This man lived in the Canadian wilderness for over 60 years (real estate, house)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Where is the picture? I bet he does not have many teeth left.
Then he would be like most everyone living in a "modern" society don't you think? Some of the people talking on the film didn't look like they had many good chompers left either.
I would freak out the first night. No TV? No shower? What about toilet paper??????
Toilet paper? What makes you think he used toilet paper? A friend traveling in India told me that most people carried a poop rag..They would use it and rise it out...better than nothing I suppose...a long while back my wife kicked me out of the house and I was forced to live in my brothers old cottage...it was more of a shack on a hill by a lake...I got so poor that I used to fish out of the canoe and make chowder out of the smallest of fish.
When it came time to bathe - I would fire up the old wood stove...open up the door to the unit...Get one of those huge tin wash basins and fill it with warm water...Then sit in the tub a few feet from the open flames licking out of the stove...steam would come up off my body...I felt like an old viking...it was actually very enjoyable. I lived that way for a few months till I managed to talk my way back into the house...the wife would come and visit me in the shack...we would take long walks and make love in the field....surrounded by a herd of horses..... It was an adventure....to get up in the morning...no one to bother me- no one or thing to answer too.
Freedom...I can see how this guy loved his life in the wild...but I had the luxury of visitors and a lover...you don't need much more...LOVE- some simple food...a clean bed...a roaring fire.....not a bad life.
Where is the picture? I bet he does not have many teeth left.
I take it you found the link to the video by now.
Too bad we didn't know one another during harder times. I made a scrap of canvass into a flat bag to hold around 4 maybe 5 gallons, painted it with linseed oil and charcoal, and installed a shower head with a on off lever from a old plastic same that the bag had fallen apart, leaving a ok shower head.
Found a steel rod, and bent it to a gambrel.... Like you, fired up either a fire or the wood and fill that bag 2/3rds with hot and added cold testing. If then the water was still to hot as I hung it in a tree, I just waited a little while.
Why did you wife kick you out? Don't answer... Me I got my back mashed on the job in NH where it isn't a good place to get hurt on the job. That tipped my little row of domino's, and that line ain't come to the ending yet.
LOL so far you are the 3rd guy I know of who would go out like a viking... No names but he would use a boat larger than mine... Me I would use my WW-1 vintage old town canoe and I see you would use that tub
This is the same canoe but the pic is rated ancient
On edit: I did use the names and places in the video to see this 'Canadian Wilderness" on NS DCN, and that place isn't all that far from other towns and even Halifax.....
I used the name of the lake in google earth and bam, there I was...
I agree to a point, however, literature is available to anyone especially if you live near a town with a library, and the share programs they have enable you to order just about any book you want for free. In some remote areas, there are programs where you can order your books from the library by mail. I know that this is available in Austrailia and have heard of it in Canada as well.
As to music, while I enjoy an occasional live show, I make my own, and most of the stuff coming out as "popular" music today is barely identifiable as music.
I tend to find my art in the ice crystals forming on the steams or sunrise over the mountains, storms painting landscapes across the praries, the flow of movement from a wild animal, transient, but magnificent and always changing, so I guess I am pretty easy to please.
Point being, not everybody has the same likes or dislikes as everybody else.
I watched Alone in the Wilderness about Dick Penneke again last night. He was in the Alaskan bush for 35 years.
He still received care packages including books from his brother and other friends, but it takes a very special kind of person to enjoy that amount of seperation for months on end. I agree that the labor is unending, but he notes that he found a lot of pleasure in hauling wood, "it seems to make my food taste better" he is quoted in the show. Some people find a lot of satisfaction in being tired at the end of the day from hard manual labor. They are fulfilled by it, and take great pride in what they produce.
Anyone that can do it gets a lot, but they give up a lot too. It all depends on what is important to youas an individual.
We are pretty much in agreement on most points. Yes, current popular music is hard to identify as music. I enjoy Vivaldi, Handel, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, and many other similar composers live at one of the world's most acoustically perfect concert halls (Disney Hall in Los Angeles) played by some of the world's finest professional musicians; it is an incomparable experience certainly not available in the wild.
I also agree that there is much stunning beauty in nature, and I have always enjoyed and valued that. I have hiked down into the Grand Canyon twice in my life, and of course it is quite unbelieveable. But in addition, we have the best of the most talented painters over the last several hundred years which we can enjoy in the major art museums of the world. (I do not consider modern art to be art, really).
As for books, yes, one can come in from the wilderness to a small town library or to a remote post office to pick up care packages from relatives, but I much prefer the easy and convenient access I have to my local library within walking distance which is open seven days a week. I use it often.
Your final sentence, which I placed in bold, is of course the operative concept. I suppose I posted here the other day mainly as a counterpart to the people in this forum who denigrate and sneer at urban life as a prison-like experience and elevate wilderness living to a sort of nirvana (which it indeed is for a few, but I emphasize "few"). You are not among those people, of course, as your view is balanced, intelligent, and encompasses the vast individual differences among members of our species.
We are pretty much in agreement on most points. Yes, current popular music is hard to identify as music. I enjoy Vivaldi, Handel, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, and many other similar composers live at one of the world's most acoustically perfect concert halls (Disney Hall in Los Angeles) played by some of the world's finest professional musicians; it is an incomparable experience certainly not available in the wild.
I also agree that there is much stunning beauty in nature, and I have always enjoyed and valued that. I have hiked down into the Grand Canyon twice in my life, and of course it is quite unbelieveable. But in addition, we have the best of the most talented painters over the last several hundred years which we can enjoy in the major art museums of the world. (I do not consider modern art to be art, really).
As for books, yes, one can come in from the wilderness to a small town library or to a remote post office to pick up care packages from relatives, but I much prefer the easy and convenient access I have to my local library within walking distance which is open seven days a week. I use it often.
Your final sentence, which I placed in bold, is of course the operative concept. I suppose I posted here the other day mainly as a counterpart to the people in this forum who denigrate and sneer at urban life as a prison-like experience and elevate wilderness living to a sort of nirvana (which it indeed is for a few, but I emphasize "few"). You are not among those people, of course, as your view is balanced, intelligent, and encompasses the vast individual differences among members of our species.
Music is the sound of the mood the expression of contemporary society, just for exemp at the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as your reference, music had as matrix a military groove marches music etc etc, nowaday the multitude.. the masses of ppl express other emotions
I think that we forget that the lives that you folks are describing were very common well into the 20th Century...certainly as far as WW II. It took the Industrial Revolution to cause people to think in terms of being without "modern conveniences" (see: Sears; Montgomery Wards).
Maybe its time for the pendulum to swing back to other way.....
Modern "conveniences" are overrated. It has crossed my mind that we pay so dearly for all of it, working our lives away, taxed at 50% or so, trying to keep up with the standard to which we have been chained. Bigger house, newer cars, God forbid your lawnmower is a push variety, and the rider had better be green and yellow. All the while paying higher energy bills on the house, and higher insurance and taxes on all of it. This while we lose our children to a massively expensive education system that fails miserably at teaching them what they need to know, and to the rotten ideas and materialism that spew from the digital media at every turn. We lose our own youth to long hours under fluorescent lighting to buy the life we should know to despise, while failing to enjoy the splendor and grandness that is all around us. We consume poor and sometimes downright poisonous food because we haven't the time to garden, hunt, fish, or raise livestock, instead hurrying though a fluorescent-lit store snatching up boxed, canned and preserved "convenience" foods.
Our family has spent the last several years uncoupling from the approved way of life and thinking, and it is wonderful. Wood heat is the finest in all the world, the fruit and vegetables from our gardens make the same items at the store appear pitiful and expensive by comparison, and there is NO comparing the eggs from the store to our own eggs. We have meat at every meal, either our own chicken or pork, or some of the venison we put up every fall. We eat like kings, play in the dirt, live in a WARM house all winter, and value things like family time, good food, and comfortable clothes and beds. We drive used cars(which get better gas mileage than new examples of the same or smaller vehicles) with no payments, cheap insurance, and even cheaper taxes.
We are striving to reach a point where we are totally debt free, can work every day on our own land, and owe as little as possible homage to the machine that gobbles up so much of the wealth Americans produce. Think about it, we work and pay taxes(payroll), so we can buy more stuff and pay taxes(sales), and keep it and pay taxes(property), until we die and leave it all to someone else to pay taxes(estate). Who wins? The banks that collect the interest, and the government that collects taxes. I say this guy did alright. He got up every day tasked only with taking care of his needs, and went to bed each night with all of whatever he worked for that day. And he learned something every day, too, I will wager. How many of us can say we have done as much?
Where is the picture? I bet he does not have many teeth left.
You might want to face reality here. Most older people have missing teeth. The difference is that rich folks fill them in with plastic false teeth. But that's purely aesthetic--they are still missing the teeth. My own teeth have been chipping away and falling out for years. So far, none have done so right up front where folks can see it. But, they will eventually. Big deal. Yeah, it makes it harder to eat sometimes. But I couldn't give a rat's rear end if someone doesn't like that I have missing teeth and it doesn't meet their aesthetic standard. Most people nowadays have a missing brain, but I don't see anyone throwing tantrums over that... it's always the "missing teeth" thing. Who cares?
You might want to face reality here. Most older people have missing teeth. The difference is that rich folks fill them in with plastic false teeth. But that's purely aesthetic--they are still missing the teeth. My own teeth have been chipping away and falling out for years. So far, none have done so right up front where folks can see it. But, they will eventually. Big deal. Yeah, it makes it harder to eat sometimes. But I couldn't give a rat's rear end if someone doesn't like that I have missing teeth and it doesn't meet their aesthetic standard. Most people nowadays have a missing brain, but I don't see anyone throwing tantrums over that... it's always the "missing teeth" thing. Who cares?
I care. Not about you, but about my own dental health. Missing teeth, per se, are only half of the issue. Deposits just under the gum line, known as tartar or plaque, contain bacteria. There is a statistical link between these deposits, which are removed by professional cleaning, and heart problems. Out bodies are not walled-off compartments, but organic whole systems. Dental health affects the rest of the body.
You undermine your own argument that missing teeth are "purely aesthetic" when you admit "it makes it harder to eat sometimes". The more teeth you lose the harder it is to eat. And gum disease leads to tooth loss. And the argument that most older people have missing teeth, while true, is very misleading because people who have had good dental care over a lifetime have far fewer missing teeth than those who have not, on average.
Your line of reasoning sounds like sour grapes to me. It's great that you don't care what other people think of you (I don't either), but it's sad that you do not value your own health and well-being more. Modern dentistry is one of the few areas of human science and civilization which has almost pure benefits for humanity and almost no downside.
Modern "conveniences" are overrated. It has crossed my mind that we pay so dearly for all of it, working our lives away, taxed at 50% or so, trying to keep up with the standard to which we have been chained. Bigger house, newer cars, God forbid your lawnmower is a push variety, and the rider had better be green and yellow. All the while paying higher energy bills on the house, and higher insurance and taxes on all of it. This while we lose our children to a massively expensive education system that fails miserably at teaching them what they need to know, and to the rotten ideas and materialism that spew from the digital media at every turn. We lose our own youth to long hours under fluorescent lighting to buy the life we should know to despise, while failing to enjoy the splendor and grandness that is all around us. We consume poor and sometimes downright poisonous food because we haven't the time to garden, hunt, fish, or raise livestock, instead hurrying though a fluorescent-lit store snatching up boxed, canned and preserved "convenience" foods.
Our family has spent the last several years uncoupling from the approved way of life and thinking, and it is wonderful. Wood heat is the finest in all the world, the fruit and vegetables from our gardens make the same items at the store appear pitiful and expensive by comparison, and there is NO comparing the eggs from the store to our own eggs. We have meat at every meal, either our own chicken or pork, or some of the venison we put up every fall. We eat like kings, play in the dirt, live in a WARM house all winter, and value things like family time, good food, and comfortable clothes and beds. We drive used cars(which get better gas mileage than new examples of the same or smaller vehicles) with no payments, cheap insurance, and even cheaper taxes.
We are striving to reach a point where we are totally debt free, can work every day on our own land, and owe as little as possible homage to the machine that gobbles up so much of the wealth Americans produce. Think about it, we work and pay taxes(payroll), so we can buy more stuff and pay taxes(sales), and keep it and pay taxes(property), until we die and leave it all to someone else to pay taxes(estate). Who wins? The banks that collect the interest, and the government that collects taxes. I say this guy did alright. He got up every day tasked only with taking care of his needs, and went to bed each night with all of whatever he worked for that day. And he learned something every day, too, I will wager. How many of us can say we have done as much?
I'm glad you are enjoying the lifestyle you have chosen, but your hyperbole (extreme exaggeration) does not make a good case for the "rotten ideas" which you claim predominate in mainstream society. Let's start with taxes. No one in the United States is taxed at "50% or so". When I figure my income taxes, both state and federal, add property taxes (in my case less than 4% of my adjusted gross income), estimated sales taxes over a year's time (figured at 8%), and add in $1,000 for miscellaneous such as auto registration fees (certainly more than I actually pay), I come up with about 30%, and I live in a high-tax state. Most people in the U.S. would be paying less.
Notice I left off payroll taxes; I did so on purpose because those we will get back in direct benefits unless we die early. People who live to a ripe old age will get back more than they paid in. Those who die early enough may not get anything back, but they had the peace of mind knowing their dependent children were covered while still under 18.
You talk about "bigger houses, newer cars". Well, if you keep up with things, you would know that the trends in mainstream society are towards smaller, more fuel-efficient cars and towards more affordable houses. Also, more and more people share your goal of being debt-free, which is a laudable goal which I also embrace. You don't have to have an alternative life-style to be debt-free or to be working towards that end. I became completely debt-free about the same time I retired seven years ago at the age of 61. My house is paid off and over an entire lifetime I have only paid cash for cars. It is easy to hold those kinds of values while still being part of mainstream society; you just quit caring if your car, or house, matches up to someone else's car, or house.
As far as the educational system, which is not perfect, why do you say that schools do not "teach children what they need to know"? The public schools, colleges, and universities taught me pretty much exactly what I needed to know. I have functioned well in society (meaning, among other things, that I have been a net contributor rather than a net taker and that I have had meaningful, satisfying employment as well as enjoyable hobbies and activities - including hiking to enjoy nature) for many years (I am 68) and I continue to function well in society to this day, and continue to give back via volunteer activities.
Again, more power to you that you have achieved what you want, but your bitter and hyperbolic rant gives evidence of a strong and underlying hostility which I would imagine undermines your contentment.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Don't answer... Me I got my back mashed on the job in NH where it isn't a good place to get hurt on the job. That tipped my little row of domino's, and that line ain't come to the ending yet.
