The Simple Life

The Search to Live More Simply

Camping at its most simple. Photo by author.

The idea of living a simple life intrigues me. With the future looking rather grim, I’ve started to think about ways to live more simply. The COVID-19 pandemic isn’t going to end anytime soon, so I’ve started to think of simple ways to maintain my existence.

So, what is a simple life? By my own definition, it is paring life down to the bare essentials. Living simply is about reducing all the clutter. It’s about wanting and needing fewer things. It’s about expecting less in myself and practically nothing in others. It’s about spending less time behind a computer and more time outside. It’s about learning about things that I want to learn about. It’s about planting a seed and watching it grow. It’s about doing the things that I want to do and not selling my soul to a faceless corporation. It’s about eating healthy and exercising more. It’s about spending time wisely on the things that matter to me. It’s about being with those that I want to be with. Living the simple life is to live independently and know that if the world falls apart that I can make it on my own.

I can’t help but to feel that modern man has forgotten how to be a natural human being. I want to reclaim my humanity. I want to feel again, love again, know again. I want to feel a passion for the planet that I live on. I want to respect the land that I walk on. I want to breathe clean air and drink clean water. I want to yearn less and give more. I want to put myself out there and work hard for something that’s worth working for. I don’t want to sleepwalk through my life. I want to grab my life by its horns and take it on a journey. I want to steer my life in the direction that I want it to go.

Living a simple life doesn’t make life easy, in fact, living simply makes life even harder. Simple living takes a lot of work, but it’s the kind of work that I want to do. I want to learn how to live more self-sufficiently. I want to learn how to create my own energy, my own food, my own necessities. In a sense, I want to become an immigrant in my own country and start over anew. I want to channel my inner pilgrim and start again from scratch.

I’ve been looking at the past for ideas about how to live in the future. I’ve always loved visiting open-air museums, especially those that showcase how immigrants embraced their new landscape and made it their own. I was reminded how much I loved those kinds of museums when I recently Google mapped for places to escape to and stumbled upon the Norskedalen Nature and Heritage Center. It was their website that reminded me of some photos that I took at Old World Wisconsin (another open-air museum):

There was no Walmart around to save you. Photo by author.

Doctor? What doctor? Hope you know a lot about herbs. Photo by author.

I mean, look at that. How much did those that lived on those farms really need? These images are my new spirit animals. I want to emulate what I think these pictures mean. I sense a fierce independence and faith in one’s ability to succeed when I look at those farms. Did life look like it was easy there? Hell, no. Did life look like it was simple? Hell, yes. I want to hybridize this look and bring it into the modern century.

I want to leave corporate America and get far, far away. I want to trust myself that I can do this and take the pilgrim plunge. Yet, land is expensive, building is costly, and taxes always need to be paid. Climate change means forests will burn, rivers will flood, and heat domes will burn crops to a sizzling crisp. Still, I want to do it. I want to quit this rat race that I’ve been running in because I’m tired of going in circles. I want to pick a new direction and follow it wherever it goes. The search is on for where my future resides, and I’m not going to stop looking until I find it.

Thanx for reading.

My travel memoir Time Traveled is available as e-book or paperback! Buy it either at Amazon or at most major retailers.