Off My Grid
If I had my druthers, I’d shed the trappings of society and move into an off-the-grid cabin. “Off the grid” means different things to different people. For some it conjures up an image of a doomsday survivalist obsessed with stocking an impenetrable bunker with everything needed for his family to survive in isolation until the storm passes. That’s not me and my family. We’re at each other’s throats three days into a week at a luxury resort. And that’s with cable TV, maid service, and a swimming pool.
To others, “off the grid” means a pastoral life in a quaint farmhouse near Boulder with chickens, goats, an organic garden, and a windmill. Half a lifetime ago, that might have been me. But that ship sailed long ago. I can’t get my kids to clean their rooms once a year. Imagine me telling them to weed the garden and scoop poop out of the chicken coop after school instead of watching Sponge Bob Square Pants reruns. And my wife Jane, the lawyer and real estate agent? Picture here in a peasant dress milking a goat.
At my life stage, living off the grid would simply mean self sufficiency. No mortgage, utilities, cable TV, Internet, or car payments. With five smartphone voice and data plans, our monthly phone bill is bigger than the mortgage on our first home. We’re such high rollers at Costco that they offer us a free penthouse suite whenever we come to town.
Just give me the simple life. I flirted briefly with living off the grid when I was a ski bum. There was that week when my roommate Ziggy didn’t pay the power bill. But we didn’t suffer much because he charmed the two cute girls next door into letting us run an extension cord from their apartment to ours. And I lived in a Pontiac Firebird in the parking lot of the Frisco A&W for three months but I guess you could say I cheated by using the bathrooms at the library.
I’ve never wanted a big house with all the latest electronic gadgets and more bathrooms than inhabitants. Jane, the real estate tycoon, has branded me a heretic and told her co-workers about my obsession with off the grid living. I’ve started looking over my shoulder. Someday I may be accosted at Safeway by an angry mob of associate brokers. If that happens, I’ll just announce that I’m thinking about upgrading to a larger home close to dining and shops with a Mt. Evans view. That will throw them off the scent. I’ll slip away while they’re fighting over who found me first.
No, I’ll never convert Jane to an off the grid happy camper. But we’ll soon be empty nesters. Maybe my off the grid dream is within reach as a weekend refuge. It would have to be cheap. Cheap equals remote and almost inaccessible. Maybe a mining claim up above Empire. Just the ticket.
I love to day dream about designing and building my cabin. I am addicted to cabinporn.com. Yes, that’s a real website featuring glossy, centerfold quality photos of cabins around the world.
My cabin will be designed to blend in with the environment so well that I’ll have trouble finding it myself. To keep out the riff raff and the lookie-loos, I’ll set up a series of trials along the path — like a non-lethal version of what Indiana Jones encountered in the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The first barrier will be a solar powered, heated video gaming station with a mini-fridge under the chair stocked with Red Bull and Doritos. That will keep out all the Millennials. Next, there’ll be a sign with very specific directions based on compass points and distance, like “walk north four-tenths of a mile and then turn east”. This will confound the entire female gender since they only understand directions based on pointing fingers and proximity to landmarks, like “turn that way at the Starbucks and turn this way when you get to Nordstrom’s”.
Finally, I’ll pin a stack of two-for-one Hooters happy hour coupons to a tree which will send all the camo-garbed, AR-15-toting rednecks scrambling back to their pickups. The seekers that pass all tests will find themselves at the entrance, a massive slab of thick pine panels bound with iron and sealed by a padlock like a medieval knight would put on a chastity belt. The key will be hidden under a welcome mat that reads, “Wipe Your Paws”.
The cabin will be constructed as much as possible from materials sourced from the property. In fact, my man cave could end up being a cave. If I’m lucky, there will be an abandoned Home Depot just down the trail. My boys would help me build it. I could pass on to them all that my father taught me. How to frame. How to insulate. How to nail down a wood floor. Wait a second…that was my neighbor Chip, not my Dad.
Ahhh…what a life that would be. In the mornings, I’d linger in my bunk, envisioning what the day would bring. Skiing, hiking, or clearing brush off the ranch like Ronald Reagan would do. I’d steel myself to the cold, force my creaking bones to roll out and dash over to the woodstove to stoke it against the morning cold. In the evening I’d sit out on the porch and bask in the alpenglow as the sun sets over the divide. Maybe one glorious twilight, my son would touch the shoulder of his old man and say in a soft voice, “Dad-it’s getting cold. Time to go inside.” But my spirit will have flown, leaving nothing but a smile on my face.
I can dream can’t I?
I wanna have friends that I can trust,
that love me for the man I’ve become not the man I was.
I wanna have friends that will let me be
all alone when being alone is all that I need.
I wanna fit in to the perfect space,
feel natural and safe in a volatile place.
And I wanna grow old without the pain,
give my body back to the earth and not complain.
The Perfect Space, by the Avett Brothers
