Hacker News Reader

Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

If anyone is interested in this way of life, I suggest moving North. It's extremely beautiful and there are way less people.

I moved to the Yukon 4 years ago, and a massive number of people live in this way. I.e. work less, own less, have way more time and live how you want. Hunt, fish, grow your own food, chop your own wood, and you can live a great life only working 20-50% time.

Also there are hardly any rules up here, and they're very weakly enforced, so you can more or less do whatever you want and "the world" will leave you alone about it.

If you go to Alaska, stay out of the big cities. They're just the same as the ones down south, but with more drugs. The small communities have all the cool people.

Photos and stories from my Yukon/Alaska adventures are at http://theroadchoseme.com

View on HN

How is the summer mosquito situation?

Sometimes there are almost none, sometimes they are plague proportions. When they're really bad you just wear long sleeves/pants and a head net and it's totally fine.

It's a bit like the cold (i.e. past -40 C/F) , you get used to it, and it pales in comparison to the beauty you are enjoying.

Aw, I'm so jealous of the amount of grand nature in North America.

It seems out of the question for me on a EU passport to live long term in Canada. You're lucky!

I'm Australian, and have gone through ~7 years of paperwork to become an Canadian Permanent Resident. I have another ~5 years for citizenship, which I'm working towards because Canada really is that awesome :)

I'm sure there are places equally as stunning in the Northern European countries.

Doesn't Australia have its own vast remote wilderness? Or is freezing cold preferable to scorching hot?

> Or is freezing cold preferable to scorching hot?

I think so. It seems much easier to build things to handle the cold vs handle the heat.

You really just need fuel and insulation (for you and the house), and you can be quite comfortable.

Scorching heat though - there's really not a whole lot you can do except find shade and not move.

There are solar powered solutions for air conditioning.

But then you are stuck in a house. In cold climates people hunt, fish, etc even when it's cold (although not during storms).

Based on my (limited) experience in hot parts of the world people manage this by breaking their day up into two and take a long nap in the middle of the day.

It does, though I've fallen in love with the mountains.

Surely New Zealand is an easier hop for those things?

What makes you think I want easy?

The harder something is, the more rewarding it is.

Also Canada has reliably much better snow, and way, way more wilderness.

The harder something is, the more rewarding it is.

It would definitely be harder to tour Africa in an old, beat-up Honda Civic than in a jeep, and it would be even harder to tour all of Africa without a vehicle, or without supplies entirely, blindfolded, and with your hands tied behind your back.

Absolutely. So what I'm doing in my life is walking the line between easy and hard, in such a way as to keep it challenging and interesting, while not making it downright painful and so difficult that I won't enjoy it. Everyone has their own personal line to walk.

I'm driving a nice Jeep, which for me, is as challenging as I personally can handle, without it being painful and not enjoyable. At the end of the day I'm doing this for enjoyment, not for punishment.

People tougher than me ride motorbikes.

People tougher than that ride bicycles.

People tougher than that walk (yes, it's been done).

etc. etc.

There will always be someone doing something more daring than me, but I'm not interested in what other people are doing, I'm finding my own personal balance / limit of difficult yet enjoyable.

I think instead of framing it as a continuum between easy and tough with a strict correlating reward factor, it makes more sense to frame it in terms of the types of challenges you enjoy versus the types you simply don't.

The rewards that come from challenges and difficulty are not often correlated with the amount or intensity of the difficulty, and even when they are, they are often inversely correlated. You need to take into account the type of difficulty (e.g. mastering a musical instrument vs enduring an abusive parent) and the predilections of the person trying to overcome the difficulty (e.g. many people who enjoy difficult challenges may not enjoy the challenge of living in a freezing climate). The challenges that you enjoy are what make you an interesting person, and so the simple statement that “the harder something is, the more rewarding it is” is not only completely false on its face, but it tells us nothing about you other than the possibility that you might be a masochist.

So one might say that they think that New Zealand provides the benefits with less of the challenges, but you could say back to them that the types of challenges that New Zealand lessens are for the most part the exact kind of challenges that you enjoy. An answer like that would better help people understand where you're coming from, which is good because you seem like a genuinely interesting person.

Thanks. I guess that's what I was trying to say, I'm just not as eloquent as you.

High five! I've just done the same and just passed the citizenship test. Canada is awesome.

Arg. I knew the rules were changing, and I thought they were changing on the 1st of July, so I got my application in a week before that... it turns out they changed the day before my application was "accepted", so it was denied, and I must live in Canada for another 2 full years before I even qualify to apply.

Normally that wouldn't be so bad, but I've just set off on two years around Africa, which means it's going to be a long, long time before I have 5 continuous years in Canada. Oh well, at least I can remain a permanent resident essentially forever.

Uggh I know exactly what you mean - I happened to see folks mentioning the rule change on the Canada visa forum and scrambled my application together just in time, and it was AoR the day before the change.

That really sucks man!

Why was Tasmania not an option? Lots of remote areas to hide away.

The northern part of the Scandinavian peninsula has some similarities to northern Canada, if you're looking for that but with an EU passport. Not as gigantic as the continent-sized Canadian north (only Russian Siberia competes there), but still pretty large and mostly empty. The "everyman's right" also makes it legal to travel/camp/forage essentially anywhere in the countryside, including on private land [1], as long as you avoid active farms and the immediate vicinity of people's houses.

[1] http://www.ym.fi/en-US/Latest_news/Publications/Brochures/Ev...

Where in Yukon are you living ? I presume not in Whitehorse.

I have actually been living and working in Whitehorse for the last 4 years, as I wanted to save enough money to do something big again (going for 2+ years around Africa in my Jeep).

While Whitehorse is a city, I have world-class mountain biking from my backyard, and 20 minutes from town in any direction I have no cell reception and rarely see other people on the weekends. 3 hours from town we can be hundreds of kilometers from the nearest person.

I'm pretty familiar with Whitehorse.

Whitehorse can be a pretty magical place -- my old friends up there got me into paragliding (Sean Kitchen still up there ?), and I got to practice my fly fishing up there for lake trout, or head to Haines for the salmon run (I was always skunked, nearly always had a good time anyway), and good hiking and beautiful terrain around Haines or pass to Skagway...

I just assumed by your description you would be somewhere else, and it piqued my curiousity. Enjoy Whitehorse, good luck with your African trip!

How do you manage the winters?

Lots of music and house parties. Life is pretty social up there.

Actually, winter is by far the most beautiful time in the North. Everything is frozen and extremely peaceful. Also Whitehorse has on average more sunny days per year than anywhere else in Canada, so often in winter it's -30something C and perfectly sunny. Gloves, a toque and a good jacket, and you're good for hours outside.

Winter is also the best time to get around, because all the rivers and lakes are frozen, meaning you can go places where there are no roads (and there are very few roads - I've driven them all). So you quickly get into snowshoeing, cross country skiing, downhill/backcountry skiing/snowboarding, ice fishing, snow mobiling, etc. etc.

The days are short, so you do whichever of those in the dark you have to. Snowshoeing at 4pm in -35C crunchy snow looking at the bright stars/northern lights is a magical thing [1].

Basically, you get outside and do stuff. If you don't like winter, you'll likely leave, which is another amazing thing about the North - everyone that lives there loves it.

[1] My latest attempts at Northern Lights Photography http://theroadchoseme.com/northern-lights-2

Reply on news.ycombinator.com