoes... none of those are cheap.

Here's what actually happens if you move north for 12 months: you go to work at a job.

Although you could set yourself up pretty well with second-hand stuff for a month's rent in San Francisco.

> Snowboards, kayaks, boats, snowmobiles, guns, snowshoes... none of those are cheap.

I bought everything used, and I rent/borrow the snowmobiles and quads because my $400 Subaru won't pull them, and they're too expensive for me. Also keep in mind you only need one of each of those things, drop the plural, we're not interested in consuming for the sake of it.

I would guess I spent around $5000 on gear for my "Northern Life", and I actually just sold all of it for basically the same prices I paid.

> Here's what actually happens if you move north for 12 months: you go to work at a job.

If you want to keep consuming and living your "Southern" life, then yes, you're right.

Or, you live the Northern way, as follows:

Borrow a chainsaw and trailer off a friend for a case of beer, and put in a few hard weekends getting your own firewood. Cost of heating for the year = $0.

Borrow, or buy ONE used rifle, spend a week hunting and get yourself 500lbs+ of local, organic meat. Cost of bought meat per year = $0.

For a few hundred bucks throw a couple of solar panels on your roof connected to some old car batteries. Get rid of your TV, and pay almost nothing for electricity for the year.

Get some fishing gear for $75 and hit Alaksa whenever the salmon are running to put away tens of pounds of salmon.

Grow a bunch of vegetables yourself.

etc. etc.

You can rent a nice cabin up here for ~$500/mo, and (for example) registering a car is $35/year, and my insurance is $325/year, so you save a ton of money there. Drive something with good mileage, distances are big up here.

As you can see, pretty quickly your expenses are very, very low, meaning it's quite possible to hardly go to work at all.

I've been going to work 5 days a week since living in the Yukon, but only because I wanted to save enough money to build my Jeep and drive around Africa for 2-3 years.

Many people up here work 3/4 time or 1/2 time. Lots just work for something like 6 months, then take 6-12months off.

>Where does earning enough money to survive come into it?

Given that I hunt my own food and grow vegetables, I can easily earn enough to "survive" by working a couple of months a year, not more.

So she swapped a good standard of living for a poor, isolated one and was surprised it wasn't usually a good time?

I think the problem was that it appears she was just drifting, with no real purpose whatsoever. She didn't commit to the idea of making a life in the wilderness for the long term - otherwise she'd be more than busy enough splitting firewood and putting up food to get through the winter. Nor did she have any real project to work at that would benefit from the solitude and isolation, no novel to write, no trunk of great books to read deeply and digest, no hard software problem to hack away at. It sounds like she was just kind of there, and then she went back. A brief, rather pointless interlude.

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