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10 Lessons from Living Life Off the Grid
by Phillip Vannini and Jonathan Taggert
AlterNet
It was in 2011 that I first understood what off-grid living really meant. Before then I had heard people claim they were off-grid if they switched their cell phone off for a day or two. Other people thought anyone who lived in remote places was off-grid. None of that made any sense. It was when I first visited British Columbia's Lasqueti Island and later the floating home community of Clayoquot Sound that I got a real taste of the off-grid life: life, that is, in a place disconnected from large natural gas and electricity networks.
For the next two years, photographer/videographer Jonathan Taggart and I travelled close to 105,000 kilometres together across Canada to find people who live off-the-grid and visit them in their homes. Occasionally we lived with them for a short period of time. Sometimes we followed them around as they fished, harvested, collected wood and built or fixed their homes. And we too practiced living in off-grid homes and cabins for short stretches of time. Overall we visited about 100 homes and interviewed about 200 off-grid Canadians, as well as many American and British expats living in Canada. We managed to find off-gridders in every single province and territory, and through our book and forthcoming film we narrated our travels and chronicled the experiences, challenges, inventions, aspirations and ways of life of a few of them.
To make our travels and encounters with off-gridders possible, Jonathan and I had to fly on dozens of planes, ride snowmobiles, paddle kayaks and canoes, walk in snowshoes, ride ATVs, sail on ferries and small boats, bike and trek across many beautiful regions of our country. Our encounters with off-gridders young and old, far and near and rich and poor inspired us to reflect not only about off-grid life in itself, but also to question our collective, modern, on-grid way of life. The lessons we learned are about disconnection as much as they are about everything we all take for granted about the modern condition and its comforts, conveniences and connectivity.
To end our Tyee occasional series, we thought we would share with readers 10 simple lessons.
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Every Day is Earth Day
Source: http://www.riseearth.com/2015/01/10-lessons-from-living-life-off-grid.html
